Sticking Your Knife in the Freezer?!!

C

Chopsticks

Joined
Jul 1, 2003
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I've read in some other forum (or is it this one?) about sticking your blades into the freezer for several days for some bootlegged stress relieving, similiar to cryo treatment for firearm barrels.

Has anyone tried this or am I just foolish? :confused:




I'll shut up now... :footinmou
 
Cryogenic freezing is a far more complicated procedure. The items are brought slowly down to near absolute zero, and held there for several days. Then the process is reversed.

The freezer just wouldn't get it cold enough.:D
 
You can use freezer for some part of the temperin on high carbon steels, but it's generally done on first temper(such as in a triple temper which I personally use) or even before the first temper. One of big things it does is complete the quenchand make sure all the austentinte as possible is converted to martensite(form of steel you want). Or such is my understanding, from various discussions in shop talk form. O1 and other high carbon steels are often snap temperred for a little bit first, at a lower temper temperature than their final temper, just because they get too brittle if you go straight to Cryo. Or so said Paul Bos, pretyt much the accepted expert on anything heat treating related(does Buck, Trace Rinaldi's, and I think Stryder's heat treating, plus others).
 
The last folding hunter I bought I was disappointed to say the least. I finally asked one of my sons if he wanted it for a junker or at least for use where a real sharp knife was not needed.

That was about the only knife that I can rememeber that I couldn't get sharp and expect it to stay that way for a while. The Puma was a different story and after the Bilton and the 12 inch AK I gave it to the boy to make up for the bad one.:)
 
Originally posted by Chopsticks
Has anyone tried this or am I just foolish?
Click to expand...

Seems like I recall David K doing something like this with his Katar, but don't remember for sure and I'm too lazy this morning to do a search. :p :D ;)
 
If you want to perform a stress relief on your blades then temper it at 25F degrees below the initial tempering temperature. Sub-zero cooling is done as part of the quenching process when the blade is initially heat treated and is followed by tempering.

-Cliff
 
OK, so I was at least partially right. Thanks for chiming in Cliff, too lazy to search for the old cryo thread I was thinking of. :)
 
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