Dave in KY
Shave Newbie
Dude, I'm floored by your skills and enjoying every second of it. ?I'm glad you enjoyed it Dave. The hardest part was I couldn't listen to my music while I was recording because it's all on my phone.
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Shawn's forging shed
- Thread starter ShawnF
- Start date
Dave in KY
Shave Newbie
Showed the wife and she says," I find it hard to believe that's going to be a knife." showed her the straight you made and she was lie WOW !!
With the forge going close to full, I can take a hot black or dull red color piece of that thickess to a good forging temp (about 1800 degrees) in just under 3 minutes.
Realized that the last video wasn't the last video. I repeated the one before it.......
https://youtu.be/9gmX2Dzvv2o
https://youtu.be/9gmX2Dzvv2o
Dave in KY
Shave Newbie
Don't worry about the misses. She rolls her eyes about shave gear. You'll have her shocked by the time you're done with the finished product. I'm getting excited now. No hurry, but I go camping on Oct. 7th ??????
Dave in KY
Shave Newbie
Just kidding. No hurry at all. Don't have to have it with me. Thanks for the updates. I am enjoying watching the progress as I have on all your projects here.
Went back out and did two thermo-cycles and quenched. Stayed nice and straight and you can hear the file skate right off it at the end. It's in the first tempering cycle as I'm typing, then one more to go.
Figured I'd go ahead and do it tonight, then I can just work on it tomorrow since it's 4 hours of waiting while it's cooking and cooling for tempering.
https://youtu.be/_Nz2om0CbHY
Figured I'd go ahead and do it tonight, then I can just work on it tomorrow since it's 4 hours of waiting while it's cooking and cooling for tempering.
https://youtu.be/_Nz2om0CbHY
So you heat treat it first then temper it? How do you make sure not to undo what you did in hardening it? This is really really interesting stuff for me.
Tempering is part of the heat treating process. When you quench hot steel, it makes it quite hard. It also makes it brittle. A knife right out of a quench would hold an edge much longer than a tempered knife, but has a fair chance of breaking just dropping it on the floor.
If you temper it, you reduce that hardness a bit (or a lot depending on temperatures used) but make the blade much stronger.
Take the 5160 I'm using for example. Straight from the quench it is a 62rc on the Rockwell hardness scale. If I temper it at 300 degrees, it drops to 60rc. 400 gives me 59rc. 500 would be 57rc. If I tempered it at 1000, it would drop all the way to 38rc.
I stay at 400 degrees for my tempering process. It keeps me at about 59rc and still provides a blade strong enough to chop with.
You have to know your alloys though to get a proper heat treatment. 1095 for example would need to be tempered at 500 degrees to get the same 59rc hardness.
D2 steel needs to soak at 1850 degrees for a half hour then quenched to -110 degrees to harden, then tempered at 400 for an approximate 60rc.
H13 needs 30 minutes at 1850, cooled in still air, then tempered at 1000.
For what I am set up to do, 5160 is pretty forgiving for heat treating and not as complex to get results from. And it has proven to be pretty consistent and durable. The real trick is the finish grinding. If you over heat it when grinding, you will remove the temper that you spent all that time doing. By taking it to a higher temperature, it will soften it.
That explains it thanks great information! I have always kind of been curious about that. I am a collector of knives and have several knives made from the powdered "super steels". Most of those from my understanding are cryo-quenched and the ones i have tend to be 60+rc.
Those are probably something like CPM S30V or ELMAX. They have unique compositions to allow the durability and wear resistance of high carbon steels, but combined with the corrosion resistance of stainless steels.
They are expensive to make (and to obtain pieces), and working and properly treating them is much more complicated than one can do in a shed with basic tools like I have.
Not being an expert, but from what I understand Martensitic stainless steels (like 440c) that have high alloy contents are generally oil quenched at austenitising temperature, and then the grain structure is frozen at -103 degrees. They then immediately get tempered at 930 and rapidly cooled at temps below 700 to keep from becoming brittle.
Of course temps will vary by alloy, but the concept is pretty much the same. I'm guessing that the powdered super alloys are similar due to the chromium content.
Way too complex for me to try.
They are expensive to make (and to obtain pieces), and working and properly treating them is much more complicated than one can do in a shed with basic tools like I have.
Not being an expert, but from what I understand Martensitic stainless steels (like 440c) that have high alloy contents are generally oil quenched at austenitising temperature, and then the grain structure is frozen at -103 degrees. They then immediately get tempered at 930 and rapidly cooled at temps below 700 to keep from becoming brittle.
Of course temps will vary by alloy, but the concept is pretty much the same. I'm guessing that the powdered super alloys are similar due to the chromium content.
Way too complex for me to try.
Those are probably something like CPM S30V or ELMAX. They have unique compositions to allow the durability and wear resistance of high carbon steels, but combined with the corrosion resistance of stainless steels.
They are expensive to make (and to obtain pieces), and working and properly treating them is much more complicated than one can do in a shed with basic tools like I have.
Not being an expert, but from what I understand Martensitic stainless steels (like 440c) that have high alloy contents are generally oil quenched at austenitising temperature, and then the grain structure is frozen at -103 degrees. They then immediately get tempered at 930 and rapidly cooled at temps below 700 to keep from becoming brittle.
Of course temps will vary by alloy, but the concept is pretty much the same. I'm guessing that the powdered super alloys are similar due to the chromium content.
Way too complex for me to try.
S30V, S35V, ELMAX, M390, 154CM all of these are the steels that i know of that are powdered alloys i own knives in. That M390 and ELMAX are a bugger bear to get an edge on but when you do it is a wonderful wonderful thing.
No video tonight..... I got a few photos though.
Got the blade out of the tempering oven and finished the profile on it. Got it down to 400 grit and then a scotchbrite belt for a satin finish.
Then I got everything laid out and ready to pin the handle scales on.
Then things went a little wrong. If I had been doing a video, youtube would have age restricted it and it wouldn't have been suitable for posting here....... The audio was........ Colorful........
I don't know what I was thinking, or actually NOT thinking.... Some flippin' idiot forgot to tape the blade before mixing the epoxy.
So when he was fighting to get the pins in the first scale that he forgot to do BEFORE coating it in epoxy, he ended up getting so frustrated that he tried putting the first scale on upside down and then got epoxy all over the blade trying to get the scale back off.
So then it was hurry up and rip the scale off, waste the pins that are sitting in the hardening epoxy while trying to rapidly clean the blade before everything sets up. I did get it cleaned up though, so tomorrow after work it will get a new set of scales made and installed. Luckily I had just picked up more pin stock and my new bottles of epoxy came monday with my belts, so we are good as long as we can get the idiot to co-operate.....
Got the blade out of the tempering oven and finished the profile on it. Got it down to 400 grit and then a scotchbrite belt for a satin finish.
Then I got everything laid out and ready to pin the handle scales on.
Then things went a little wrong. If I had been doing a video, youtube would have age restricted it and it wouldn't have been suitable for posting here....... The audio was........ Colorful........
I don't know what I was thinking, or actually NOT thinking.... Some flippin' idiot forgot to tape the blade before mixing the epoxy.
So when he was fighting to get the pins in the first scale that he forgot to do BEFORE coating it in epoxy, he ended up getting so frustrated that he tried putting the first scale on upside down and then got epoxy all over the blade trying to get the scale back off.
So then it was hurry up and rip the scale off, waste the pins that are sitting in the hardening epoxy while trying to rapidly clean the blade before everything sets up. I did get it cleaned up though, so tomorrow after work it will get a new set of scales made and installed. Luckily I had just picked up more pin stock and my new bottles of epoxy came monday with my belts, so we are good as long as we can get the idiot to co-operate.....
Dave in KY
Shave Newbie
Sorry for the issues Shawn but it's looking great. Do you file the back after the scales?
Thanks Chris!
Dave, The issues were just me trying to rush, and I know better. No worries, it's not the first time I've done something dumb, but at least it was an easy fix this time.
For the thumb grip notches, I do those after. That way I can file the scales at the same time and not have the notches full of epoxy or missing my mark and getting them out of alignment.
Dave, The issues were just me trying to rush, and I know better. No worries, it's not the first time I've done something dumb, but at least it was an easy fix this time.
For the thumb grip notches, I do those after. That way I can file the scales at the same time and not have the notches full of epoxy or missing my mark and getting them out of alignment.