Vanadium alloy

J

jimmyseymour

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Dec 31, 2003
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So as not to hijack Brad's thread any further found here;
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=780230
I decided to start a new one here.

Ed, you made an interesting quote that I thought needed further inquiry on my part. You said:

Ed Fowler said:
A uniform fine grain, such as is many times achieved with a vanadium alloy is usually like glass, very fragile and fails catastrophically in toughness tests.
Click to expand...

I have never heard this before. Could you shed a little light on this. Are you saying that steel's like CruforgeV have a weakness or am I misunderstanding what you meant?
 
We have not tested cruforgeV so I cannot state how tough it can be.

What I do know was that when we tested 52100V and another steel, that I cannot remember the name of that was alloyed with vanadium the blades failed catastrophically at less than a 45 degree flex.

While the blades cut very well, they had to be tempered higher than we temper our 52100 and 5160 and still had a tendeancy to edge chip. Still with the higher tempering temp and edge quenching we could not achieve a tough blade. When they broke it was alll the way to the spine - resulting in a two piece blade.

I would suggest that if you are working with this steel, do some testing on your own and see what happens. And naturally you will be doing all a favor if you report your results so we all gain some insight.

Good question!
 
if you don't mind me asking a related question, I've been curious about the effects of vanadium in Aldo's 1084. Any idea of these things hold with that or is the conc. too low to consider?

I've also been wondering about how vanadium reduces the effect of excessive grain growth in the Aldo 1084? To what extent does this occur? Could a guy really blow his HT and still be okay in terms of performance? Sorry if this is a highjack... I would be happy with a PM is somebody can answer....
 
Vanadium content is steels up to about .025 V is there for finer grain. Aditional amounts are there for wear resistance as vanadium carbide .
 
I would recommend caution in making the jump from one vanadium steel having less toughness to vanadium steels having less toughness.

Mossanimal, a little bit of vanadium will form very small carbides that act as barriers to the grain boundaries, slowing their movement. This effect is called particle drag in Verhoeven's "Metallurgy for Bladesmiths" book. Vanadium carbide disolves at higher temperatures than most other carbides, so it offers some protection to higher temperatures. You can slightly overheat blades with V in them, but you can't completely botch the heat treatment. Grain growth is not the only thing to worry about with overheating. V may also work in other ways, but the carbides are the major factor.

Ed, do you recall or have recorded the method used for heat treating that vanadium alloy? Any idea if the vanadium alloy was more difficult to bend/flex before it broke? Was there any permanent bend after the failure?
 
Ed Fowler said:
We have not tested cruforgeV so I cannot state how tough it can be.

What I do know was that when we tested 52100V and another steel, that I cannot remember the name of that was alloyed with vanadium the blades failed catastrophically at less than a 45 degree flex.

While the blades cut very well, they had to be tempered higher than we temper our 52100 and 5160 and still had a tendeancy to edge chip. Still with the higher tempering temp and edge quenching we could not achieve a tough blade. When they broke it was alll the way to the spine - resulting in a two piece blade.

I would suggest that if you are working with this steel, do some testing on your own and see what happens. And naturally you will be doing all a favor if you report your results so we all gain some insight.

Good question!
Click to expand...

Was this heat treating using a torch or was it actually controlled repeatable conditions?
There are a lot of alloys with vanadium in them, the difference between Vanadium content suitable for pinning grain boundaries, and Vanadium content that will precipitate enough carbides to affect wear resistance is huge.

-Page
 
Both blades we tested just flat broke, with about the same amount of distortion as you would see in a piece of glass. I don't remember them being super strong, but we were not using a torque wrench at that time.

Every blade of my own makng that I have tested has been hardened using a torch since 1955.

As always I invite anyone interested to do some experimenting on their own and let us know how it went.
 
Was the shaping and heat treating of the vanadium steel as involved as what is used for your 52100 blades?
 
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