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The Newbies Arena Are you new to knife making? Here is all the help you will need.

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  #1  
Old 05-07-2013, 05:08 PM
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Naboyle Naboyle is offline
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First "real steel"

Here's my first knife out of "real steel' It's Aldo's 3/16 1084 hand forged. It's 8"OAL and a 3 1/2" cutting edge. Cocobolo Dymondwood scales with stainless steel pins. Any comments or suggestions welcome. I'll take all the help I can get.


Last edited by Ray Rogers; 05-07-2013 at 06:32 PM.
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  #2  
Old 05-07-2013, 05:18 PM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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I think it looks pretty darned good overall. Why is the back part of the spine discolored like that though? Either something went wrong with the heat treat or your finish work needs a little improvement ...


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Old 05-07-2013, 06:03 PM
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Naboyle Naboyle is offline
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I dipped it in FC to get a greyish/darker tint to it but no matter what I did, that part and right at the plunge line kept getting dark. I sanded, rubbed, polished, cleaned but every time it would be dark so I just threw up the white flag on that one.
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Old 05-07-2013, 06:10 PM
metal99 metal99 is offline
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Looks good man that darker area is most likely not fully hardened so you sort of ended up with a "hamon" line. No big deal really as long as the edge got hardened properly.


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Old 05-07-2013, 06:38 PM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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I agree it's not a big deal but it is important to understand why it happened so you can avoid it in the future. Now you know that any difference in the temperature at various points around the blade result in different levels of hardness. That can be good or bad depending on whether or not it happened where you wanted it to happen - it could affect only the looks as in this case or it could affect performance if the soft spot was on the edge or point ...


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Old 05-07-2013, 07:07 PM
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Naboyle Naboyle is offline
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Thanks for the input guy. I value every opinion I get. I never thought it could be the hardness since I quenched the entire blade portion of the knife. I thought at first it was from not being clean enough so I sanded, scrubbed, wiped, and cleaned the snot out of it yet it still came back. I'm pretty sure I got it hardened properly, it'll shave your arm smooth with little effort. Still wanna put it thru its paces thou. Cut some rope and stuff. Bunch of guys at work want me to make them one but I'm still not sure if my process is right. I'd hate for them to end up with a letter opener.
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Old 05-07-2013, 08:29 PM
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Ray Rogers Ray Rogers is offline
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You probably did get the hardness right on the important part of the blade although testing is the only way to be sure. But, apparently, the blade wasn't evenly heated over all of its surface. You probably never would have known if you hadn't etched the blade, it's the etch that makes the difference easily visible.

I'm guessing that your blade was already ground when you did the heat treat. This makes the edge cross section very thin (obviously) and the spine much thicker. It is easy to get a differential in the heat (the thin areas being hotter) when there are thick and thin areas and this is why good temperature control PLUS a proper amount of soak time is important. In this case, the rear part of the spine either wasn't as hot as the rest of the blade or you grabbed the blade in that position when removing it from the heat thus cooling that area.

As for shaving hair, that's good as far as it goes but that alone doesn't prove much as I think you already know. Test to destruction until you know your process is right ...


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Old 05-07-2013, 10:02 PM
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Naboyle Naboyle is offline
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Your right ray. I'm really diggin the concept of forging, So I put it in my forge and beat it into a knife-like shape. I give you blade smiths TONS of credit. It's not as easy as you guys make it look. But it's also not as hard as I thought it'd be. I honestly thought I'd have a better chance of seeing Jesus than to forge a blade. So after I had something resembling a knife I normalized and annealed it. Then I cleaned it up on the grinder and went back for the heat treat. Maybe I need to leave even more material before ht? After all of this I was worried about over heating it, causing grain growth. I think I might of not let it soak long enough. I read lots of ht info and some of it differs. As in just after non mag quench, after non mag letting it soak for a couple min then quench. Maybe I was a scaredy cat and bailed to early. Looks like I may show this to a few more people, start cutting some rope and see how it turns out. Then take it to destruction. And advice on how to put a knife thru its paces?
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Old 05-07-2013, 10:25 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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How thick is the spine where the dark spot is? I'm assuming that you didn't put any clay one the blade to quench it but it sort of looks like what I had at the ricasso of a blade that I just finished. It was sort of weird. Even though I clayed the pretty much all the spine except for the point, it just wanted to form a hamon right at the ricasso. I'm wondering, being that you said that you had etched it, if you are having a little auto-hamon there. If my head wasn't pounding right now I'd take a picture and post it. I'll do that tomorrow when my head's not kicking my hind parts.

Doug


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Old 05-08-2013, 05:11 AM
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Doug. It's a little under 3/16. No I didn't put any clay on it at all. Take some Advil and stay off the anvil!
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  #11  
Old 05-08-2013, 02:59 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Here is the blade that I was talking about, it too is from Aldo's 1084
IMG_0198.JPG
It is 7/64" at the ricasso and doesn't start to taper until about half way between the ricasso and the point. The bevels are flat from the edge, I haven't finished the secondary bevels yet, to the spine. I had clayed the blade for about half it's width from the plunge line to about 3/4's the way to the point. I fully clayed the ricasso area and about half the tang. I then polished the blade with emory paper and WD-40 out to 1500 grit and etched with ferric chloride. Then came the "what the (bleep)" moment when I saw the hamon. Not exactly what I was after. Your spot on the spine looks something like the ricasso on my blade. That's what got me thinking the you were seeing an auto hamon.

Doug


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Old 05-08-2013, 04:04 PM
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Now I see exactly what your talking about Doug. What do you think causes an "auto hamon?" I got 2 more blades ready for ht as soon as I get my 100lb tank filled. I left some extra meat on these ones. Not to sure what to do thou. If I should destruct this one first to see what the inside looks like or what? I'm pretty sure my process for 1084 is right but I'd hate to do these blades and end up with that mark again.
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  #13  
Old 05-08-2013, 05:28 PM
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Austin Cutlery Austin Cutlery is offline
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looks good!


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Old 05-08-2013, 06:33 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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What causes the auto hammon is that the steel in that area is too thick, you're blade was almost twice as thick as mine, in an area and will not cool quickly enough. In Steel Metallurgy for the Non-metallurgist it's referred to as film heat-transfer control (pp 88-89). Basically is that in steel under about 1/4" thick there is little difference between the rate of cooling of the center and the surface. In pieces twice the depth of hardening for a given piece, or less, (remember that you are cooling from both sides) the steel will cool quickly enough to form martensite. Thicker than twice the depth of hardening there will be a thin line where both pearetic and martensetic steel will form and the rest will be pearletic steel. When you etched the blade this showed up.

What happened in your case is that area just around the spine and the ricasso couldn't cool quickly enough to form martensite. All shallow hardening steels have this characteristic, though grain size and austenizing temperature will effect the degree to which this occurs. Grain size will have the strongest effect as the finer the grain the shallower it will harden.

My problem was probably that I didn't put enough clay on the blade past the ricasso. I've tortured that poor blade enough. I'm going to put a handle on it as it is. I don't want to redo it and get visited by the tink fairy.

Doug


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Old 05-08-2013, 08:13 PM
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Naboyle Naboyle is offline
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Thanks for the comments. And thanks for explaining that to me Doug. I really have a good idea as to why this happened. I know a few things I wanna do different next time. Hopefully the next few come out a little better. I know I got a lot to learn. I guess I will try and conquer each blooper as they come. Again I appreciate the knowledge you guys have givin us newbies. It really helps us by not having to redesign the wheel each time.
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