tempering

2

22wmr

Joined
Mar 5, 2007
Messages
24
when you tempering a knife I heard you are sposed to get it straw color.well is straw color hotter then ornge or cooer then ornge. thanks
 
straw color refers to a "permanent" color, not a glowing heat color, that you get starting at about 325-350 degress. full blue comes on in the high 400's-500. When I temper at 425-450, I get straw going to blue. Normally, 5160 gets tempered to kind of a medium straw color. For O1, 10xx, W series, 52100, it should be a strong straw color at a minumum if not blue. W2 is pretty brittle even after a couple of tempers if you don't have any blue showing.
 
22wmr, You really need to read some books on knife making. Get "The $50 Knife Shop" and go from there.
Stacy
 
What stacy said. All this is covered in a lot of basic books. Yeah, I know, reading a book at your age may seem somewhat an endeavour, but trust me, it's well worth the effort.
;)
 
where can I get the 50 dollar knife shop at? so I want to get the metal blue right hotter than ornge? thanks
 
what you do when tempering is literaly cook the blade,when the metal is orange and glowing you've gone well beyond the point or temperature you need to.simple way to do it use your oven and set it at the temperature you want or need to (300-500 degrees) place the blade in the oven once pre heated and cook the blade for the pre determined length of time for the blade steel you are using,once you've cooked the blade or drawn out the temper take it out of the oven,place it on a cooling rack and allow it to cool down slowly,don't quench or cool it down in oil etc.Obviously you've got the internet so do a search on heat treating and tempering for the steel you choose,if it's 0-1 it ussually has the heat treating and tempering info right on the paper covering it comes in,get a book on knifemaking and go from there as the other members stated,it'll help you out quite a bit
 
is there any way that I can do it in the fire or with a cutting torch? I dont have a stove that I can use,(mom says I cant use ours)
 
Did you follow the link to Tim Livelys site that I gave you? You may need to go back and re-read your previous theads, I think that I did a pretty good job explaining how to temper in a fire but If you have any questions e-mail them to me and I will go over it again. If you read Tim's heat treat process it will explain all of this. Also go to the largest library in your town and check out "the $50 knife shop" by Wayne Goddard...The library in my little one horse town has 3 books on knifemaking!! If they don't the book most librarys will order or borrow it for you..
 
$50 Knife shop can be found at knife shows and ordered on line. If you go to half.com you can often pick up a copy for less than $5.
Stacy
 
I can tell you that its a good idea to get the $50 Knife Shop, I learned a lot from it. It has been easier for me because I grew up in the steel business and read a lot of books on the subject of steel working and machining. I would suggest going to the library and picking up some books on metallurgy (or scoop up the PDF from...

Well you could just work your way through this list, it helped me...

I put it on my blog here
 
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