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Can the potentially worst recipe for kool-aid in history make for easy, cheap and highly effective case hardening of mild steel?


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Getting started here... don't even have a forge set up, but I bide my time between pay day and free day trying to understand basic principles. Of course the first family member I mentioned my interest to requested a spike knife(a little ahead of my desired first projects of nipper tongs, nails, and bracing for a work bench). Well, I'm a proponent of make it useful, make it right and then make it pretty, and I think I understand that it simply isn't tool/ good edge grade steel coming from a spike. So I'd like to find the best and most readily available method... Optimum results ya know. (I think I saw the best option on the site as... forging a spike out of the right steel and going from there.)

Well back on topic now... I spoke with a guy who sent me a kitchen based recipe for hardening mild steel. And I would really like any input on it seeing as it's still going to be a little while before I can just give it a go. Curious particularly about why it does/doesn't work, an explanation of the carbon issue, and what grades of steel it would and would not work for if at all. the recipe is:

5 gallons of water
24 ounces of Dawn dish soap
5 lbs of table salt
8 oz Jet Dry or other rinsing aid

(I think I could divide that down a bit)

Can the potentially worst recipe for kool-aid in history make for easy, cheap and highly effective hardening quench of mild steel?

Please feel free to correct anywhere I'm off track.

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Lots of opinions on hardening mild steel: Here is my best shot at it; get to forging and work on mild steel for a while and do not try and jump ahead alot in the process. So many tings to lear before you jump past the basics. For those trying to push you ahead let them know you will tend to there need in a couple of years. That is if you can find a lot of hours in each week to do the basics. As for recipes and items that may or may not help you later on le me suggest that you write all of them down and keep track of them. Later on make up a batch of wotever appeals to you at that time and try it. Wot we say about your formula now will be lost later on and tucked away in this log may not be reachable readily. But when you do a shop project and record the goods and bads it will stick with you a long time. Lots for you to do for a long time...Maybe forever if you enjoy it and have the patience.
This site has many small projects to get you working and building skills no matter wot you level of expertise is.

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Welcome to the addiction fine hobby that is messing around with crafting hot metal, transforming raw metal and useless junk into beautiful and useful works of art. Wait, I think I got that last part backwards.

Anyway, you have chosen to try to sip from the firehose of knowledge, good luck with that.

What you have is the recipe for Gunter's Super Quench, NOT case hardening, which is closer to Jim Jones kool-aid, in that case hardening usually involves cyanide. A search of the forums will turn up plenty of discussion on both topics.

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Rob Gunter's Super Quench works because the surfactants help break up the gas jacket. It therefore cools the metal more quickly.

Mild steel should be heated well above non-magentec (should be orange or so) when superquenching.

Using Mr. Gunter's quench on other than mild steel will result in cracking and or breaking - the steel gets too hard too fast & tears itself apart. (But the SOUND it makes is worth experimenting with at least once!)

I dumped my Super Quench a year and a half ago when we moved. I have not missed it. Medium and high carbon steel are very easy to come by.

DO experiment with this stuff if you have the time and inclination. It is fun to play with!

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While not superquench, I have used a saturated salt solution with dish soap to quench a one-time use drift for a nail header. I am sure that the mild steel (A36) was hardened to a certain extent, However, after the single use, I made my drift into a nail, using said header.

It made a horrendous screaming sound as it quenched.

The saturated salt solution with dish soap is a useful punch and drift lubricant. It leaves a slick film that resists jamming. It is also in one of the Hofi series blueprints.

Phil

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Lots of opinions on hardening mild steel: Here is my best shot at it; get to forging and work on mild steel for a while and do not try and jump ahead alot in the process. So many tings to lear before you jump past the basics. For those trying to push you ahead let them know you will tend to there need in a couple of years. That is if you can find a lot of hours in each week to do the basics. As for recipes and items that may or may not help you later on le me suggest that you write all of them down and keep track of them. Later on make up a batch of wotever appeals to you at that time and try it. Wot we say about your formula now will be lost later on and tucked away in this log may not be reachable readily. But when you do a shop project and record the goods and bads it will stick with you a long time. Lots for you to do for a long time...Maybe forever if you enjoy it and have the patience.
This site has many small projects to get you working and building skills no matter wot you level of expertise is.


Thanks Rich, I read ya loud and clear and I appreciate the method proposed. I had actually already started writing these things down too, notes are a habit of mine and have proven themselves useful countless times. I do get ahead of myself I'm sure, but it's just that easy to while getting a forge in order and starting to learn about this stuff. I will hopefully have the means for application very soon.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Rob Gunter was formerly the resident metallurgist at Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, and he was getting results hardening mild steel with caustic soda. At one point, the Inspector General's staff had a look at his lab, and they decided that the caustic soda "was too caustic." They told Rob to get rid of it. He did so, and that's when he came up with the super quench formula as a replacement.

http://www.turleyforge.com Granddaddy of Blacksmith Schools

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While super quench can help out A36 quite a bit it really doesn't do much for true mild steel at the lower ranges of carbon content. HC RR spike knives top out at 30 points carbon according to the specs I have read and so are at the lowest boundary of medium carbon steel---not my idea of a good blade steel.

As has been mentioned we are awash in medium to high carbon steel and so the utility of doing stuff in mild and then trying to get them to act like higher carbon seems low to me.

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The term "mild steel" is part of any metal craftsman's vernacular, but it ought not to be used since it is at best an imprecise definition and is not a category in the manner that most people use it. While I am not a metallurgist, I did study several courses in metallurgy in college and have a fair understanding of its definitions and some of its processes. It has been my experience that what many call Mild steel is just about anything softer than a Mill Bastard File. I dare say that what many are quenching in Gunter's famous Super Quench is NOT mild steel if it results in turning the steel hard.

I used to run a Blacksmith shop at Fisher Body in Lansing, MI and we would boil cold rolled 1018 steel pins in cyanide salts over a banked coal fire in our forge. The molten cyanide has a lot of free carbon molecules that are introduced into the space lattice of the 1018 steel at around 2,000 deg. F. Since the steel is well below its melting point the carbon is only allowed to migrate into a very thin 'outer shell' of the steel. (just a few thousandths) Thus, the term: Case Hardening. A fairly hard outer shell with a softer inner core. Using a very long handle for safety, we would lift the stainless steel basket (with the pins) out of the cyanide and throw them (basket and all, glowing bright orange) into a submerged strainer in a tank of very cold running water. That would create a fast quench with a loud shotgun-like blast that sprayed water and cyanide about fifteen feet. (of course we used shields and containment curtains)

The quenching process locks the carbon molecules into a body-centered tetragonal space lattice. That makes it very hard and brittle, but because plain carbon steels are not very easily through-hardened without adding some other alloying elements, it generally leaves the core tough and resilient.

I suspect, that Gunter's Super Quench contains molecules of free carbon that may possibly migrate into the outer skin of the steel, but it seems very unlikely because the time frame for this to happen is less than a second. We used to boil our pins in cyanide for 15 - 20 minutes 'at heat', in order for the carbon to migrate from the cyanide into the steel. Only then would we quench it to lock in what had already taken place! Without a migration of carbon molecules into a true 'mild steel' there can be no hardening of that steel. Therefore if someone has "success" hardening with that quench, then it is only because that steel already had a significant enough percentage of carbon and/or alloying elements in its original makeup to allow that to happen!

If you need to harden and temper steel, buy the proper steel to start with.

Happy Trails!

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super quench,......I'm a fan. When done properly, you can make a chisel out of almost anything. I've used it to make items harder for forming dies. You must "scrub" the hot steel in the solution up and down. sometimes you have to do it twice. If you don't "scrub " it,.... it really doesn't work. Try it,.....its an interesting experience and can be useful in certain circumstances.

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In my 1988 Jorgensen catalog, A36 is termed "mild steel." Whether properly or improperly named, it is used in marketing. A36 is sold by performance, yield strength, etc., rather than specific alloy analysis. This catalog has a chart with this information showing analysis limits:
3/4" and under Carbon Max 0.26%; Manganese ---
Over 3/4" to 1½" incl. Carbon Max 0.27%; Manganese O.60/0.90
Over 1½" Carbon Max 0.28%; Mangqnese 0.60/0.90 Max

With that much carbon, you will get some hardening with a regular water or brine quench, although the hardening will not be appreciable and will not be appropriate for edge holding ability.

http://www.turleyforge.com

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Note that A-36 spec is close to that of an HC RR spike in carbon content! As the mild/medium boundary is at 30 points, 26-27-28 is right close---and it's not a hard line cut off either just a generally accepted transition from one type to another.

Just like quenching in oil doesn't increase the carbon content of the material being quenched, quenching in super quench does not either. It's a *faster* abstraction of heat making it possible to capture more of the few carbon atoms as the structure changes from Face Centered Cubic to Body Centered Cubic and so warp the crystal lattice to prevent easy deformation---ie makes it harder.

This is a help for low run tooling where you don't want to fuss with using a higher carbon steel; but going up in carbon content makes a big difference in the long run!

(early iron swords were not that much harder than hammered bronze ones; but when they figured out quench hardening the hardness numbers then soared over the hammered bronze ones!)

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  • 4 years later...

Look in the heat treating sub section under bladesmithing. You'll find information here a LOT faster if you read the sections of Iforge pertaining to the subject. Even if it doesn't answer your question directly it'll get you on the right track.

Frosty The Lucky.

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