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drdata:

--- Quote from: howsitwork? on February 17, 2015, 06:14:53 PM ---Hi and welcome.

After the heating and forging are you water quenching or oil?

--- End quote ---

Thanks again all for the warm welcome.

To be clear, I do stock removal, but have a small forge to play with. The brick forge was needed for heat treat and could handle up to 30" blade, but so far the longest I have attempted was a wak at ~ 26"

I quench into both water and/or oil depending on the steel and if I want a temper line/hamon. For 01 tool steel I use tranny fluid (canola oil would be better, as would parks 50 or such, but I try to work cheap and got used atf at a local shop as I needed about 10 gallons). For 1080/w2 I have used just water but had cracks, so now do an interrupted/hybrid approach that has the blade first go into warm/hot water (with some salt added) for 3 seconds and then into oil until cool that seems to help.

The hybrid quench gives the initial fast cooling needed to beat the "nose" in the phase diagram and thus get martensite on the thinner sections/unclayed areas, while then giving it a gentler finish to help ease stresses. Oddly, seems that the cracking tends to occur 5-7 seconds into pure water quench long after the hamon has formed. I tend to unclay the spine as well to help avoid added sabering/sori/curve. Thus I shape in the curve during stock removal which has its own limitations.

I then use a hybrid polish of files, sand paper, acid etch, polish. I did try using Japanese water stones but too expensive and gave me arthritis in the hands. ;)

HTHs.

Cheers

awemawson:
Quenching in the blood of a virgin is traditional, though they are quite scarce these days I find  :lol:

howsitwork?:
Try the EZE lap diamond stones- the fine gives a truly excellent finish to cutting blades.

Also works for wife's knivews so can be a "present for me to help you"


Devious- who me, surely not ????

drdata:

--- Quote from: howsitwork? on February 20, 2015, 05:01:27 PM ---Try the EZE lap diamond stones- the fine gives a truly excellent finish to cutting blades.

Also works for wife's knivews so can be a "present for me to help you"


Devious- who me, surely not ????

--- End quote ---

I will check them out. I wore though natural stones fast, so clearly I should have spent more time with the file (or better yet, make a sen/scraper).  I started using DMT stones, which are diamond, and they worked ok, but in the end the whole stone thing is hard on my hands.

Regards

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