Problemo's with McMaster Carr Quench oil Help

R

RHankins

Joined
Jul 14, 2007
Messages
190
Used to use Texaco type A (I think) or type 50 don't really remember.
On carbon blades it would pretty much blow off the antiscale and leave a nice clean blade and they hardened perfectly.
Now using McMaster Carr fast quench 11sec it is leaving a crusty mess on the blade.
Am using a new kiln for HT that may be part of it, but it seems to be right on color wise as far as temps.
Oil is preheated to 130deg using O1 steel with a 1475deg F quench temp...

Any advise is appreciated
 
Put your blades in boiling water, and the anti-scale breaks up and falls off.
 
I have been using the McMaster Carr Oil with good results, with one exception.
I used the oil one time with an antiscail compound and the blades came out a mess. Baked on crude that was very hard to get off. It would not boil off and it ruined a belt. I just did another batch of knives with the McMaster oil and they came out nice and clean from the quench, (no anti-scale compound)
I posted a question about my crud coated anti-scale knives and got a bunch of responses on how it should come right off.
I thought that I got a bad batch of anti-scale compound, but based on what you have said I am now thinking that there may be an incompatibility between the anti-scale compound and the McMaster Carr quench.
Also, "and I may be wrong" but I believe that the 11 second oil is for fast quenching steels like W1, I think the recommended oil for O1 is the 28 second oil. Of course if works :)

Mike
 
Mike
You may be right on the incompatibility as the tang end I grabbed had no antiscale on it...That was the cleanest part of the knife. no crud
May need to borrow a pyrometer from someone to check the Kiln temp.
The O1 did not crack or show any signs of it using the 11sec oil
Usually when I crack a blade they happen right at the quench or very shortly afterwards.
I will try on W/O the antiscale and see what happens
 
That brings up the question in my mind of what happens if I use my Parks 50 on steel like O1, 5160 or 52100. Is it bad to quench these to fast. Done a couple from 5160 and all is good so far
 
Most steels can be done in a fast quench oil, however you do risk cracking. I did several damascus blades in parks 50, 1084 and 15n20 mix and a few HC. They hardened up wonderfully but I had 2 problems. My shoulders were not a smooth as they should have been and I got stress risers. Then I had one HC blade made from a Cat Spring that had spiderweb cracking along the spine. All were heated in a salt pot to 1500f and soaked 10 minutes. I now have 2 types of oil to do my quenching in. One for the W-2, 1095 etc and one for higher alloy o-1, 52100, 5160 etc.
 
Chuck,

I'm trying to limit my steel choices to 5160, 52100, 1084/15N20, W2.

So would I use Parks 50 with the W2 and 1084/15N20 and another oil with the 5160 and 52100?

What 2 oils do you use?

Thanks, Phil
 
Phil

The best second oil would be texaco type A or the like. I have gone back to using some peanut oil on the deeper hardening steels. I had great luck with it an is does not flare as much as some of the petro based oils. I still use parks 50 on the w-2 and the like. Your choices seem sound to me. They are all good steels.

A side note, Margaret is taking back control of the scholarship fund so she will be awarding 2 this year. Your application should be fine. No guarantee but you are in the running.
 
Hey Chuck (and friends),

Thanks for the tips!

Finding Parks quench oils these days seems about as likely as finding the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Apparently Darren Ellis (http://refractory.elliscustomknifeworks.com) is the ONLY source, when he has it in stock. Parks 50 (ECKW-P50) and Parks AAA (ECKW-PAAA) cost $25 per gal or $80 per 5 gal.

But, I'm not sure of the wisdom of embarking on a knife making path of development based on so elusive a product. I've been searching this forum for additional quenching info (search term QUENCH). So far I've gone through 250 hits out of 500, but have only found a few quench specific oils listed as alternatives.

McMaster (http://www.mcmaster.com) has a 11 second oil ($18.89 per gal, PN 3202K4 or $85.10 per 5 gal, PN 3202K7) and a 28 second oil ($17.52 per gal, PN 3202K5 or $79.38 per 5 gal, PN 3202K1)

Houghton (http://www.houghton.ca/products.asp?Cat=1&SubCat=9) has several oils. The main ones being Houghto Quench G, Houghto Quench K and BioQuench 700. All of which seem almost as equally difficult to attain as Parks products are.

Brownells(http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/store/productdetail.aspx?p=1129&st=quench&s=) has their Tough-Quench ($14.95 per qt, PN 083-027-032 or $41.95 per gal, PN 083-027-128). I understand this is Houghton's Quench Q bundled under their label.

At this point, it seems, the only quench products that can actually simply be ordered are Brownell's and McMaster's. I haven't looked into the Texaco products.

Also, I haven't really quite figured out the quench speeds of all the various products. McMaster is the only one that actually published figures (that I've found) 11 seconds and 28 seconds. I've seen various figures via BF threads, but haven't felt comfortable drawing accurate conclusions. [EDIT: Houghto Quench Q = 11 to 13 seconds; Quench K = 7 to 9 seconds; via http://www.houghton.co.jp/egr4.htm]

I must admit I like the idea of peanut oil and its green-ness. Houghton's Bio Quench 700 also has that attraction for me.

Thanks for the heads up re the pending scholarship assessment. (I never heard back from Scotty Hayes, in spite of numerous inquiries.)

All the best, Phil
 
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Phil

I went through all the same searching as you have. It seems to be coming to the same conclusion too. Here are a few additional things I found.

The easiest to obtain is the Mcmaster Carr 9-11 second however in my opinion the parks 50 (7-9second) gives the most consistent results in w2 and 1095.

Heatbath "parks 50" will not speak to you unless you are "in the industry". They would not even consider speaking to me with a 55 gal order.

Houghton will sell to individuals with a min 55 gal order. Price per gallon was reasonable but shipping was prohibitive.

I like the idea also of the peanut oil as an alternative due to it's non-petroleum base. If you are willing to put in the time to experiment with it and the steels you are using it can be used satisfactorily. I did a lot of performance testing with peanut oil for both JS and MS performance tests using peanut oil. Passed both and made many blades that performed as well or better than expected. I do not have the metallurgical testing systems that others do so I had to rely on performance rather than micrographs. Do your homework and you will find a great HT quench medium, if using W2 brine may be a sensible thing to explore.

Good Luck
 
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