Jeff RP

Irondragon ForgeClay Works thank you! I was able to find another thread where someone had almost the exact same issue. I read some of the suggestions given there and I will try them this week. I hope it works. I was hoping to give a knife to each of my brothers for Christmas. (Not that they would be amazing knives because they are my first few but still would be cool)

Oh, I got these hardness files I found on Amazon too. There are very few places that sell blacksmithing supplies in my area. Either that or they are just not very well advertised. I had it at 1500 (fluctuating a bit because I’m trying to use a propane forge and the laser thermometer) for 10 min. Then I let them cool in vermiculite. Then I heated them up again to 1550-ish for about 7min. Then pulled them out and it took me a second or two to pick each up and see the markings, then drop them in the different mediums. I did drop them in, and then pick them out a few seconds later.

Hello! I’m brand new to iforgeiron as of about 15 minutes ago. I recently got into blacksmithing, I’ve always thought it was interesting, started with just making tongs and practicing my hammer control with mild steel until I thought I was ready to make a knife. I ordered some 80CRV2, I forged a few knives. They turned out okay, a little profile bro ding and they looked pretty good. I’m ready to heat treat them but I didn’t want to screw them up. So I used some scrap 80CRV2 (a few little 1”-ish triangles I hot cut off the end of the flat bar while forging). I did about 6 hours of research (so many different recommendations!). i try not to take anything on the internet as fact until I do my own tests. I saw people say you could harden 80CRV2 in water, in canola and most people say a fast quench oil. I don’t have any fancy quench oil (I ordered some but it’s not here yet). So I did a controlled test, i used a two burner propane forge (bought on Amazon) with a 4” diameter piece of steel pipe inside it (I saw it a few times in some you tube videos to prevent hotspots). I marked all the pieces in a distinct pattern with a punch before I heated them. I used a laser thermometer to measure the temp (1550F). I quenched one in canola oil at room temp, one in warmed canola oil (it was probably around 140F), one in warm water (about 100F) I also had one I didn’t quench at all. The ones I did quench I dropped in small cooking pots then grabbed them out with tongs. Maybe 2min? Not a single one of the samples hardened… I really hope someone can help me figure out what I did/didn’t do to make that happen.