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heat treating 01


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Have taken on board what the "admin" bods have advised....spending my time reading, as i wait for bits of equipment that are sourced 2nd hand...........

a while ago i came across this website.."threeplanes.net".........to do with woodworking tools...but has a few pages on heat treating 01 tool steel

QUESTION

has any body read it and what is your opinion of it...should i stay clear of it or use it as a good reference point ?

 

cheers 

 

ditch

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1 hour ago, Steve Sells said:

good start, it left out a lot

At risk of inflating my own ego, Mine is better

:lol:....ok i will use that as a starting point...........i cottoned on to it as it was a simpler version of what i had read so far....im also talking to an old dyed in the wool blacksmith on my shooting forum about the same question..........

thanks for your reply..

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Remember that people learn in different ways at different times. The first time I read @Steve Sells's version, a lot of it went straight over my head. Later, after I'd been spending more time on the forum and reading the various discussions, I went back to read it again and was startled how much of what I thought I'd learned elsewhere had already been planted in my brain by Steve's writing.

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1 hour ago, JHCC said:

Remember that people learn in different ways at different times. The first time I read @Steve Sells's version, a lot of it went straight over my head. Later, after I'd been spending more time on the forum and reading the various discussions, I went back to read it again and was startled how much of what I thought I'd learned elsewhere had already been planted in my brain by Steve's writing.

thanks for that ...i will try and locate it.........................on the bye i have gleaned from various suppliers of 01 that when making cutting edge tools it is preferable to heat treat them 3 times....what is the rational behind that ?:wacko:

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1 hour ago, ditchman said:

it is preferable to heat treat them 3 times

"Heat treat" is extremely vague: it could mean "normalize", "anneal", "harden", "temper", or a number of other processes both simple and complex. 

Steve's heat treating guide is pinned at the top of this subforum. Go read that, and if it doesn't give you the answers, you'll be in a good position to ask better questions.

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Many bladesmiths normalize 3 times to refine grain---in alloys that works in! They often draw temper 3 times as well to get a more thorough tempering and the temperature cycling can knock a few grains hanging back down the slope.

Few people will harden 3 times and that only for certain alloys and for certain properties desired.

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14 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Many bladesmiths normalize 3 times to refine grain---in alloys that works in! They often draw temper 3 times as well to get a more thorough tempering and the temperature cycling can knock a few grains hanging back down the slope.

Few people will harden 3 times and that only for certain alloys and for certain properties desired.

good reply....that is the sort of answer i was looking for................JHCC is right in his observation of me using the word heat treat....as it can be an all encompassing term...what i should have said is "to temper thrice"............................but TP has expanded brilliantly on this issue .....................

thanks TP

 

ditch

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15 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

I remember well the surprise I had when I was reading the ASM handbook on a new to me alloy and it said to NOT normalize it!  (Of course that is the reason I do like to read up on alloys new to me...)

 

Like the time I learned about intergranular corrosion and stabilization in steels like S5 and S7 - not something that needs to be done on large pieces, but when getting into detailed shapes it's a plus. Either way, reading is good.

-J

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/22/2018 at 8:58 AM, Steve Sells said:

good start, it left out a lot

At risk of inflating my own ego, Mine is better

Right.............since my absence from this forum ...i have been busy...i have found an old pre-war flatbed Linisher machine made by Qualters & Smith of Barnsley..(trust me you dont want to go there:lol:)...and i am re-building and modifying it....putting new roller bearings in it and have designed a raised steel (milled) plate to be screwed to the flat bed to allow a precise plunge cut/line..........

what i have also been doing is "wading" thro' the multitude of different ways to harden and temper 01 tool steel..........and they all seem to contridict each other..regards number of times to do the process and the time taken between each process

look im a poor simple English fellow and i need something simple to follow...

i do not have pyrometers or gas forge...i use my eye for colour and magnet for hardening...the stock is already in an annealed state....

These are my thoughts

  1. harden first...(magnet...then into warmed / heated cooking oil point first and straight up and down...
  2. clean
  3. into forge onto plate and watch the colours to "light straw at 229deg's C
  4. quickly remove and into shallow bath of warmed oil cooling bottom third of blade...cutting edge and some ..leaving upper and full tang to cool naturally ....

Question...

am i on the right track....

what will happen to the air cooled part of the blade and tang

will there be a problem where the 2 heats zones meet (the interface).....

im looking to get a hard but not stupid hard culling edge with a softer spine and tang.............

what do you rekon Steve.:wacko:...............would be interested in your procedure............

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Its a mistake trying to differentially harden high alloy steels, they are deep hardening and that process will only make your efforts a  pain with spotty eresults.  Use a simple steel for those treatments.  frp O2 just bake in the home oven,  the flame tempering isnt doing  much good if you want  controlled tempering. shillings worth

just my 2 shillings worth

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20 minutes ago, Steve Sells said:

Its a mistake trying to differentially harden high alloy steels, they are deep hardening and that process will only make your efforts a  pain with spotty eresults. 

Steve, would that also be true for the initial hardening (as opposed to the edge quench @ditchman suggests for the tempering step)? For example, if I have a fairly thick and heavy blade made from 5160, could I do an edge quench when hardening and then temper in the oven? Or is that also a waste of time?

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