- Joined
- Feb 1, 2000
- Messages
- 1,370
Take a worn out Nicholson file and break it to observe the grain. It is ultra fine and a good reference to shoot for in your own blades.
After watching a forging/heat treating demonstration this past
weekend by Don Fogg, (WOW, that was great!) I decided to break one of my blades to observe the grain. It never ocurrred to me use a broken Nicholson file, that Don showed us, as an example of very fine grain for reference. I discovered that the 1084 blade that I thought I had heat treated well was actually coarser grained than the file. Evidently I've been working a little hotter than is ideal, but I wasn't far off. This knife I broke had pretty good edge retention but I wasn't entirely satisfied with it. Now I know the culprit. I will be using one steel, 1084, and breaking a bunch of blades for a while just to learn everything about that particular steel so I can nail that grain down to what the grain in the file looks like!
After watching a forging/heat treating demonstration this past
weekend by Don Fogg, (WOW, that was great!) I decided to break one of my blades to observe the grain. It never ocurrred to me use a broken Nicholson file, that Don showed us, as an example of very fine grain for reference. I discovered that the 1084 blade that I thought I had heat treated well was actually coarser grained than the file. Evidently I've been working a little hotter than is ideal, but I wasn't far off. This knife I broke had pretty good edge retention but I wasn't entirely satisfied with it. Now I know the culprit. I will be using one steel, 1084, and breaking a bunch of blades for a while just to learn everything about that particular steel so I can nail that grain down to what the grain in the file looks like!