The Next Step

J

jvholt

Joined
Mar 2, 2008
Messages
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With the New Year approaching I am almost ready to take the next step in my knife making. I am still a newbie, and have been making stock removal knives for a while now. I have been using stainless steels & sending them out for heat treat.
I have done a lot of reading and research in the last few months and want to build a small forge so that I can heat treat my own blades. My question is not about the forge . I think I have decided how I will do that.
I realize that in order to heat treat my own blades in my new forge I will probably have to use a different steel than what I have been using. From what I have read (mainly on these forums) I will probably use 1080 or 1084.
I think that I understand that they are some of the easiest to heat treat.
I may sound stupid & elementary to some of you guys, but I really don't want to mess this up. So if I continue to make blades by stock removal (for now), get some 1080, & grind my blade, when I am ready to heat treat is it necessary to normalize the blade if I am only doing stock removal? I assume I will be recieving the steel that I buy in an annealed state.
I know that all steels are different & require different temps. and soak times and so on and so forth. But for the situation that I have describe is there a general recipe that I can follow?
Sorry for the lengthy post but any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
Not a stupid question at all.

Heat treatment is an entire process. It is more than just quenching a hot blade. Annealing the steel before grinding may not be necessary since it will most likely come annealed. Normalization ,however, is a part of the stress relieving done prior to the final quench. You may get by without it, but warpage and other problems will be higher. The best procedure is to normalize the steel and then do the quench, which is promptly followed by the temper. The simplest way to do this with a gas forge is to bring the blade to non-magnetic, hold it for a minute or two, and let it cool until all color is gone. Repeat this. Then, bring it to the austinitization temperature, hold it for the required time (about one minute for 1080/1084) and quench in fast oil.

Stacy
 
Stacy nailed it, as usual. I've been doing backyard forge heat treating with files just as he described with pretty good results. I didn't normalize my first few blades and they warped, so I started normalizing and haven't had problems since.
 
Just a suggestion, but a programmable oven such as paragon or even heat will take all of the guess work out of heat treating.
Best of luck. Cliff
 
Did you get the answer you wanted? The answer is correct. The only thing i would add is make sure when you quench the blade in the oil, do not move the blade side to side. This will warp the blade. Use Parks 50, its the best choice.
 
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