Water Hardened Bowie in W2 and Ironwood

J

Justin Carnecchia

Joined
Jun 4, 2011
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147
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Hi, here's one I made not too long ago. Blade is water hardened W2. Fittings are w's damascus and copper. Handle is a stunning piece of ironwood burl.
Thanks for looking, Justin
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Living dangerously with the water quench on the W2. Well worth the effort. Nice Hamon. Did you have to do any straightening after the blade was hardened?
 
Honestly, I've always quenched my blades in water. In the beginning, I took it as a cracked blade was just an excuse to forge another. Later, with experience, the failure rate came way down. Now it's pretty rare to crack a bowie sized blade.
You mention warping, but if the heating was even its usually not a big issue.
I've recently been experimenting with parks50, and have very similar amounts of warping. Usually I can grind out, at worst can fix while tempering.
The big difference is if I need to re-quench. With water, I've found that a second attempt at hardening will almost always crack the blade. But with parks I haven't had that problem ay all. For this reason, I'm trying to switch over to the parks, but I'm having some issues getting full hardening. I think perhaps I'm not using a large enough volume as I've not heard of others having this problem. Going to keep at it though as I've seen some very nice activity with the parks50 that I haven't gotten with water. Different, not better, another tool in the box as it were.
Anyway, Thanks. -Justin
 
Justin Carnecchia said:
Honestly, I've always quenched my blades in water. In the beginning, I took it as a cracked blade was just an excuse to forge another. Later, with experience, the failure rate came way down. Now it's pretty rare to crack a bowie sized blade.
You mention warping, but if the heating was even its usually not a big issue.
I've recently been experimenting with parks50, and have very similar amounts of warping. Usually I can grind out, at worst can fix while tempering.
The big difference is if I need to re-quench. With water, I've found that a second attempt at hardening will almost always crack the blade. But with parks I haven't had that problem ay all. For this reason, I'm trying to switch over to the parks, but I'm having some issues getting full hardening. I think perhaps I'm not using a large enough volume as I've not heard of others having this problem. Going to keep at it though as I've seen some very nice activity with the parks50 that I haven't gotten with water. Different, not better, another tool in the box as it were.
Anyway, Thanks. -Justin
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A good explanation on how you started out quenching in water. And it's a good place to start. If you can quench in water you can quench.
I've been using Park's 50 for a few years and like it for W2. It's very predictable and produces straight blades. If you stay at this long enough you'll learn how thin you can grind a blade before causing yourself concern. Nice work on the blade.
 
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