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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
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AEB-L HT failure
I posted a while back to get recipes for heat treating AEB-L, looks like I am back to the drawing board.
I used my evenheat kiln ramped to 1950?f soaked for 30min then plate quench. No cryo treatment , tempered for 2hrs at 400?f. There was a warp so I tempered for 20min twice in my straightening jig at 400?f. This is what the edge looked like after cutting through a 3/32" brass rod. There was very little variance in blade thickness along the edge and for some reason some spots failed much worse than others. Anyone have any suggestions to improve my process? Sorry about the pic size, photo bucket wasn't letting me upload pics so I had to use the one I put on Facebook. |
#2
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Yup, that looks pretty bad. You didn't say whether or not you did your grinding after the HT was finished. If you tried to plate quench a ground blade that will never work with AEBL.
Try the process shown in the table I have attached .... PS It just occurred to me that it appears to me that your idea of the brass rod test might be to chop or cut the rod in two. If that is the case then that is a MAJOR misunderstanding. If that is what you did then use the Search function on this forum and find the correct way to do the test. Or, if I'm mis-interpreting your picture then just ignore me ... Last edited by Ray Rogers; 04-20-2017 at 05:46 PM. |
#3
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I ground the blade to 80% or so then did HT with plate quench. So i think I know what i screwed up. Your saying the plate is quench only suitable for a blade that hasent yet had the bevels ground? Is this only the case for AEB-L, I have 154CM as well will it plate quench after having the bevels ground?
As for the brass rod test I did flex the edge over a thicker piece of brass, it looked like only the very edge of the blade didn't flex back. The chop was to test how it would hold. I chopped a wooden dowel, then a piece of tie wire before going at the brass. |
#4
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First off, let me admit that I don't like plate quenching for knives because I don't believe that it will do the best job of completing the transformation and I want the absolute best for my knives that I can manage. That said, plates can work 'OK' even on some types of steel after the bevels are ground but I don't believe AEBL is one of them. If you want to use plates for any steel I strongly recommend grinding post HT.
Sounds like you do understand the brass rod test. The very edge is that part the brass rod test is intended to evaluate and if it did not return after flexing the the steel was probably too soft. That seems right to me considering the quench and temper cycles you used. Before you make any more AEBL blades I recommend that you do a number of test on some AEBL coupons. A coupon is just a 3" section, or even 2", of your blade steel stock with a V notch cut into each side at the middle about 1/3 of the way from each side. That makes it easy to break in the middle. Do the HT process in that chart I provided, try it with plates, try it with oil, maybe try a couple of different tempering temps but use the full 2 hour cycles as stated on the chart. Test the coupons for hardness if you can and break them in a vise (wear eye protection!!). Break some before tempering - these should snap like glass. The tempered ones should be much tougher. Look for what HT process gives you the toughest result with the finest grain structure and that's what you want to use on your blades. Every new steel you try should go through this process before you waste time and material on a blade. Most stainless steel benefits greatly from a cryo cycle and AEBL is especially dependent on it. If you plan to continue with stainless you should give serious thought to cryo ... |
Tags |
154cm, aeb-l, back, blade, brass, case, cryo, edge, evenheat, grinding, heat, jig, knife, knives, material, post, rod, show, stainless steel, steel, thickness |
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