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I Forge Iron

H13 help, hopefully in layman's terms (yes I've read through the existing posts)


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Anything and everything. I can cut 1/2 square cold. Much beyond that just takes too much power. H13 can get pretty hard, as I note above up into the lower 50s HRC. The edge geometry is not a flat grind but more of an apple seed/convex grind to add strength.

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  • 2 years later...

Annealing for is something like let it cool no more than 50 degrees an hour.  Forge it, and use it, or forge, heat to orange and let it cool, maybe in front of a fan, no?? I tried to link an old thread I found, real quick using the search but it won't let me post it.

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22 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

the air hardening steels usually need a computerized furnace with ramping controls to anneal which is why I was wondering about the ash process.  Heat cool in air and temper would be what I would be looking into and as I recall the draw temperature for tempering is quite high indeed!

Looks like tempering at 1000-1200 degrees f , pretty hot when your used to working simple steels.

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As Thomas said, to do h13 to spec will require a heat treating oven / furnace. Some people get results acceptable to them from skipping the anneal and doing the quench and temper by eye. Do also note that high alloy steels like this often have to be significantly above magnetic to harden. h13 is about 1900°F, i.e. several hundred degrees above magnetic. Do not forge below 1650°F. Actually, consider some other steel.

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34 minutes ago, EricJergensen said:

As Thomas said, to do h13 to spec will require a heat treating oven / furnace. Some people get results acceptable to them from skipping the anneal and doing the quench and temper by eye. Do also note that high alloy steels like this often have to be significantly above magnetic to harden. h13 is about 1900°F, i.e. several hundred degrees above magnetic. Do not forge below 1650°F. Actually, consider some other steel.

Anneal after forging before heat treating??

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Greetings Blou, 

If you are going to purchase your metal from a supplier many times H13 can be purchased pre-annealed. If that is the case just bring it up to temperature after forging and let it air cool.. It will work just fine.. Like all punches they will need some touch up grinding after a while. Just this ol boys 2c. 

Forge on and make beautiful things

Jim

 

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50 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Nick you just said "Heat Treating after forging before heat treating?"  annealing is a heat treating process...

Sorry that was poorly phrased. Anneal before hardening, everything I saw on it was normalizing wasn't nessecary so couldn't it just be forged then hardend and tempered with good results?

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17 minutes ago, Steve Sells said:

no just Normalizing. annealing is long slow cool allowing grain growth. you have them backwards

No, I was just trying to figure out why annealing it was in the question , sounded like it should he wanted to he wanted to normalize not anneal it after forging, and was making sure I wasn't missing a reason to not skip normalizing it.

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The reason to skip normalizing it is that the ASM Handbook, 8th Edition, vol 2 Heat Treating, Cleaning and Finishing; page 232 says normalizing is not recommended for H13 and in the general write up on hot work tool steels,  page 231, it says " Normalizing. Because these steels as a group are either partially or completely air-hardening , normalizing is not recommended except for the high nickel steel 6F7."  Handy thing the ASM handbooks...

There is a reason to use the specific terms; a lot of folks use "heat treating" to mean hardening when it could refer to making it as soft as possible just as correctly.

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40 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

 

There is a reason to use the specific terms; a lot of folks use "heat treating" to mean hardening when it could refer to making it as soft as possible just as correctly.

Yea I know better , I should have read that one again before I hit submit. 

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