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Heat Treating and Metallurgy Discussion of heat treatment and metallurgy in knife making.

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  #31  
Old 11-10-2014, 05:48 PM
jmccustomknives jmccustomknives is offline
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The only true advantage that one has when forging is changing the shape of the steel to accommodate a proper blade profile. An extreme example would be forging a ball bearing into a blade or making certain Damascus patterns.
As far as steels and the proper heat treat, you can contact the manufacture. They will be able to tell you what steps are needed. Just remember, the more complex the alloy the more difficult the heat treat to get right.
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  #32  
Old 11-10-2014, 06:02 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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There are those who claim that forging bends the grain of the steel where stock removal cuts it. That would make sense if you were dealing with wood but your not. The steel grains reform each time they convert from one phase to another.

Most steels that are use for forging heat treat with not a lot of difference between alloys. You can heat steels that have 0.75% carbon just a little hotter than steels that are above 0.90%. High carbon high alloy steels that form a lot of carbides my need to be soaked at around 1475? for 10-15 minutes. Steels lower in carbon generally need to be tempered at a lower temperature that a higher carbon steel but even there that would depend on the use the knife is intended for.

One thing about going by company data is that they are dealing with steel sample greater that 1". Things get thrown off with knife thicknesses, especially with the simple steels.

If you get into the range of air quenching steels things do start to change. Again depending on the amount of particular alloying elements. You might find yourself having to do a pre-austinization soak followed buy a 30-60 minute soak at around 1800?. Air quenching steels cannot be normalized and you have to anneal them to soften them.

Doug


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  #33  
Old 11-11-2014, 11:03 AM
samuraistuart samuraistuart is offline
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Doug, thanks for posting that reminder about steel grain. I have heard many times, even very lately, from knife makers and knife connoisseurs that grain direction is very important when laying out the pattern, or forging the billet. For the life of me, I never understood this, because like you said, I always thought grains were not oriented in steel like they are in wood, and any "orientation" they may have gets erased during austenitization.
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  #34  
Old 11-11-2014, 12:10 PM
WBE WBE is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by samuraistuart View Post
Doug, thanks for posting that reminder about steel grain. I have heard many times, even very lately, from knife makers and knife connoisseurs that grain direction is very important when laying out the pattern, or forging the billet. For the life of me, I never understood this, because like you said, I always thought grains were not oriented in steel like they are in wood, and any "orientation" they may have gets erased during austenitization.
This is true. However, the best of steel has many tiny occlusions and inclusions, most or all invisible without magnification. When the steel is rolled at the mill, these are elongated just as the grain is, and pressed shut or compacted. The grain will reshape at austenitization heat and then have no direction, but the inclusions and occlusions do not change, and grains are collected around their elongated boundaries. For lack of a better description, not quite, but somewhat similar to a finished button hole, or damp rice floured for frying. This effect does add directional strength and resistance to lateral pressures against the steel. So, a mill rolled piece of steel is directional, even after heating, but not it's actual grains or grain structure. In a steel casting, nothing has direction, and this makes cast parts slightly weaker, depending on the service they are to be used for. This effect shows up off and on in cast steel V springs, and other cast springs, which are today, very good, but not quite as dependable as springs from rolled steel bar stock shaped relative to direction. In a common knife, there is so little curving in the blade shape, that any advantage from forging is pretty insignificant as to strength.
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  #35  
Old 11-13-2014, 10:53 AM
ivance ivance is offline
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Hey guys, is the tempering process the same for all steels? I mean on air hardening, oil hardening and water hardening steels. I think the little difference is in temperature, right?
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  #36  
Old 11-13-2014, 01:43 PM
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GHEzell GHEzell is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ivance View Post
Hey guys, is the tempering process the same for all steels? I mean on air hardening, oil hardening and water hardening steels. I think the little difference is in temperature, right?
Yes, the process is the same, though differing steels require different temperatures, depending on the intended use. Some (most?) steels require 2 or 3 tempering cycles also.


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  #37  
Old 12-14-2014, 09:12 AM
ivance ivance is offline
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And all kinds of steel are tempered in water, right? Jim did not wrote this information in his book.
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  #38  
Old 12-14-2014, 03:25 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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I have never heard of steel being tempered in water. You could temper in molten salts or oil but water is not capable of holding the temperature that is needed because those temperatures will be above the boiling point. The safest thing to temper in is hot air as in an oven.

You might be confusing tempering in air with quenching in water between tempering cycles. I don't like the idea of exposing the steel to those kinds of stresses and prefer to cool my blades between cycles in ambient air.

Doug


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Last edited by Doug Lester; 12-14-2014 at 05:47 PM. Reason: change temper in water to temper in air
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  #39  
Old 12-14-2014, 05:35 PM
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GHEzell GHEzell is offline
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I think you might want to read this....
http://www.cashenblades.com/heattreatment.html


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A good friend told me one time about forging "What is there not to like, you get to break all the rules you were told as a kid, don't play with that it is sharp, don't play with fire, and don't beat on that"
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  #40  
Old 12-14-2014, 06:00 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Another good source of basic info on various heat treating methods can be found here. Sorry I haven't figured out how to do links but go to Knifedogs.com > Knife Making Area > Heat Treating Forum > a sticky on the top of the list Heat treating Tool Box. This was also put together by Kevin Cashen to help new people get their heads around heat treating a bit. It's a bit more in depth than the link that George provided.

My advice is that you print out the subjects found there.

Doug


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  #41  
Old 12-14-2014, 06:24 PM
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Thanks for that Doug. Here's a direct link.


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A good friend told me one time about forging "What is there not to like, you get to break all the rules you were told as a kid, don't play with that it is sharp, don't play with fire, and don't beat on that"
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See some of my work.
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  #42  
Old 12-14-2014, 08:13 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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Thanks for linking it.

Doug


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  #43  
Old 12-15-2014, 11:08 AM
ivance ivance is offline
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Can every steel temper in oven?
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  #44  
Old 12-15-2014, 12:54 PM
Doug Lester Doug Lester is offline
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If you are meaning a kitchen oven or toaster oven then the answer, in the broadest terms, is no. Some of the complex tool steels and stainless steels may need a bit more heat than a kitchen oven will put out. As a practical matter, any steel that would be used to forge blades from and the majority that would be used for stock removal will be able to be tempered in an oven. We won't even get into special processes such as austempering.

Doug


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  #45  
Old 12-23-2014, 10:02 AM
ivance ivance is offline
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I have been reading Jim's book these last few days. Jim wrote that many steels can harden using oil, but is that the same for tempering? If you use oil hardening blade can you quench them in same medium to add extra toughness?
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