What's wrong with my w2

DH III W2 is Fantastic if you can get your hands on it!
 
I'm anxious to hear your results with forge or torch HT as well. Methinks it will be a fail, but try anyway. Also, just curious if you're hardening after profiling, as in the edge is still .140". I always take my steels down to as thin as I can get away with. .020" usually. The reason is equipment related, or lack thereof to be more specific. I do bevels with files....so I really must do the bevels pre heat treat. Also, just to be clear on the RC testing. Should be done on flat surface, like the ricasso area, and surface should be polished a bit, maybe 220 grit. Depending on how hot the tang/ricasso gets during HT, and how fast that ricasso cools in the quench, could be lower RC than the edge. But I doubt that's the issue here, just throwing it out.
 
Assuming OP steel in question is actually Aldo W2 - not tin can.

I've posted before, IMO - Aldo/NJSteelbaron's W2 is highly optimized composition for finest possible grain (with conventional ht). Unless, you are well-versed in ht, challenges await when hting this W2.

Before going too far diagnose/debug the wrong areas and wasted heap of time. Perhaps take Warren/Willie's offer to check out the steel. If you don't want to toss the blade over the border to Canada. Send blade in OP + a fresh profiled blank(leave edge about 0.03 thick) to me to ht. No promises on straightness after hardened.

PM or email me - since I am mostly offline until this weekend.
 
samuraistuart said:
I'm anxious to hear your results with forge or torch HT as well. Methinks it will be a fail, but try anyway. Also, just curious if you're hardening after profiling, as in the edge is still .140". I always take my steels down to as thin as I can get away with. .020" usually. The reason is equipment related, or lack thereof to be more specific. I do bevels with files....so I really must do the bevels pre heat treat. Also, just to be clear on the RC testing. Should be done on flat surface, like the ricasso area, and surface should be polished a bit, maybe 220 grit. Depending on how hot the tang/ricasso gets during HT, and how fast that ricasso cools in the quench, could be lower RC than the edge. But I doubt that's the issue here, just throwing it out.
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All of the pieces I have done were not ground. Just profiled and holes drilled. Scale and decarb were ground off to 320. I ground some with 80 grit .040 or more just to make sure I was getting past decarb.

It's looking like it maybe next week before I try it in a forge.
 
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bluntcut said:
Assuming OP steel in question is actually Aldo W2 - not tin can.

I've posted before, IMO - Aldo/NJSteelbaron's W2 is highly optimized composition for finest possible grain (with conventional ht). Unless, you are well-versed in ht, challenges await when hting this W2.

Before going too far diagnose/debug the wrong areas and wasted heap of time. Perhaps take Warren/Willie's offer to check out the steel. If you don't want to toss the blade over the border to Canada. Send blade in OP + a fresh profiled blank(leave edge about 0.03 thick) to me to ht. No promises on straightness after hardened.

PM or email me - since I am mostly offline until this weekend.
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I appreciate the offer and yes the steel is Aldo's w2. Everything is well marked in my shop. I only have three steels cpm-154, one bar of w2, and two bars of 1095. If I can make it into town in the next week I will mail some blanks out. I'm not worried about getting a blade heat treated else where though. I need to find out if I have bad steel or if something in my process is wrong. I've got pages of notes from the 18-20 hours of testing coupons I did yesterday. I believe at least one coupon should have come out hard.
1380-1650 temps with various soak temps at each temp.
Fresh parks 50 95-120 degrees.
Water quenched a few
Various normalizing/thermal cycles from the forums and private messages with other makers. Nothing has worked for me. Then to be able to jump in and harden two other steels lends me to believe it's the steel.
 
A buddy of mine who has done a bunch of W2 before has also had trouble, I had about 6 blades I sent to him that were underhardened. the one I had tested came out at 52-54 rc. All the blades came out of 2 bars of w2 purchased in 2014 I believe. Im also anxious to hear the results of your tests, the problems sound all too similar to what my buddy has been experiencing.
 
Your process is definitely not the issue. Again, this exact identical problem with a particular W2 batch has reared it's head a number of times with some knife making gents I've spoken with (guys who know their stuff), and after the above post, Tim and friends too. I don't begin to know how to fix the issue, I wish I could. IIRC, one well known metallurgist was called in to take a look at a few blades from this batch that wouldn't harden. He got them to harden, and I forget how, 1700f brine quench for all I recall, but that is not how W2 should behave. Just to be clear...I love Aldo. Sometimes hiccups happen.
 
After a couple messages from makers I tried something different.
I took three pieces from yesterday including the one I showed a picture of that hard and soft spots and did the following.
1550 to black
1450 to black
And then an hour long soak at 1200. I had not done this and had two makers tell me to try it.
Then I did a 15 minute soak at 1460 and quenched. I now have a Rockwell of 56 on the two thin pieces. The one that had the soft spots in the picture still has soft spots in those areas. The other one has soft spots as well but the hard spots went from the 40s to the 50s. The big piece has one tiny spot that is mid 50s and the rest is soft. And like the picture from yesterday you can see sift and softer spots.
 
Ryan,
Try re-setting everything in the steel.
Heat to 1800F and hold for 5 minutes. Cool to black and water quench.
Heat to 1500F for 5 minutes and quench in fast oil. Test hardness.
Heat to 1550F and cool to black.
Heat to 1450 and cool to black.
Heat to 1450-1475F for 10 minutes and quench. Test hardness again.

I would suspect this will give you a good hardness again.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Ryan,
Try re-setting everything in the steel.
Heat to 1800F and hold for 5 minutes. Cool to black and water quench.
Heat to 1500F for 5 minutes and quench in fast oil. Test hardness.
Heat to 1550F and cool to black.
Heat to 1450 and cool to black.
Heat to 1450-1475F for 10 minutes and quench. Test hardness again.

I would suspect this will give you a good hardness again.
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Stacy this is one of the cycles I tried already including the 1800 heat. Both coupons still came out soft.
 
Ryan, I posted another thread on this subject with W-2. You might try hardening a un-normalized piece and see what you get. I took a 1/8" piece of Aldo's W-2 heated it up with a torch past un magnetic and quenched in Parks 50. I got a RC of 65. The pieces that I normalized and then hardened got a lower RC.
 
Tom Lewis said:
Ryan, I posted another thread on this subject with W-2. You might try hardening a un-normalized piece and see what you get. I took a 1/8" piece of Aldo's W-2 heated it up with a torch past un magnetic and quenched in Parks 50. I got a RC of 65. The pieces that I normalized and then hardened got a lower RC.
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I was just reading that. I will look at my notes but i ended up doing 6 coupons I think with nothing done to them except the heat treat. One of the coupons was the .200 thick piece. When I get back in the shop next week I'm going to try and do one in the forge. Weird/interesting for sure
 
Just to check, you have ground the surface clean and free of decarb on it? It can get pretty deep with multiple cycles. The other W2 HT thread came out with that being the problem.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
Just to check, you have ground the surface clean and free of decarb on it? It can get pretty deep with multiple cycles. The other W2 HT thread came out with that being the problem.
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Yes I will post my notes while I'm on night shift tonight if possible. One piece I ground .040" off of, it was .140 thick to begin with. I searched out threads with this issue and many talked about the decarb. I can saw the coupons in half with a file easily. The visible soft spots go through the steel and are still visible even after trying the process over again, in the same spots.
I saw Tom's post and his steel was the same size a mine and purchased a month or two after mine. The guy at njsb said they had a bad batch and some could have slipped by.
The plan next week is to try a piece in the forge, but may wait until I get the replacement bar in. I spent 18-20 hours one day messing with this steel after a failed heat treat of a w2 blade when I should have been wrapping up a couple of orders, so messing with something I'm almost positive is bad is being put on hold for a few days.
 
It sounds like the carbon is balled up in spheroidite, and the bulk of the matrix is ferrite.

A reasonable length soak at 1800F should break that down?

If playing with it, put several coupons in a foil packet and soak for 30 minutes at 2000F. Cool to ambient, and then harden at 1475F and quench. Grind clean and test. If that doesn't give you fully hardened steel at Rc65, something is very wrong.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
It sounds like the carbon is balled up in spheroidite, and the bulk of the matrix is ferrite.

A reasonable length soak at 1800F should break that down?

If playing with it, put several coupons in a foil packet and soak for 30 minutes at 2000F. Cool to ambient, and then harden at 1475F and quench. Grind clean and test. If that doesn't give you fully hardened steel at Rc65, something is very wrong.
Click to expand...

Stacy I just tested again . 2 coupons one .250" thick one .140" thick. And heated them to 1800 hold for 20 min. Air cool the. Heat treat at 1460 as quenched 44 hardness on both.
Next I took two coupons heated to 1800 hold 20 minutes air cool. Then 1550 5 minutes air cool. 1450 hold 30 minutes are cool, 1200 hold 1 hour air cool. Heat treat to 1460 quench in parks. .250 piece 63-65. The .140 thick piece 54-55. Also at this time I heat treated 1 piece cut straight from barstock no thermal cycling and it quenched at 44.
The new steel will be here Thursday. In the mean time ive heat treated 1095 and cpm-154 blades with no issue.
 
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I agree. But I keep getting messages from other makers with things to try, so I figure why not. I still need to try one in the forge but a combination of laziness and getting called into work on days off has prevented that.
 
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