With Digital Controls, How Thin Before Heat Treat

[John Frankl]

Using digital controls BUT a propane forge not salts, how thin do all of you think is safe to go before thermal cycling and hardening?

I have a blade that suffered some serious tip dip and I'd like to re-heat treat. I have ground it back to a profile I am happy with and now have two choices:

1. Simply work it from here and not re-heat treat. It is 1095 and only hardened about half way up the blade, but I am pretty confident that all the decarb is gone, etc.

2. Redo it with digital controls and Parks 50 in order to more fully harden, but have to worry about decarb, etc.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated.

 

[Rick Marchand]

When you say propane forge, do you mean an open forge or is this some kind of oven? If you have good control and insulation to where it is only firing periodically, you can go .010"-.030" and be safe.

It will most likely tip-dip again unless you do things differently. Scrape the clay off of the spine near the tip and quench in a horizontal tank, spine down.