proper annealing/normalizing technique

jdm61

jdm61

itinerant metal pounder
Joined
Aug 12, 2005
Messages
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So....I think i have this part down. lol This is one that i messed up the plunge grind on alast month, so i thought i would have a bit of fun and ended up with a cool paperweight/sculpture. Fully annealed W2 bent in a vice by hand with no cheater bar, vice grips or gloves for that matter. :D
 

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Don Hanson's magic W2 and an overnight rest in a galvanized trash can full of vermiculite. That is why I am thinking that I should take Kevin C.'s advice and use a full quench, maybe with clay on the W2 blades...:D When a master smith like Bruce says "WOW!! that stuff is soft" then i fear that if i edge quench, i will end up with a knife that resembles a razor blade stuck in a block of silly putty. considering how hard W2 gets when quenched..lol You think I will have any problem passing the bending portion of the JS test next yer with this steel? HA!!!!! lol
 
Well I guess we know now why you can get such an active Hamon with his W2! No problems on the bend test. If you are going to anneal your test knife to this extent, heres a thought, do some interupted deep quenches edge first. It would be very cool to see about 3 wild Hamons. Also the old "triple quench" but at different oil depths should stiffen up the center and tang areas but still give the soft spine and the hard edge.
 
A couple years ago Dr. Lucie and I were messing around at his shop and I was mentioning all kinds of crazy ways I had though of to beat the ABS bend, so for fun we took a hunting knife blade that I had speroidized and did a funky heat treatment on just the edge, and bent it 360 degrees in a vice. I had to go in a spiral to do it, so that it looked like a corkscrew. I think he still has it on a bench in his shop. Although it was capable of cutting chopping and shaving, it was nothing I would want other than for messing around. All the same steel is an amazing material with all the things one can do with its varous phases.

How many other materials can you lop a piece off of and treat so that it is capable of cutting and tooling the same bar it was taken from?
 
W2 is a super simple steel that respones well to thermal cycles (normalizing, annealing, heat treating) you can make it soft as butter or nearly as hard as glass. Good stuff :) When I clay coat a W2 blade for hamon, I normalize after a sub-critical anneal and grinding (one hour at 1300f), use very thin clay and a full quench, my blades don't bend easily. Some of my blades just get normalized a few times and no anneal. This is where testing comes in, you get out what you put into it.
 
I was going for the artistic effect with the alternating bends. lol The blade would have bent a lot further, but after a couple of kinks, the vice jaws got in the way. I think the most severe ones are over 150 degrees. I don't remember how many thermal cycles this one went through, but suffice to say that it went through a few:D The two W2 blades that I am getting ready to heat treat when i build up the courage have gone through the entire gamut....multiple normalizing, annealing, quick quenches while forging, etc, etc. pretty much everything everyone has told me about:thumbup: The also were left rather thick so i hopefully managed to grind off all of that decarb:eek: I did a final normalization on thursday using the Brownell's anti-scale compound and I am thinking real hard about putting a thin coat of that on the areas on the blades where there will be no clay. Any comments? I'm going to try a 5-6 second interupted quench in 150 degree tough quench....wish me luck!!!!!
 
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