Testing W2 Hardness Quenched with Parks 50 and 9% Brine Solution.

After around a couple of months of careful testing and analysis trying to nail down the proper treat for W-2 I have come to one conclusion and that is that W-2 is one persnickety m*****f***er to heat treat. I admit it my nemesis is W-2 and it has beaten me not because I have given up but because I simply don’t know where to go from here because the results vary vastly when using the same steel from the same piece of flat bar using the same equipment and the same procedures. My results are so bizarre it seems as though somebody is sabotaging my experiments but that’s impossible because I’m the only one here, lol. I admit I am totally perplexed by this steel and really have no idea what my problem is with it or how to solve it because my results are simply all over the place with no consistency.

I have only made two knives all summer and that’s with a lot of time off because I decided to practice my grinding on some cheap tool steel and put the stainless away for a while and I chose W-2 because it gives the best hamon but instead of being able to practice my grinding basically I wasted most of the summer trying to figure out how to heat treat W-2 and have gotten nowhere. People can give me suggestions if they want but I just don’t see what the problem is but my question is has anyone else ever given up on W-2 because it’s almost impossible to get consistent results in heat treating?

Here’s the story if anybody’s interested that I cannot make heads or tails out of. This is a little bit of repeat of a previous post but it will tell the complete story in one go. If you look at the top of my first photograph I’m trying to figure out the proper austentizing temperature so I tested 1450°F, 1460°F and 1470°F and from the results it looked that 1450°F was high so next I tested 1420°F 1430°F and 1440°F. If you look at my results from that it looked like probably 1435°F was the sweet spot because I was getting in the mid-60s.

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The next day I tried the same experiment using a skim coat of furnace cement to try to cut down on scale and tried to use a broader range to really see the hardening curve and know exactly where my temperature was best by testing every 5°F from 1425°F to 1455°F. As you can see my hardnesses are a disaster where I only broke 50 hardness in one place. I assumed that the skim coat was slowing down my quench so I did one test piece at 1435°F with a fresh piece with no anti-scale layer of furnace cement and got hardnesses of 68.5 and 67 so I thought I had my perfect temperature and I was ready to make a knife.

The day was getting late so I quickly tried to reuse some pieces from the previous experiment where I ground off the scale and cement and got the same disastrous results where it says reused pieces. I found that perplexing but thought maybe it was because I didn’t get rid of the de-carb layer so I tried grinding a fresh piece like I did the reused pieces and tested it and got 66 and 67 so I figured that was my problem.

Now today I decided to redo the 1425°F to 1450°F with brand-new pieces expecting to get the same results as yesterday but this time I couldn’t even get hardnesses of 40! That is just beyond my comprehension because I was using the exact same steel and same procedure and yesterday I got 67 and 68.5 and today I only cracked 40. You can see these results in my second photo.

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I thought maybe it was my austentizing soak time and it seemed to work fine at 10 minutes previously but I doubled it to 20 and after removing a decarb layer I got 64 ½ and 65 again so then I thought maybe 15 minutes was a sweet spot but it wasn’t then I tried half an hour and again that was worse.

Honestly I don’t expect anybody to solve this problem because they aren’t here watching me and I don’t blame people for assuming I don’t know what I’m doing but I honestly have meticulously been adhering to the same procedures and my results are truly confounding. So my question is again has anybody else just given up on W-2 because it’s almost impossible to heat treat properly consistently?

I do have one sneaking suspicion that it may be my parks 50 because I’m not actually using parks 50 for all these tests. I used the parks 50 that was sent to me for the first set of tests where I was using 10° variations and getting in the mid-60s. But after that I used 50 Quench Oil that I bought which is what parks 50 is now called because another company bought them out and this is what I purchased and the initial test was done with the oil that was given to me that is truly parks 50.

That would explain why suddenly my results are so poor but my highest readings when I did the fresh piece in my first photograph is with the 50 Quench Oil so how did I get that if the oil is no good? Honestly none of this makes any sense to me and I think it’s time for a few drinks. I don’t think anybody can help me but feel free to put your two cents in.
 
Why you not try to quench it in the water ?

W2(AISI) - Water hardening tool stee
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W2(AISI) - Water hardening tool steel. Quite popular with custom knife makers, beginners and seasoned experts alike. Easy to work with, decent edge holding and ok. toughness, depending on the heat treatment. Maximum working hardness is in 63-65 HRC Range. Obviously, you won't be getting much of the toughness at 65hrc, however edge holding and cutting performance for thin edges increase accordingly.
W2 a is just as bad(read, broad) in terms of specification precision as AISI W1 steel. Carbon varies from 0.85%-1.50%. Huge variation for an alloy. Trace amount of Chromium serves primarily as a carbide former, may be adds something to alloy strength as well, but nothing in terms of stain resistance, too little of it(Cr). W2 maxes out 64-65HRC when enough Carbon is present, and works quite well at that hardness levels as a light use knife. Pretty good with polished, thin edge at 64HRC. I've seen various types of knives in all sizes, starting from small folders and ending with rather large kitchen and utility knives. Overall, it's a decent steel, non-stainless, won't win any awards in abrasive wear resistance department, but will do variety of jobs.
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Natlek said:
Why you not try to quench it in the water ?
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I have quenched W2 in water as part of earlier tests but I would rather use oil because of the high rate of cracked blades using water. But that's a good idea maybe I will try quenching in brine again to see if I can get higher numbers in comparison with the 50 Quench Oil. Maybe it is the problem that when the new company bought Parks and renamed Parks 50 to 50 Quench Oil they changed the formula and maybe now it isn't as fast. Unfortunately I mixed most of the parks 50 I was given with the 50 quench oil I bought so I can't really test the two that well but I do have two or 3 ounces and maybe that's enough. But I did get 68.5 hardness with the 50 Quench oil so that probably isn't the problem but maybe it is who knows?
 
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Re hardening W2 can decrease hardenability, as the grain gets finer every time you go through the phase transformation.

Secondly, there are a few bad bars of W2 out there. Sometimes that is the issue.

Third, this is why I always normalize and use grain refining cycles. The steel is in the same condition, every time I heat treat.

If I get a new supply, I test a piece before I make a knife to verify my heat treat is consistent with that batch. I'm down to the last few bars I bought from Aldo with his first good batch a few years ago, the batch those posts you referenced where I did my testing.

Fourth, is there possibly an issue with the thermocouple, reading inconsistently? I know you tested it, but if there is an intermittent problem.

Hamon are a rabbit hole, as you are finding out. When you get a supply you like, buy a lot of it. Saves some headaches.
 
Hey Jeff, it sounds like you are changing more than one variable with each iteration. That would make it hard to nail down the culprit, and could be part of your problem. I'm not much of a knife maker, but I a guilty of the same thing!


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Jeff the Millwright said:
I quenched those with the Parks 50 you were kind enough to send me I agitated for 30 seconds and then left them in the oil long enough to cool completely. It was at about 80°F.
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I was just curious if you had used brine or the oil for those numbers. Thanks for the further data!


Also, Jeff, the oil I sent you is the same as the oil you've purchased if you purchased it through Maxim. My 5 gallon jug only says "50 quench oil" or whatever. Not Parks 50.

I'm willing to bet you either have a furnace/thermocouple fluctuation or a bar of W2 that is inconsistent. I think you should put away the notebook and make a knife. You know what temp you need to hit 66 RC. You know your quench medium is correct. I think further experimentation is going to have you chasing your tail.

Use the satanite clay for your normalizing cycles. Get rid of it for your austentizing cycle, as the amount of scale you're going to develop in a single 10 minute soak is pretty minimal.
 
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Willie71 said:
Re hardening W2 can decrease hardenability, as the grain gets finer every time you go through the phase transformation.

Secondly, there are a few bad bars of W2 out there. Sometimes that is the issue.

Third, this is why I always normalize and use grain refining cycles. The steel is in the same condition, every time I heat treat.

If I get a new supply, I test a piece before I make a knife to verify my heat treat is consistent with that batch. I'm down to the last few bars I bought from Aldo with his first good batch a few years ago, the batch those posts you referenced where I did my testing.

Fourth, is there possibly an issue with the thermocouple, reading inconsistently? I know you tested it, but if there is an intermittent problem.

Hamon are a rabbit hole, as you are finding out. When you get a supply you like, buy a lot of it. Saves some headaches.
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I appreciate the input Willie so thanks for trying to help.

As far as re-hardening decreasing hardenability most of my tests have been done with new steel so that isn’t really a factor in this case. But I am starting to suspect that perhaps I do have a bad bar of W-2. The bar I have been testing I bought from Canadian knife supply in Alberta who told me it was from the steel baron but since then I have bought 3-4 foot pieces 2” x 3/16 directly from The Steel Baron.

I am thinking I will do a test with the new steel I bought directly from The Steel Baron and see if that makes a difference. Maybe I do you just have a bad bar because it is really weird that I get good results one time and using the exact same procedure and equipment I get dismal results.

And I do understand how normalizing may help this so maybe in the future I will start normalizing all my W-2 but I haven’t been because I did try it once with this bar and it didn’t make any difference in hardness. But yes that may be wise in the future.

And that’s what I thought that it probably was my thermocouple but I have an external one also and I used it to check against my one that is part of my oven and they seemed to be about the same in comparison to each other as they were before so I really doubt it is a temperature issue.

And yes you are correct sir a hamon certainly can turn into a rabbit hole and I would just switch steels and because I found 1095 much easier to heat treat with more consistent results I would just switch to that because from what I have read it gives a Hamon almost as good as W-2 but the problem is I now have 12 feet of W-2 and I would hate it to just go to waste.

So I am going to try and test some of the new W-2 I have directly from Aldo and see if that’s the issue and I think I will quench in parks 50 and brine to see if they both harden the same. I was a little disheartened yesterday but there has to be an answer because if I am getting good hardnesses sometimes eventually I should be able to figure out how to get it all the time. Hopefully it is just that I have a bad bar. I was thinking of doing some hardness tests on the bar before heat treating because I would think it should be pretty consistent even in the annealed state? Maybe that would be an indication if it is a bad bar?
 
A.McPherson said:
Hey Jeff, it sounds like you are changing more than one variable with each iteration. That would make it hard to nail down the culprit, and could be part of your problem. I'm not much of a knife maker, but I a guilty of the same thing!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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It may sound like I am changing more than one variable but I really try not to do that and I think I didn’t really make things perfectly clear in my post about my problem but I really haven’t been doing that.

The only thing I changed was the austentizing temperature for the vast majority of my tests. I did change oils I suspected but actually I didn’t. The company that makes Parks 50 was bought out recently and they changed the name to 50 Quench Oil so I suspected they perhaps changed the recipe a little but I was informed by kuraki who sent me a sample of his quench oil for my tests that I used in the first part of these tests was actually the 50 Quench Oil and not parks 50 so actually I was using the same oil all along.

When I was totally perplexed I did also change my austentizing soak times but that was only a few pieces at the very end of my tests. The perplexing reality is that I was able to get a hardness of 68.5 and the next day using the exact same steel and quench oil and procedure I couldn’t even get 40. So not only did I not change more than one variable I didn’t change anything and my results were that much different and that’s what so perplexing.
 
kuraki said:
I was just curious if you had used brine or the oil for those numbers. Thanks for the further data!


Also, Jeff, the oil I sent you is the same as the oil you've purchased if you purchased it through Maxim. My 5 gallon jug only says "50 quench oil" or whatever. Not Parks 50.

I'm willing to bet you either have a furnace/thermocouple fluctuation or a bar of W2 that is inconsistent. I think you should put away the notebook and make a knife. You know what temp you need to hit 66 RC. You know your quench medium is correct. I think further experimentation is going to have you chasing your tail.

Use the satanite clay for your normalizing cycles. Get rid of it for your austentizing cycle, as the amount of scale you're going to develop in a single 10 minute soak is pretty minimal.
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Thank you very much for your post kuraki because I assumed what you sent me was Parks 50 so knowing that it was indeed the same 50 Quench Oil I purchased eliminates that as a suspect.

I was pretty sure that you were right that it was my furnace thermocouple/fluctuations inconsistencies that was causing my problems so I checked it with my other thermocouple and the furnace seems good. And yes I would like to make a knife but I’m not getting 66 consistently. So I really have to get consistency before I make a knife sadly enough.

And no I haven’t been normalizing but maybe I should be but first I’m going to check to see how my new supply of W-2 performs because I am suspecting at this point I may have a bad piece. And that’s a good idea about the clay so if I do start normalizing I will take that advice. Thanks again. Wish me luck I know I need it, LOL.
 
Jeff the Millwright said:
I appreciate the input Willie so thanks for trying to help.

As far as re-hardening decreasing hardenability most of my tests have been done with new steel so that isn’t really a factor in this case. But I am starting to suspect that perhaps I do have a bad bar of W-2. The bar I have been testing I bought from Canadian knife supply in Alberta who told me it was from the steel baron but since then I have bought 3-4 foot pieces 2” x 3/16 directly from The Steel Baron.

I am thinking I will do a test with the new steel I bought directly from The Steel Baron and see if that makes a difference. Maybe I do you just have a bad bar because it is really weird that I get good results one time and using the exact same procedure and equipment I get dismal results.

And I do understand how normalizing may help this so maybe in the future I will start normalizing all my W-2 but I haven’t been because I did try it once with this bar and it didn’t make any difference in hardness. But yes that may be wise in the future.

And that’s what I thought that it probably was my thermocouple but I have an external one also and I used it to check against my one that is part of my oven and they seemed to be about the same in comparison to each other as they were before so I really doubt it is a temperature issue.

And yes you are correct sir a hamon certainly can turn into a rabbit hole and I would just switch steels and because I found 1095 much easier to heat treat with more consistent results I would just switch to that because from what I have read it gives a Hamon almost as good as W-2 but the problem is I now have 12 feet of W-2 and I would hate it to just go to waste.

So I am going to try and test some of the new W-2 I have directly from Aldo and see if that’s the issue and I think I will quench in parks 50 and brine to see if they both harden the same. I was a little disheartened yesterday but there has to be an answer because if I am getting good hardnesses sometimes eventually I should be able to figure out how to get it all the time. Hopefully it is just that I have a bad bar. I was thinking of doing some hardness tests on the bar before heat treating because I would think it should be pretty consistent even in the annealed state? Maybe that would be an indication if it is a bad bar?
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Regarding the normalizing: some of Aldo's stock is highly course spheroidized, and won't harden, even with a 30 minute soak. It's worth normalizing, cycling, and then hardening to rule this out. If the steel hardens, but doesn't get full hardness, this may be the issue too. Before deciding a bar is bad, mormalize and cycle a coupon, then heat treat. Over cycling the steel may put it past the point where even parks 50 would get you last tne pearlite nose. This is when I try brine. If it hardens in brine, then it might be best to normalize, and do one fewer cycles refining the grain. As you have found out, W2 is very picky, and there are at least four batches, maybe 5 out there, and there is inconsistency in the structure between the batches. There are bars that simply won't harden, no matter what you do.

I'm not looking forward to restocking W2 with the inconsistency in supply. Even getting two thicknesses from the same supplier could be different batches.

Edit: do you want to send me a piece of your bad steel for me to try with my setup? If I get the same results as you, that would confirm it's the steel, not anything else. I'm getting pretty damn consistent results with my supply. I'll pm you my address if you want me to try.
 
Willie71 said:
Regarding the normalizing: some of Aldo's stock is highly course spheroidized, and won't harden, even with a 30 minute soak. It's worth normalizing, cycling, and then hardening to rule this out. If the steel hardens, but doesn't get full hardness, this may be the issue too. Before deciding a bar is bad, mormalize and cycle a coupon, then heat treat. Over cycling the steel may put it past the point where even parks 50 would get you last tne pearlite nose. This is when I try brine. If it hardens in brine, then it might be best to normalize, and do one fewer cycles refining the grain. As you have found out, W2 is very picky, and there are at least four batches, maybe 5 out there, and there is inconsistency in the structure between the batches. There are bars that simply won't harden, no matter what you do.

I'm not looking forward to restocking W2 with the inconsistency in supply. Even getting two thicknesses from the same supplier could be different batches.

Edit: do you want to send me a piece of your bad steel for me to try with my setup? If I get the same results as you, that would confirm it's the steel, not anything else. I'm getting pretty damn consistent results with my supply. I'll pm you my address if you want me to try.
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Success!!! You are absolutely right Willie normalizing is the secret. Thanks to your suggestion I tried normalizing two pieces one from each of my two stocks of W-2 and after grinding off .005” they were both 66 ½ hardness throughout their entire surfaces.

I had tried normalizing in the past and it didn’t seem to help but I think that is because there is inconsistency in the structure of not only batches but within a single piece of bar. I think probably the degree of spheroidizing varies and so some test pieces don’t need normalizing because the spheroidizing is not so severe and other places is more severe so it does need normalizing and I think that’s why I was getting such variations throughout individual test pieces. After I normalized not only was it hard it was hard consistently throughout the entire test pieces.

I am a little confused though because people seem to say normalizing and thermal cycling and I thought they were the same thing. The method I used is the one Stacy recommends; I heated to 1650°F let cool to black and then quenched in water and then did the same procedure at 1350°F and 1250°F. Is that what you would recommend for W-2?

Now that I have that figured out I am going to normalized six pieces and do another test from 1425°F to 1450°F in 5° increments to really nail down the sweet spot for maximum hardness. I know 66 ½ is very good but I might as well try and find the 67 to 68 ½ spot if I can find it and I am just plain curious how sensitive this steel is to austentizing temperatures and how wide the range can be before it dramatically falls off.

I was going to take you up on your offer to send you a few pieces but I don’t have to now because it looks like you solved my problem so thanks for the offer and thanks for the great advice; you solved my problem and it is much appreciated.
 
The sequence I use is 1650 for 10min, cool to black (magnetic), 1550f for 10 min, cool to black, 1450f for 10min, cool to black and quench. 1350 or 1200 will stress relieve and fine spheroidize the steel. The first cycle it above ac3, which grows the grain, making it all the same size, and its hot enough to break up the course spheroidized carbides. The two subsequent heats result in new grains forming within the old grain boundaries. The heat is low enough that the grains don't grow. I'm not sure about the reason for the quench on the last cycle, but those with mire knowledge than me said it can lock everything in where we want it, so I trust them. The subcritical temps are only needed if one has to grind or machine the steel, as spheroidized structures machine easier than pearlite.
 
Willie71 said:
The sequence I use is 1650 for 10min, cool to black (magnetic), 1550f for 10 min, cool to black, 1450f for 10min, cool to black and quench. 1350 or 1200 will stress relieve and fine spheroidize the steel. The first cycle it above ac3, which grows the grain, making it all the same size, and its hot enough to break up the course spheroidized carbides. The two subsequent heats result in new grains forming within the old grain boundaries. The heat is low enough that the grains don't grow. I'm not sure about the reason for the quench on the last cycle, but those with mire knowledge than me said it can lock everything in where we want it, so I trust them. The subcritical temps are only needed if one has to grind or machine the steel, as spheroidized structures machine easier than pearlite.
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It was another surprising roller coaster day in the shop again today trying to figure out my heat treat for W-2. Your normalizing cycles made a lot of sense to me Willie so I tried them in my test to try to figure out the best astentizing temperature for W-2.

I normalized six pieces so I could do 5°F increments from 1425°F to 1450°F. As you say the 1650°F cycle breaks up the course spheroidized carbides and the subsequent heat cycle results in new grains forming which was what I was hoping to do. And I didn’t do the subcritical temps because I didn’t want any fine spheroidized carbides. So I just did the top three temperatures exactly how you described for 10 minutes each and cool to black and on the last one quench after black.

As you can see from my results I started to get the same terrible results I had before I started normalizing so for some reason your system did not work with my W-2. I’m not saying it doesn’t work with yours and perhaps it’s just our different batches have different requirements.

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So then in my next test I tried redoing the same normalizing system I used before that Stacy recommends that worked for me hoping I would get repeatable results and fortunately I did. So either the fact I did a low temperature 1250°F cycle gave me my improved results or it was the fact I didn't do the two cycles at 1550°F and 1450°F?

It was a real relief to finally get a repeatable results so I can move on now with my austentizing temperature test using this normalizing sequence again. When I did your test I only quenched after black on the last piece but when I had my successful test yesterday using Stacy’s method I quenched after every temperature so I thought maybe that was the difference so when I did my retest using Stacy’s method again I did two samples and with one I quenched after every temperature and the other I only quenched after the last temperature.

And to my surprise only quenching one time resulted in about 1 ¼ higher in hardness. Which makes me think perhaps even that last quench has a detrimental effect so I’m going to try a test not quenching at all during normalizing. But first I’m going to do the test tomorrow to find my best austentizing temperature again using Stacy’s method for normalizing.

It seems every single day I try that test thinking I am one day away from figuring out how to heat treat W-2 and every time something comes up unexpected and I am still a day away but this time it really looks like I will get it. It must seem crazy how much time I have spent trying to figure out how to heat treat this steel and although it has been very frustrating at times it’s actually interesting trying to solve the mystery and I really do want to get the best performing knife I can so I really want to get this down right. And even once I get the proper austentizing temperature down I am still going to fiddle around with the normalizing because it seems to me there might be a little more to be gained there. Hopefully I can get to 67.5 to 68 ½ consistently with the proper austentizing temperature and playing around with the normalizing a little more.
 
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Ive given up on the w2 bars I have. I've have over a hundred test samples with nothing consistent. I've got pages and pages of notes. I've gotten the exact same results as you. Same process same temps one day is 44 the next day hard as woodpecker lips. I'm behind on orders because of my inability to leave this steel alone. Ive had it tested, and I've emailed back an forth with numerous folks to try different things.
 
Ryan Minchew said:
Ive given up on the w2 bars I have. I've have over a hundred test samples with nothing consistent. I've got pages and pages of notes. I've gotten the exact same results as you. Same process same temps one day is 44 the next day hard as woodpecker lips. I'm behind on orders because of my inability to leave this steel alone. Ive had it tested, and I've emailed back an forth with numerous folks to try different things.
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All I can say Ryan is I feel your pain, LOL. But seriously I do and although I am sorry to hear you are having the same frustration it’s actually a relief to know I’m not the only one and it isn’t really just me because it is bewildering how the exact same process can result in such bizarrely different results. And here are the samples I have used up trying to figure out W-2 heat treating and I’m still not there.

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I have been trying to do a simple test to figure out my austentizing temperature from 1425°F to 1450°F in 5° intervals. I have actually thought that I had my consistency down enough to do this test and I have been wrong seven times now including today. Every time I think I have solved my consistency problem I try that damn test and my results are all over the place. It seems like every single day I feel like I have figured it out, solved the problem and tomorrow I will get my results but that tomorrow never comes and I actually against all reason feel the same thing today. This steel may very well be the devil’s work in my humble opinion, LOL. But seriously it just seems like it starts to behave like I have found a procedure which will give me consistent results and then the next time I use it they are all over the place again.

These are my latest results. On the top of the page you can see yesterday at the end of the day I returned to my initial normalizing cycle of 1650°F, 1350°F and 1250°F. Some people say to quench after every temperature and others say only on the last so I tried two samples doing each method. And as you can see I got pretty good results with both but the sample I only quenched on the last temperature was higher so today doing my 1425°F to 1450°F test at 5° intervals I only quenched after the last temperature during normalizing.

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If you look at the results there are some decent hardnesses but again some are all over the place for absolutely no reason which is bizarre considering all these pieces were normalized in the same batch in exactly the same way. The only difference was the austentizing temperatures varied by 5°F. It is so bizarre that 1425°F and 1435°F were over 60 and yet 1430°F maxed out at 41? That is just too bizarre? And if you look at the pieces I put the highest and lowest reading for every piece and the variation is crazy.

But as usual there is one small glimmer of hope that may be the answer. Because yesterday I got better results only quenching on the last step while normalizing I tried one piece that I normalized with the others but I did not quench at all. This piece resulted in not only having amongst the highest hardnesses but also had the most consistent hardnesses throughout its entire length. I took about eight readings on this piece and nothing was below 65 and most fell in the 66 range.

This makes me think possibly that the problem may be the quenching during normalizing is throwing off all my results. Not thinking it mattered I have been very sloppy with this procedure usually just letting all my pieces cool to black and then chucking them in a jar of water on top of each other. I didn’t think it mattered but this may be resulting in very uneven cooling which is giving me such wildly varying results even within single pieces.

Many times I thought I had figured things out so my confidence is waning but this does seem like a possibility so tomorrow I am going to do another six pieces and try the same test again without any quenching during normalizing. And I am thinking that quenching during normalizing may actually help hardness it’s just that I have been doing very uneven quenching not thinking it mattered so if I do get consistent results not quenching during normalizing I may try again quenching during normalizing but doing it very carefully just like I quench during hardening by agitating pieces separately.

And I totally understand your situation Ryan because I am putting a lot of things on hold trying to figure out this damn W-2 heat treating and it is so hard to put down because it always seems like the solution is so close and after dedicating this much time it would feel like such a waste to give up before it is solved not to mention I have about 12 feet of the stuff so I totally understand your situation. Stay tuned tomorrow because I might have the answer but then again I thought that every day for quite a while now.
 
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