Sprocket chain damascus heat treat recipe needed

C

Craig Daniel

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Feb 17, 2016
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I have 3 knives cut out of a bar of sprocket chain my friend forged for me, Can someone give me the how to on the correct heat treat? Thanks for your help.
 
Hey Craig! I wish to offer excellent advice for "correct" heat treat, but unfortunately I don't think that will be possible with mystery steel! We don't know what steel it is, so impossible to recommend "correct" heat treat. You can, however, simply treat it as 1084 and see how that turns out. 1500F, soak for a couple minutes if you can (most likely there will be some alloying in this mystery steel), quench in 130F canola or commercial quenchant. Start your tempers low and walk up to desired HRC. If it doesn't harden in oil (make sure to account for possible decarb), try water. Good luck! Maybe someone else can chime in with experience working sprocket chain, and could give a better quesstimate.
 
There's no way to know what is in it, so pretty difficult to suggest a HT procedure.
What I would do(and have when using salvage steel) is a few reducing heat cycles.......one high,1600 ish, then 1550 cool to black, 1500 cool to black, 1450 cool to black. That should set you up OK if it is anything common. Austinize at 1475 to 1500 for a 6 minute soak(may not need the soak time, but it will hurt nothing, and could make a big difference depending on composition) and quench in a fast oil. Check if a file will skate, if so, temper at 350* finish grind, sharpen and test it for edge retention. Flex the edge over a rod and see if it chips at all......if it chips, retemper at 375* and repeat test procedure. Keep tempering at higher heat until you get a durable edge that stays sharp well and doesn't chip out. Write down what works so you can repeat the procedure on the other blades.

Some of the other guys here may modify my method and suggest improvements:thumbup:

Cheers,

Darcy:)

Edited to add, some people(most??) type faster than me:)
 
Darcy, good points that I left out. Since this sounds like it was forged, you'll need to normalize and cycle it. Just as Darcy lined out. I might normalize a bit hotter, 1650F.
 
Thanks a lot guys, The smith that forged it is well known here in our state and has put on several seminars for forging. I have used his Damascus before but it was not sprocket chain, He just made this and handed it to me and said make a pretty knife out of this, So I was very proud to get free steel with a pretty pattern yo boot. If all turns out well I will post some pics of the finished product.
 
Craig Daniel said:
Thanks a lot guys, The smith that forged it is well known here in our state and has put on several seminars for forging. I have used his Damascus before but it was not sprocket chain, He just made this and handed it to me and said make a pretty knife out of this, So I was very proud to get free steel with a pretty pattern yo boot. If all turns out well I will post some pics of the finished product.
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So , way you don t ask him how to correct heat treat ?
 
He is not a knife maker, He just forges mostly fence,gate and other ornamental structures. He just forges bars for me once in a while And gives to me, As far as I know he has never made a knife so I wanted to ask makers with experience as to what to do.
 
If it wouldn't harden in water, you either didn't get it hot enough, or it's just not going to get hard because of the material.
 
I normalized at 1650, 1550, 1450 then hardened at 1500 let soak 6-8 min quenched in 130 degree canola and it would not harden, Heated back to 1500 soaked quenched in warm water and still would not harden.
 
Not enough carbon most likely. Not going to make a decent blade ever in that case. If that HT procedure failed, you are probably out of luck.

That said, make sure you file through the decarb, since you may have hard steel inside there. Sometimes the file will cut for several strokes, and then you will hit hard steel below the decarb layer.

Darcy
 
I filed several strokes right on through then I tempered at 350 for 1.5 hrs and sharpened and the edge bent and would not come back on the flex so I will put them in the scrap bucket, No more unknown steel for me to take up time. Thanks so much for all the help!
 
That sucks. But I wouldn't scrap them. I would take them back to your blacksmith and have him flatten them out and forge weld them to a known steel core so you have a 3 layer billet with a good, known middle core. Then you'll have the chain damascus appearance with a good carbon edge. Heat treat it as whatever steel you choose for the core.
 
If the steel is 1050 or lower, you need more heat to austenitize. Try 1600, or 1650 and quench in water. If it doesn't harden after that, it won't harden.
 
I may try to harden again when I have some knives I am working on to treat, Yeah I won't scrap them after all maybe I can do a little something with them.
 
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