So I have been doing a job using a steel called Allvit or Univit. It has almost pure iron with minuscule amounts of carbon and alloys. I have been using it to do repousse. It does get workhardned eventually and it can tare after a lot of cold working. I was just heating it up to where you can barely see color and putting it in a can with a whole bunch of previously heated leaf blanks to hold the heat. My helper who generally knows more than me about heat treating claims that it needs to be heated to nonmagnetic and allowed to cool slowly but I find this raises too much scale. What I did worked for me. My thought is it has basically no carbon I would think different heat treating rules would apply. Perhaps more like nonferrous metals Any thoughts on proper procedure. .003 carbon to be exact.

In silversmithing we coat the silver with boric acid mixed into alcohol to prevent scale from forming

I wonder if case hardening would help. I don 't know how that would effect the metal you are using, but I've used Kasenit case hardening on mild steel and that has helped a lot.

I wonder if case hardening would help. I don 't know how that would effect the metal you are using, but I've used Kasenit case hardening on mild steel and that has helped a lot.

No we want to keep it soft.

Annealing isn't the issue as you said there is very little carbon in the mix, if there was no carbon is would just be Iron. To be steel it needs to have iron and carbon. You need to address stress relief, a quick heat up should be fine for that. Even a water quench to get back to working on it again faster is fine as there isn't enough carbon to get it hardened.

Read about what hardening does to steel, and you will understand. There is a sticky in the knife HT section of some easier to understand details about it.

So I have been doing a job using a steel called Allvit or Univit. It has almost pure iron with minuscule amounts of carbon and alloys.

Where on earth did you source it from? sounds like it would be fun to work with.

If it is essentially pure iron then it should act like any "normal" metal instead of steel. Heating it to red and quenching (however you choose to) should do it.

Steel is not a "normal" metal. It can be manipulated by heat treatment.

Phil

Well my suppler is calling it steel so I called it that. You guys are bearing out my thoughts but my helper had me doubting my self. I was treating it like more like copper because it seemed to act more like it than steel. http://www.aksteel.c...ling_Steels.pdf

fwiw, anytime I've wanted to anneal steel sheet.......I've gotten it to "red heat"(non magnetic or close enuf ) and then I've stuck the HOT sheet in a 5 gal. bucket of vermiculite or WARM DRY sand or ANYthing that will insulate and SLOW down the cooling process as much as possible. I've been surprised at how LONG it can take for a bucket of cut out HOT leaves to cool down. I've done this at the end of a day.....came in first thing in the morning and the leaves were "warm" to the touch.......and very SOFT.
The main application for this was PREP for acanthus leaves and other repousse. I've also used "deep draw sheet" from a company called ARMCO. That material enabled me to do the leafwork without ANNEALING first.

Just curious..............where do you get the "a steel called Allvit or Univit".

Well my suppler is calling it steel so I called it that. You guys are bearing out my thoughts but my helper had me doubting my self. http://www.aksteel.c...ling_Steels.pdf

Test a few samples! Work them to hard and try a few different methods. Powering them with some borax may keep scale down and come off quickly in water.

That document seems to indicate low scale formation below 1400F, which is just below non-magnetic.

Phil

fwiw, anytime I've wanted to anneal steel sheet.......I've gotten it to "red heat"(non magnetic or close enuf ) and then I've stuck the HOT sheet in a 5 gal. bucket of vermiculite or WARM DRY sand or ANYthing that will insulate and SLOW down the cooling process as much as possible. I've been surprised at how LONG it can take for a bucket of cut out HOT leaves to cool down. I've done this at the end of a day.....came in first thing in the morning and the leaves were "warm" to the touch.......and very SOFT.
The main application for this was PREP for acanthus leaves and other repousse. I've also used "deep draw sheet" from a company called ARMCO. That material enabled me to do the leafwork without ANNEALING first.

Just curious..............where do you get the "a steel called Allvit or Univit".

I got the material from a company called Mapes & Sprowl. I have used the above process for years successfully on many types of steel I know it works. I feel that it is unnecessary because the steel has no carbon in it and it forms too much scale. I think just getting it a little hot just enough to cause a bit of stress relief is enough for what I am tiring to do. I am just hammering in some fluting and I don't want it to tare. I don't need it full dead soft just soft enough so it wont crack.

Test a few samples! Work them to hard and try a few different methods. Powering them with some borax may keep scale down and come off quickly in water.

That document seems to indicate low scale formation below 1400F, which is just below non-magnetic.

Phil

What I'm tiring to say is that you don't need to get that hot to get it soft agian.

I have used the borax mix mentioned above as an anti-scale compound on steel, and it worked well. However, it becomes corrosive to steel at around 1600 F, so you need to watch your temps if using it.

With that said, if this is basically pure iron and you want to improve ductility a little -- not like a real "intermediate anneal," but some -- then heating to, say, 1000-1100 F and holding for a while may do the job. I don't think you're going to get any significant improvement if you don't at least reach recrystallization temp, though. Could be wrong.

Always do what works, not what anyone thinks should be done. Practice always trumps theory. Because this material has essentially no carbon, slow cooling is not needed. You basically are just stress-relieving the piece, which seems to be all you need.

Well I'm sort of interested in the concepts behind it. Even if I have practicalities of it worked out.

Well I'm sort of interested in the concepts behind it. Even if I have practicalities of it worked out.

Well then, here's a little intro.

Yep. Negligable carbon: http://www.matweb.com/search/datasheet.aspx?matguid=a92dedfe89444fb8a1db4376a3bc755c&ckck=1

So I am doing sort of an recovery anneal. If you have no carbon it can't get hard from a quench the only way it can get harder is by work hardening. So there is there a temperature at which full recrystallization occurs? I wonder what that is in pure iron or Univit steel. Is this a separate thing from the temperature at which any given carbon steel would harden? I assume that I am going cooler than this and only getting a partial recrystallization that is enough for my needs. I do this because I don't want to deal with scaling and or coating the leaf in some sort of anti-scaling agent.

Seems like recrystallization is a pretty complicated phenomenon. But yeah, the recrystallization temp seems to be different than the austenitizing temps. More info here.

Seems like recrystallization is a pretty complicated phenomenon. But yeah, the recrystallization temp seems to be different than the austenitizing temps. More info here.

A number of years ago, I was teaching at Penland School, North Carolina, and I met Bill Helwig. Bill is an enamelist who was using Univit because "zero carbon steel" was better for enameling than carbon steel. Bill said that it was made by Armco Steel, Presently, I cannot find Armco on the net; has it become AK Steel? I don't know whether Bill is still working, but if you could contact him, he knows all about Univit. He was a renowned artist/craftsman.

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