Watcha doing? Wondering.

B

BOB26

Joined
Mar 25, 1999
Messages
59
Wondering what the "best" heat-treat recipe would be for a fighter. Not a "combat" knife a fighting knife made out of 3/16" stock in A2 with a sharpend false edge with a blade length around 4". I've got some info on how to heat-treat A2 from Heat-Treating Online and a good tool and die heat-treating shop near hear (don't have my own oven yet) but I need to know if there is a "different" way to treat a fighter. This knife will come in contact with bone and all sorts of other hard things one wears on their person, buckles,buttons,zippers, pocket change etc... I would like to know an optimal treatment that would give this steel an "edge" up (yes pun intended
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)on these items people wear on and in their bodies.

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The spirit grows, strength is restored by wounding
 
I am rather enamored of austempering, which involves quenching in a hot molten salt bath for a long time, usualy a couple hours, and then doing a final quench in a cooler bath.

The net result is a blade that can take obscene amounts of flex. I'm talking flexing 90 degrees and returning true at a Rockwell hardness of 55-57.

The treat differs for different metals, I don't even know if it can be done with air-hardening steels, but I think I still have the recipe for doing 1095 up like this lying somewhere around here if you're intrested.

This one doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. It's a great process, yields a good knife. I guess it's expensive to do(relatively) and it can only be done with pieces of steel with thin cross-sections (.5" and under or so), so it doesn't get a whole lot of attention in industry.
 
Snickersnee,
I would be interested in you in your method for 1095 if you can dig it up.

Glenn
Glenn_A._Hecko@oxy.com

[This message has been edited by Glenn (edited 07 July 1999).]
 
Dangit Snickersnee! Just when I was all set and ready to go you throw a monkeywrench in the whole works!
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I forgot that process, I read about it in a knife rag but didn't quite "get it". You use the salt bath to bring it up to quenching temperature, quench it in oil bring the salt temperature down to tempering heat and put the knife back in the salt for tempering? In other words you do the hardening and temper both in the salt bath? I'm wondering if 55, 57rc. is a good hardness for a fighter. I would think it would be considering it won't be used for anything but protection. You might be on to something here. Send me the info if you would please. I'm interested.

Thanks Snick
Robert

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The spirit grows, strength is restored by wounding
 
Yeah, I seem to have misplaced my recipe, but they've got it at the local tradeschool in a book, I'll see if I can swing by tommorow and grab it for ya.

55-57R is fine for a fighting knife. Before people got a little too obsessed with edge retention it was the standard. Honestly, I prefer shock resistance and toughness over edge retention in a fighter/something that I'm'a gonna use to kill me a big ol' boar/gator. Nothing would suck like sticking your knife into a suarian's neck and then having it break off. Never happened to me, but it gives me nightmares...

Yeah, austempering involves heat-treating much more slowly and that somehow let's the steel skip being martensite, which is what you get when you do an ordinary quench, and is also responsible for much warping and stress fractures in steel. Anyway, it skips that and goes straight to bainite, which is why it has it's great flexibility. You'll have a helluva time breaking a knife done up this way, it'll lay down, but as soon as you relieve the pressure it get's back up.

 
Dagnabbit!! I think I gave my cookbook away when I sold my equipment some time ago, and I went by the tradeschool that I got the recipe from in the first place, only it's been a long time since I lived in this town so I didn't know that the tradeschool closed it's doors and now all the vocational ed is handled by the community college, and I don't know what happened to their library.

I hate to leave you hang'n, but I got nothing for you. I'll do some searches on the internet and see what I can come up with.
 
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