AndrewB Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 I am information gathering at this point, I am trying to figure out what kind of metals I could for instance instead of quenching in oil I could quench in water instead. I do plan on making some of my own tools. I also plan on making some knives as well. How ever. I know oil is primarily best for quenching knives from my understanding. Now i know there are many posts on here stating that motor oil and used motor oil is basically a NO NO. How ever. Would Canola Oil work for quenching metal or is that just too different than many oils used in quenching. So with that being said is there any specific type of oil to use that anybody would recommend? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Are you confusing quenching with hardening? You need to get the terminology right! There are a lot of metals and alloys that you can quench in water with no problem as they won't harden at all in it; others will shatter in water but do OK in various oils! Canola oil is mentioned a lot of times in the knifemaking section as a decent quenchant.especially when preheated to around 140 degF. Did you read the heat treating sticky there? Are you gathering information by ignoring the hundreds of previous posts on the subject? What is best depends on the alloy! Some alloys will not harden in oil but will in water or brine. Other alloys would be destroyed by trying to harden them in oil as they are air hardening steels. Others work very well hardening them in oil...So far you seem to be saying that the 7.62 is the best round for all rifles ignoring the fact that it won't even fit in many rifles... I use canola oil, brine, urine, water, air, parks 50, blood, etc depending on the alloy, it's intended use and my personal preferences for the hardness/toughness of tools and blades Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewB Posted February 9, 2018 Author Share Posted February 9, 2018 Thanks... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daswulf Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 9 hours ago, ThomasPowers said: I use canola oil, brine, urine, water, air, parks 50, blood, etc depending on the alloy, it's intended use and my personal preferences for the hardness/toughness of tools and blades Do you preheat the blood to 98.6 deg F for proper viscosity? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustAnotherViking Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 8 minutes ago, Daswulf said: Do you preheat the blood to 98.6 deg F for proper viscosity? Obviously the correct method is to plunge it through the still beating heart of your enemy, so it's at the correct temperature, and still pumping to ensure it circulates over your blade correctly to prevent warping.... not forgetting to take their temperature first to make sure they don't have a fever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 8 minutes ago, Daswulf said: 9 hours ago, ThomasPowers said: I use canola oil, brine, urine, water, air, parks 50, blood, etc depending on the alloy, it's intended use and my personal preferences for the hardness/toughness of tools and blades Do you preheat the blood to 98.6 deg F for proper viscosity? If you stir in some Warfarin, its anticoagulant properties will help maintain proper viscosity without needing precise temperature control or dealing with the inconvenience of disposing of a body. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daswulf Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Then one wonders if different blood types might quench differently. Then one wonders if animals have different blood types like humans do. Then one starts down a research path, and wonders why they just looked into all of that.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Always a good excuse to contact my daughter the Vet! (and yes they do; but not the same ones as humans...and they differ between types of animals: cats are different than dogs for example) As for the blood quench---it needs to be fresh! otherwise coagulation does cause problems with warping. (thanks to a local small slaughterhouse way back when! Bragging rights over anything else, urine is a lot easier to use and acts like a weak brine and was suggested by Theophilus in 1120 A.D.) Quenching in a body, (human or otherwise) is pretty much a guarantee for a badly warped blade. (Funny thing the "quenching in the body of a slave" was an extra credit question on the final of a MatSci course I took at Cornell back in the '70's. I got extra credit on the extra credit as I mentioned a faint bit of nitriding might be occurring... It was a gimme question anyway as I had discussed it in depth with the Prof earlier in the school year...) The urine quench (I used an exhausted vat indigo dyebath that I had originally filled for my wife's traditional indigo dyeing experiment.) had such an amusing smell when hot steel hits it... Anyway: for a number of amusing quenchents suggested in the renaissance; see "Sources for the History of the Science of Steel" for wormwater or radish juice---all guaranteed to make your steel whiter and harder! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swedefiddle Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Good Morning Andrew, Different materials use different 'Quench Rates'. 'Quench Rate' is how many hundreds of degrees it may/should take to cool something in one second. (ie 900 degrees/second). Fastest to slowest is; Brine, Water, Oil, Air. There are many different quench rated oils (some oils cool faster or slower). When you ask a general question like above, you are showing that you don't understand the "Hardening and Tempering" process. The hardening and tempering data is available in every copy of 'the Machinery Handbook', regardless of what year it was published. The data for what chemistry is used for what Metal is also available in 'the Machinery Handbook'. You can often find an older copy in a used book store for very little dollars. The Hardening and Tempering Data is also in 'the Machinery Handbook'. The Heat Treating of a material requires the material to be stress relieved, first. This is Annealing or Normalizing. The next step is heating your material slowly to above the 'Critical Temperature'. This is about 50-75 degrees above when the molecules don't know if they are north or south, ie. become non magnetic. Then you plunge your material in your quenchant. This makes your material hard like Glass. The next step requires Tempering, this is to take the brittleness out and creates the toughness. The tempering should be done as soon as possible after hardening, the internal stresses of Hardening could cause the material to crack, on it's own. There are many books written with all the information and all the correct terminology. This is just a quick snippet to try to start your learning process. Often times the correct quenchant is determined by creating failure. What breaks, what doesn't. Good Luck in your journey. Neil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Sells Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 dont forget before you try the slave quench, its an inconsistent medium with lots of void spaces, resulting in uneven hardening and bent blades from the wriggling around when they feel the hot blade enter dont ask how I know about this, its a long story Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Steve; what---you not going to show us your scar? Note that some alloys take variations---like high temperature soaks way above the critical temp to solutionize carbides. Ramping heating and ramping cooling, etc. I generally advise folks to NOT mess with the fancy stuff until they can work with the plain stuff and get good results every time! (the intermediate method is to send out the fancy stuff for professional heat treating.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLAG Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Quenching in urine? The odor is vile. (& sometimes choking). I, and I suspect, many other folks here remember the irresistible urge to help douse a campfire by peeing on it. You try it once and usually never again. Using warfarin is rare for blood collected in 'glass' (plastic these days) ? Heparin works much better. SLAG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 1 hour ago, SLAG said: Using warfarin is rare for blood collected in 'glass' (plastic these days) ? Heparin works much better. Yes, but warfarin is readily and cheaply available as rat poison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Sells Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Aspirin is even cheaper and safer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 But is it as effective in quenchant? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLAG Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Warfarin (a.k.a. Coumadin or/also dicoumarol ) works well but it has a 5-7 day lag time for anticoagulant activity when injected into mammals. that is the reason why it is not used in blood containers etc. Also warfarin is made from a chemical reaction.(s). and is thus more expensive than. Heparin works immediately and can do so outside the body. Heparin is extracted from bovine lung tissue or porcine (pig) intestinal tissue. Those materials are cheaply derived from tissue that is obtained from slaughter houses. It is an extraction process and not a lab synthesis. Aspirin also works but slowly. The chemical inhibits the activity of two classes of catalysts, prostaglandins and thromboxanes. (allow me to not go into the reaction mechanisms). What is notable is that they take some time and happen in the body. (heparin works quickly in a test tube, or syringe). Incidentally, the test tube holding a blood sample and heparin, has a green cap. Other colors each denote other chemicals. SLAG. Quenching cutlery creations in blood may be costly and would probably stink up the smithy. It may also contravene certain city ordinances and the Mayor would not be very pleased. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Not to mention the demented cackling tends to violate noise ordinances... My Grandfather used to make blood bait and my Uncle was a meat inspector so access to fresh hemoglobin was not that much of an issue when I was big into trying out the old ways---or what was reported as being the old ways... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyBones Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 Great thread, yall should take this on the road. I laughed till i cried with yall and the blood and urine quench thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwistedCustoms Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 For best results with the urine quench the urine should be taken from a red haired maiden. The slave/blood quench doesn't require a specific hair color but it's almost imposable to get a permit for that one where I live. Blood bait is a different story though. When I was a kid we used to go to the slaughter house and scoop up buckets of congealed chicken blood. We would mix it with saw dust to form a stinky dough that catfish couldn't resist! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 Actually Theophilus says: (in translation from the Latin he wrote in) "Take a 3 year old goat and tie it up indoors for three days without food; on the fourth day give it fern to eat and nothing else. When it has eaten this for two days, on the following night shut it up in a very large jar perforated on the bottom and under the holes put another vessel, intact, in which you can collect its urine. When enough of this has been collected in this way during two or three nights, let the goat out and harden you tools in this urine. Tools are also made harder by hardening them in the urine of a small red headed boy than by doing so in plain water." On Divers Arts, circa 1120 AD/CE (My wife says I almost qualify for one of the methods, except for the 3 year old part...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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