S1 steel strange things

H

hawkwind

Joined
Oct 26, 2004
Messages
298
O.K. I m working on this big knife out of S1 eqivalent. I was drilling some holes and noticed it to harden under the bit.
Thats not all! I have called a friend of mine which is top notch knifemaker, about HT. and he told me he made a knife out of forged round S1 bar and that he just heats it up to austenitic temperature and let it air cool, without quench. After this he measuered 58 RC hardness on tester and the thing was chopping nails as easy as matches. (Something which can be done with convex grind and this steel).
Now this guy is ACE and I dont have reason not to believe him, but has any of you similar experiences with this steel and can you enlighten me on its properties? I asked around couple of days in thread, Russ pointed me to the fact that it is roughly S1 equivalent altough slightly more spiced.

Thank you

Jaro
 
None :D I leave HT to professionalls. I just want to figure it out. (I actually have torch and forge, but this is 18´´ long blade, so it needs oven and precise temps.

I have now the rough grind done I m going to drill some holes into tang and grind it clean so I can send it to HT.

Jaro
 
Hi Jaro.
S-1 can air harden because of the Chrome and Tungsten, and 58 Rc is
believable.
I'd suggest, normalizing twice, perhaps even three times, with the first
two above critical, and the third one just below critical. this should leave the
piece pretty soft.
Even so, the tungsten will be a bit of a challenge for drills and files.
 
What I have on S-1 is that is comes in many different formulations. The HT depends on the chemistry. It is not recommended that it be normalized. Annealing ( similar to what Russ does, is fairly straight forward). It hardens in oil to Rc57-59. With a different make-up, it could air harden, I suppose, but I would use oil. It has 30 seconds to get below 1000F.Then it can be martensite or bainite, depending on how fast the cooling rate is.
Stacy
 
Oh so... Thank you Russ again. I m going to do something more tommorow.
I m not professionall knifemaker by means, I only made few - so this is pretty new to me.

cinguvmeser.jpg


This is rough grind so far, very bad picture. I m going to make point more clipped, going to remade the handle shape more narrow etc.
The transition from ricassso to grind needs to be filled with round file (looking forward to that) and I m going to drill some holes into the tang to shed off some weight.

Jaro
 
I forgot to comment on the steel after asking about heat treatment. While it could be possible to air harden it effectively, it would be better to find someone who can oil harden it. S1 is a good steel, IMO. With its tungsten content it has a good combination of toughness and wear resistance.
 
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