Zapp Z-Wear experience and heat treat

Not sure if the steel ans/or heat treat us the same but Miller Brothers Knives use Z-wear. I have an 8" knife and it is extremely tough....!!! Check out their website and tests they gave posted. Very impressive...!
 
After a couple weeks using this blade, it's quite tough, even at 0.003", but I use it as a knife, not a prybar or axe. I did slight damage to the edge cutting strapping but pushed against hardened 15n20. Three passes on a 1200 diamond stone cleaned it up nicely. So far very impressed. :thumbup:
 
I just ordered a couple sticks of this and 10v from AKS.
 
I stumbled upon one of my experimental zwear blade and only tested for toughness. 0.017" behind edge thick, 14 dps bevel. hrc reads from wheel ground tang (core hardness).
aust 1950f, cryo, tempered 325f 2x 15 minutes
* take this post as fwiw however lmk if it is noisy-garbage, I will blank this post...
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Bluntcut, don't blank your post. Any info is good. This steel needs 6h of tempering, and possibly benefits from 8h. Your test shows a brittle steel in basically an untempered state.
 
It wasn't brittle at all, damage mode was deformation/dent, not fracture/chip. It could be hrc reading errors (guessed at edge) but I found this edge prone to roll/deform too much. keep in mind, this is way outside of the norm in term of ht.
Willie71 said:
Bluntcut, don't blank your post. Any info is good. This steel needs 6h of tempering, and possibly benefits from 8h. Your test shows a brittle steel in basically an untempered state.
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edit to add comparison: same radical ht & specs - toughness among 3v, zwear and m4. zwear. zwear exhibited highest ductility, 3v, last is m4. for chopping blades - zw or 3v tbd.
 
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I just did a skinner with 1975 (30min) austenitize, plate quench, sub zero, then three 1000f 2h tempers. I got Rc61/62. I didn't get the extra 2Rc points I got with cryo as part of the quench. As part of the ramp up, the steel was soaked at 1250f for 20 min, and 1650f for 20min.

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Update on heat treat:

Some interesting initial results. On the blank I heat treated at 1975, cry for 12h, 400f temper 2hx4, I am at Rc65. (Ranging from Rc64.5 to Rc65.5.) As quenched wa Rc66 after cryo.

Blank #2 was same heat treat, but tempered at 1000f 2hx4. I am at Rc63 on this one. I had a little bit of decarb to grind through, to get to good steel.

Both blades showed a little bit if dimensional change in cryo. They were arrow straight out of quench. I wonder if this is why cryo is recommended after 1st temper in the datasheet. I just got my copy of the asm tool steels 5th edition, and cryo after 1st temper won't help retained austentite that was stabilized in the first temper. It'll convert any retained austentite still left though. The 1000f temper won't produce secondary carbides as they were produced in cryo.

Now what I have to do is grind the blades to final dimensions, and see if the 400f tempered blade is brittle. I already know the 1000f tempered blades are great performers. One experiment I want to try is cryo plus 900f temper, as with cryo you can lower the recommended tempby 50-100f according to a pm steel heat treat guide I was looking at.

Warren
 
Z-wear scrap turned into a knife. It's the 1975 heat treat, cryo, 1000f 2hx4 heat treat. Rc63.5. It's great for breaking down chicken, or cutting raw bacon.

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Another z-wear blade. This one is 1250x20min, 1550x20min, then 1950 for 30 min. 12h cryo, then tempered at 400f for 2hx4. Its Rc 63/64. I'll be trying 1925 and 1900 with cryo and low temper.

I've got 2 more blades to heat treat for the testing, and hope to heat treat them today. I'll make a 3v tester at Rc60 to compare.

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General comments on working with this steel so far:

Get it straight out of quench. It doesn't like to be corrected, even if overclamping at 1000f.

Get it close to final dimensions before heat treat. This stuff chews up belts faster than 3v. I will only do brushed finishes with this steel. It looks good with a medium scotchbrite finish.

As mentioned by someone else, this steel is tough enough for almost any knife specific task. Outside of abuse, I haven't damaged an edge in regular use. From what I can tell so far, expect at least three times the edge holding of W2. Probably more.
 
I have one knife in this steel, running right around 61rc. I'm very impressed with it. Very good stuff. I would like to see it used more often. Especially for the price of the steel.
 
rodriguez7 said:
I have one knife in this steel, running right around 61rc. I'm very impressed with it. Very good stuff. I would like to see it used more often. Especially for the price of the steel.
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I agree with you. I think this stuff has a lot of potential for the knifemaking community.
 
I have made a few knives from Z Wear and have a couple more bars on the shelf.
It does make a very nice knife, tough and holds a nice edge.
I ran the knives I made at 63 and found they had better edge retention than 3V.
It is another steel that will perform equally well in a hunter or a larger camp knife or chopper.
 
I have been using Z wear in one of my mid sized blades. I haven't gotten to test it extensively myself but some of my customers have told me they are very happy with its performance.

I run it at 61 and avoid the secondary hardening bump. At this hardness its definitley more difficult to grind that 3V which makes me think it will have better edge retention. I run 3V in my small knives at 62 with the high austenization temperature and low tempering temps. It performs very well in its own right but I think Z wear is going to be the winner in the edge retention department.

I take the edges down very thin before sharpening just like 3V and it seems to be able to maintain a thin edge through hard use.

I had blanks run at 63 to test the secondary hardening curve but I haven't gotten around to grinding them yet.

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go0dMAN said:
How Z-wear steel compare to CPM-M4?
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It's lower alloy than M4. M4 should have better edge retention. Z-Wear would likely be tougher than M4. It's all relative. Any of the PM steels will exceed our expectations in normal use.

http://www.crucible.com/PDFs/DataSheets2010/ds3Vv1 2015.pdf

Take that info with a grain of salt. It's a comparison anyway.

My take on this is anywhere you need toughness like L6, 5160, or 15n20, 3v will shine. Anywhere you use 52100, W1/W2, 1095, O1, use z-wear. You will get 100-300% better wear resistance with the cpm/pm steels. They are barely heat treatable with our typical equipment though. We can do it, but are we getting everything we can out of these steels? I'm skeptical.
 
I'm always believe that higher alloy content or carbide volume are not always directly translate into better edge retention since edge retention is pretty broad term.

Its all depend on what you are cutting, how do you cut, geometry to the design of the knife itself.

For instance, steel like 52100 and many low alloy fine grain steel will has edge over high carbide one when it come to super acute edge like razor like application. The higher carbide steel will suffer carbide tear out thus micro chipping at the very edge. I have tried S30V from PHT against 5160 both are sharpen to scandi like zero ground and 5160 won out by very significant margin.

I believe Keffeler has test 3V agaisnt PD1 which is basically another Cruwear type steel with even finer grain due to the more advance micro-melt PM tech. The result are 3V being remarkably tougher than the later one. Both are HT by PHT tho.
 
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