Steve Sells recommendation of hot drilling works using common high speed steel bits.

I have a cake pan filled with sandstone powder(shop neighbor is a stone mason). I heat to non-magnetic and then bury the material in the sand and leave it overnight. I finish all my blades by hand and have never had trouble drilling or filling. I also found that when annealing like this compared to in or near the forge that I have a lot less scaling. ?? works for me!
Cheers, Darren, Loneforge Blades

The best advice i have been given is to spheroid anneal it, heat to non mag then in the dark watch for ALL color to be gone and quench in oil. It really cuts down on "hard spots". ymmv

while that method does soften steel. that is not spheroidal annealing. and WHY would anyone want to quench, that is risking a new hardening,

Will spheroid annealing give better grain structure, and does it get softer than with the method I use?

while that method does soften steel. that is not spheroidal annealing. and WHY would anyone want to quench, that is risking a new hardening,

You are correct, i left out the full process somehow. I usually just do the one cycle and all is good. When i do the vermiculite cool off i was getting warps and hards spots frequently.


From another forums admin:


 

I personally would do a full spheroidal annealing on a file:

Heat to about 100F above non-magnetic - 1450-1500F
quench in oil
repeat at just a tad above non-magnetic - 1425-1450F
quench in oil
Heat to just non-magnetic - 1350F
Quench in oil
Heat to just below non-magnetic - 1200F
cool to black heat (900F), and quench
Heat to sub-critical again, cool to black, quench.

What this does is give you a fine grain structure with spheroidal carbides in fine pearlite. When you work the blade it will drill and file easily. When you re-harden the blade, it will start from a good place. If working with simple heat treating tools ( torch, one brick forge, etc.) this is the best approach.

This is basically what I do with 52100 ALL THE TIME and I have never had a problem since using this method. The 320mm bowie blade just finished was tested to a 45 deg bend and I could never get this with 52100 before. It would always break and I could clearly see the enlarged grain structure in the steel. It takes more time to forge a blade this way but the end result is worth it.

Maybe if you had read the post I made that is now a heat treat sticky you would have avoided this entire problem, as well as this thread :)

 

Thanks so much steve, its so good of you to take the time to post in my thread.

Thanks so much steve, its so good of you to take the time to post in my thread.

 

How do you think I and other people feel when you and others ignore what we already told you? Most everything you just said was new info to you is in those threads you were referred to.

 

That feels like we are wasting our time with the knife classes and heat treat information.   You act offended but disreguarding existing posts you have been referred too until you get special attention is disrespectful. we should not have to retype all that information over and over again. My time has value as well.

 

I wont bother you with information anymore, but try to see if from another point of view.

Again, thanks so much for taking the time to post and sticky this thread, perhaps others here can learn from my ignorance. :) have a lovely day!