Surprise I'm fighting warps again. This is my last attempt at this batch of fillets before they all go in the garbage and I get different steel. I bought a bunch of AEB-L in .060 for fillets. And I have tried several things to fight these warps with no success. The stuff I get comes bent as hell when I get it, so I straighten, profile, and do an anneal at 1350 for 4 hours. At this point they are straight. I use Hoss's method with the 1725 prequench, and when I pull the blades from the kiln, within a second they curve, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. Plate quench till cool and they are straight. Back into oven at 1975, soak, same thing, when I pull them out, before they even hit the plates, they take a curve. On a 12 inch knife we are talking tip and butt touching the plate and a 1/2 gap in the centre, that's how bad they warp. Plate quench and they are pretty much straight. At this point I clamp them between two pieces of angle iron, subzero, and then temper. When I take them out of the clamp after tempering, thy are still nowhere near straight. Some have a warp of nearly 1/8 inch.
I'm at a complete loss here. I thought maybe my foil packs were too tight, but I have never had this issue with CPM154 using similar sized packs. I do not have this issue using any of my other steels whether carbon or stainless whether I grind before or after HT or at any other thickness. These ones are all being ground after HT. I have tried this with and without clamping in the dry ice, with blades sitting edge up in a little submerged rack I made and see no difference in straightness. Just to see what happens, I left two as plate quenched without the dry ice, and they stayed dead straight sitting in the shop and after tempering. They are just not useful because they are full of RA and not full hardness.
I am sure I must have several problems going on at once here, but I can't figure them out. The thing that's really confusing me is the massive warping that happens in the first two seconds outside the kiln. I have profiled 10 of these damn things and needed to finish three as gifts for Christmas but all I have been able to do is chase the warps and not grind anything. I have another 6 feet of this steel sitting in the corner but at this point I may just chuck the entire batch of knives and steel, and use up the cpm154 I have left over.
At this stage of the game I'm not really sure what I am even asking. I guess if anyone has any info on the massive warp as soon as the blades leave the kiln, or why after straightening, annealing, prequenching, and then hardening, these damn things warp like nothing I have ever seen, I would be very thankful.
Sorry if this seems like a rambling rant, I'm just extremely frustrated. I took a week off work to get this stuff done, and have been in the shop today for 15 hours already with basically nothing to show for it besides a bunch of pointy boomerangs.
I'm at a complete loss here. I thought maybe my foil packs were too tight, but I have never had this issue with CPM154 using similar sized packs. I do not have this issue using any of my other steels whether carbon or stainless whether I grind before or after HT or at any other thickness. These ones are all being ground after HT. I have tried this with and without clamping in the dry ice, with blades sitting edge up in a little submerged rack I made and see no difference in straightness. Just to see what happens, I left two as plate quenched without the dry ice, and they stayed dead straight sitting in the shop and after tempering. They are just not useful because they are full of RA and not full hardness.
I am sure I must have several problems going on at once here, but I can't figure them out. The thing that's really confusing me is the massive warping that happens in the first two seconds outside the kiln. I have profiled 10 of these damn things and needed to finish three as gifts for Christmas but all I have been able to do is chase the warps and not grind anything. I have another 6 feet of this steel sitting in the corner but at this point I may just chuck the entire batch of knives and steel, and use up the cpm154 I have left over.
At this stage of the game I'm not really sure what I am even asking. I guess if anyone has any info on the massive warp as soon as the blades leave the kiln, or why after straightening, annealing, prequenching, and then hardening, these damn things warp like nothing I have ever seen, I would be very thankful.
Sorry if this seems like a rambling rant, I'm just extremely frustrated. I took a week off work to get this stuff done, and have been in the shop today for 15 hours already with basically nothing to show for it besides a bunch of pointy boomerangs.
