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Ed Caffrey's Workshop Talk to Ed Caffrey ... The Montana Bladesmith! Tips, tricks and more from an ABS Mastersmith.

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  #1  
Old 02-17-2001, 09:19 PM
foxcreek
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edge quench


I am starting to work with this technique a bit, and was wondering. ....when one edge quenches a blade, is the area above the quench full soft, i.e. completely unhardened; or is it somewhat hardened from being cooled just barely rapidly enough; or is there a gradation from hard to soft that extends abovce the edge quench area; or is all this one of those "depends on..." type situations. Thanks in advance ED.
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Old 02-17-2001, 10:15 PM
Ed Caffrey
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As with any steel that contains chromium, there's going to be a slight bit of air hardening. More so on 52100 than 5160.
That being said, there is a graduation of hardenss.
If a blade is properly prepared for the heat treat, triple quenched, and triple tempered; The edge area should be Rc 57-59, then, where the temper line is boldest, that is the transition zone. It is a fairly small band, in which the RC level will drop from the 57-59, into the mid to low 40s. The area above that transition line should be approx Rc of 38-40. Anything up to 46-47 is not bad, it only means that a little more of the blade got hotter than necessary.
It's a good idea to experiment and find out what meets YOUR performance standards. I personally like the area above the transition line (temper line) to be as soft as possible. An easy way to control how stiff, or how "whimpy" the blade will be, is to adjust the depth of the quench. One of the experiments I did a couple of years ago, proved that if the prep before heat treat is good, you can quench to within 3/8" of the spine, and still get a blade that will flex to 90 degrees without the edge cracking. (although it's a booger to bend a blade that is hardened that far)


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Old 02-17-2001, 11:56 PM
genechapman
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Hi Ed, a few months back some Neo-Tribals were playing around with potato and onion quenches with small forged blades, get it hot, quench in a vegie, was lots of fun during full moon madness. Only drawback, no knife pun intended, was somebody smeared onion juice on the anvil, wow smelled like lunch whenever hot steel was on it.

Gene C.
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