Joël Mercier

And it has to be "stropeable"

Will W. Why not use aeb-l or nitro-v? They have been developed as razor stainless steel. If I remember well, 440c's edge is not ideal for razors. Those large chromium carbides(440c has plenty) don't make a very fine edge, well, not in razors terms. Aeb-l's recipe is designed to prevent chromium carbides formation.

Beautiful! i love the choice of woods and layout of that handle. The traditional sheath looks really authenthic.

W2 can get pretty hard. it shines in the 61-62hrc range for kitchen knives. Though I have no experience in razors, that steel should do it. It's also pretty easy to work with and sharpen.

Edit: just saw you use canola. You may not get full hardness with it so 52100 seems the best option

19 minutes ago, Steve Sells said:

If you want something different and super hard, try F1 steel

Didn't know such steel existed. Seems like W2 with a lot more tungsten. Do you know where to source it?

It seems to have worked for you but isn't sanding between the quench and temper a bit risky? I've heard some guys cracked some blades for just waiting too long before tempering. Also, why sanding when the steel is extremely hard when you can do it more easily after the temper?

Love'em! Well done!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bainite

The way I understand it, to properly sphero anneal those steels, it must be soaked at a sub critical temperature for a few hours and be cooled very slowly. This will create mostly pearlite. 

Just bringing the steel to critical and letting it cool in vermiculite might be enough to create some amount of unwanted bainite. 

That's the thing, standard "annealing" creates bainite in file steel. Either do normalizing cycles and air cool or do a sub critical temper. File steel is shallow hardening, there's no way it's going to air harden.

Here's an interesting document on file steel. 

Old_Files_New_Knives.pdf

Thank you DS! I will certainly consider building a white box in a near future. 

If I remember well, the only way to get *some* hardness off the highest carbon RR spikes is to quench them in water or brine. Since you already bought those, you can use them for practice and try to harden them out for fun, but they definitely won't hold an edge much.

no you didnt remember corrrectly

 I did read in an interesting pdf about using file steel that slow cooling hypereutectoid steel can promote the formation of bainite. That's what's ruining your drill bits. The sub critical temper is definitely the best way. I'm just the kind of guy that needs to know the why of things. So I thought this might interest some folks.

Thanks!

I completed it yesterday. Here's a few shots. 

Very beautiful and precise work!

I know it is dated but I thought I'd add some info on this steel because it is very nice and info is scarce. There is also a great deal of controversy on how to heat treat it. Here's how I do mine.

Normalize 1600/1530/1475/1300(optional). The sub critical cycle is to add toughness. A soak(or holding time) is recommended but not necessary. 2 minutes is enough. Do not worry about grain growth, the vanadium prevents it(to an extent) if you don't overheat.

Quench 1530 in 11 secs oil or hot canola.

Tempering temp chart:

300f..........63hrc

400f .........60hrc

480f..........57hrc

Thanks again!

Don't know about lyuv but I do it between 2 tempering cycles. 

Excellent! It's hard to nail HT the first time.

It should have the texture of fine sandpaper. Something like 400 grit and up. If you could actually see the grain, it was too big. Here's an example of a good grain size

The exact same thing happened to me on my first. It may be too late but you can take this "opportunity" to examine your grain size. See if you had the right temp before quenching. 

Very beautiful! Congrats!

A little update on the santoku. It's been HT and polished. A seasoned eye will tell you I did not soak the blade long enough for the steel to reach critical under the clay. The edge is very thin and I was worried about overheating. It was a nice experience nonetheless. 

It's unsharpened but the edge is almost zero. 

I believe it it well deserved! 

Very nice!