my first couple knives im making are out of a couple old ice auger blades they are a laminated steel with the core being a rockwell hardness of 61 i reformed the blade with the belt sander and kept the steel cool dipping in water and wiping constantly but i welded a bolt on with a 5 /16 rod i saw the blade glow red for a second then welded the opposite side it then glowed again for a second i then cooled the blade in snow i think the snow was way to cold but now i have made the shaft on the blade drilled the holes and am ready to pin .when i dipped the blade in snow to temper should i have used warm water and also dipped completely under?. i am getting some refract cement so my next blades will better and ill cover the spine so it wont get to tough. kellyw
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quenching
- Thread starter hellgap
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2006
- Messages
- 1,655
Seeing as we do not know the type of steel. I'd just run a file down the edge to see if its hard then finish the knife. My biggest recomendation is use a known steel. 1080& 1095 are fairly cheep.
Its hard to give advice on how to anneal and reheattreat an unknown. If it didn't crack I'd just finish the knife.
Its hard to give advice on how to anneal and reheattreat an unknown. If it didn't crack I'd just finish the knife.
Yowza. Whatever heat treating was done to the steel to make it 61 RC is long gone. Your best bet to make this into a servicible knife would be to heat treat the whole thing again. Take it all up to nonmagnetic, hold it there a while, and quench it it warm oil. Temper it in the oven at 400 for an hour. Check to see if the edge will chip. If it does, temper it again at 425. If it doesn't, do another cycle at 400.
Might put you in the ball park, or at least be a decent place to start. Doesn't have to be rocket science with fancy ovens, forges, and the like. I HT'd a small blade using the fire in my fireplace the other night, just took it a while to get up to temp. Caveats: we don't know what steel it is, and so it might not respond to the simple HT described above. We also are not likely to get 100% of the steel's potential using this method, which is why I used "servicible."
Might put you in the ball park, or at least be a decent place to start. Doesn't have to be rocket science with fancy ovens, forges, and the like. I HT'd a small blade using the fire in my fireplace the other night, just took it a while to get up to temp. Caveats: we don't know what steel it is, and so it might not respond to the simple HT described above. We also are not likely to get 100% of the steel's potential using this method, which is why I used "servicible."
thanks that helps . the knife did not crack when i cooled it but it was only the back or base that heated up i think the working edge is fine as far as being heated up.i know 61 is high mora made 4 different blades of steel the laminated was the hardest being 61 the others were all 57 to 59. i did try to bend the handle as it warped slightly and hit is really hard snapping the blade i reground the blade welded the handle and finished making it flat by grinding but that time i cooled it more slowly .thanks the oven tip is good. kellyw