Had some O1 offered at a decent price - tell me how to use this stuff guys.

Bill,I use O-1 primarily and love the stuff.It is very forgiving and easy to heat treat.I heat till non-magnetic,then quench in 110-120 degree olive oil or vegtable oil.Then I heat the tang and spine till bluish with the edge being gold .Then quench in warm water.You can also do an edge quench and skip the last procedure.I also just learned that if you soak the knife in a borax solution and let dry before you start all this,it helps get the carbon scale off.Hope this helps,Dave

Bill, are you forging O-1 ? I forge O-1 drill rod, it doesn't move well under the hammer. Keep it hot because it will red short ( harden while forging ). Another concern, it's hard to anneal. I have a blade I tried to drill pin holes in it last night. Dulled all my drill bits, and I thought I had annealed it properly. I think it's a good steel and I'm doing experiments for heat treating. When I finish, I'll post the results. Just started playing with it a few months ago.

After normalizing your blade, heat a block of steel, big enough to hold the heat for a long period of time(1/2 x 1 1/2" x6-7") or bigger,(bigger is better) to dull red heat just below nonmagnetic, put this steel in a container of wood ashes or vermiculite. Then heat your blade to a dull red just below nonmagnetic and put on the steel block in the wood ashes and let it cool to room temp. This will give you a primitive sub critical anneal. After this anneal you call drill O1 or 52100.
B L Howard, Long Hunter Forge

AAhhh yes O-1 my favorite the guys here will back me on it bein a darn good steel, I use it for 90% of my knives and love it... here`s my process!
- Forge blade
- Normalize
- Grind blade
- make a solution of 1/3 borax in a container of water, bring to boil and dip knife in solution multiple times, then let dry.
- Heat veggy oil to 115F
- Heat blade in forge till a magnet doesn`t stick then just a bit more like a 5 count.(checking with mag frequently, as O-1 changes quickly)
- Imediately quench blade Horizontally(scale should flake right off, thanks to the borax solution i believe)
- Wipe off and into a pre warmed toaster oven at 350F for an hour, let cool in oven then bring back to 350F for another hour, repeat one more time.
- bury edge in wet sand and heat tang and spin till you get a bright blue color
- 4" hunters come out at 57 to 59 Rockwell

This works in my shop and may need a slight variation on the tempering temp to get your desired hardness

Hi Bill well you are in luck because my rope cutter was 01 and I can show you my technique for working it when you come up. It isn't one of my favorites for forging though because it is red short and by being that way if you overheat it enough times at the least the blade will have spider web cracking in it which alot of times can only be seen by applying acid to etch them. The steel on the worst can actually crumble under the hammer during forging and it does have a tendency to air harden even though its an oil hardening steel. Don't get me wrong 01 is an awesome edge holding steel but it is not as forgiving as 5160 at all and your forging range is alot smaller. Its not a steel for just making a knife in my personal opinon but because of its qualities it does make great knives.