Author Topic: silver steel hardaning  (Read 14523 times)

Offline krv3000

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silver steel hardaning
« on: May 22, 2012, 09:13:01 AM »
Hi all right ? silver steel hardening do i get it Chery red then let it cool slowly or do i dunk it in a bucket

Offline Bluechip

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2012, 09:46:20 AM »
Bob

If it is silver steel, get it carrot red in sudued light for some 30 secs. then drop into cold water. Most of it is water hardening.

Guage plate is usually oil-dunked IIRC

Then run a file on it. If it skids you're there, except it will most likely be quite weak and brittle, so you will have to temper it to suit whatever intend to do with it.

??

BC
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Offline andyf

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2012, 10:37:58 AM »
If it's a long thin item where distortion might matter, dunk it vertically to minimise warping.

Like BC, I go for carrots, which are all pretty much the same colour, whereas cherries come in different shades.

Andy
Sale, Cheshire
I've cut the end off it twice, but it's still too short

Offline Bluechip

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2012, 11:01:54 AM »
If it's a long thin item where distortion might matter, dunk it vertically to minimise warping.

Like BC, I go for carrots, which are all pretty much the same colour, whereas cherries come in different shades.

Andy

Oh dear ...  :scratch:

http://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Vegetables/Vegetable+Seeds/Carrot+F1+Purple+Haze+Seeds_157351.htm#157351?utm_source=Bing&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=SS%2BVegetable%2BSeeds

????

BC
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Offline grayone

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Re: silver steel hardening
« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2012, 11:39:27 AM »
 :offtopic:I know but that colour is just wild, must try them on the grandkids :D
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Offline Lew_Merrick_PE

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2012, 12:00:58 PM »
Krv,

1) When a strong magnet is no longer attracted to a piece of steel (assuming enough carbon content to make it hardenable), you are at the correct temperature.  You don't want to get it too much hotter than that or the crystal grains will get big and brittle.  For anything less than (about) .50 inches (12 mm), you want to hold it at that temperature for a bit more than a minute.  Larger pieces need to stay at temperature longer (look up "heat treating tool steel" on the McMaster-Carr website).  Holding it at temperature too long also makes for big and brittle grains.

2) Salt water works better as a quench than tap water.  Boiling water holds salt better and still makes a good quench (the key is getting the temperature of the part down to at least 360°F or 185°C).  8-10 drops per gallon (call it 2-3 drops per litre) of quench of (A) glycerine and (B) good grease-cutting dishwashing liquid detergent help the quenching process -- these are called surfactant wetting agents.

3) Whenever possible, put the part in the quench as quickly as you can and swirl it in a figure-of-eight pattern.  This helps keep bubbles from sticking to the side of the part and reducing the quench effect.

No matter what, full-hard untempered steel is brittle.  Older editions of Machinery's Handbook had good, not-too-technical sections on tempering (also called stress relieving).  I believe that the first of Guy Lautard's The Machinist's Bedside Reader books has a pretty good non-technical discussion of tempering (though it may be one of the others in that series).  Basically, you polish up your part and then heat it from the "it can be softer" end and watch the change in oxide colors.  When you hit the temperature (color) you want, you re-quench it.

When I was an apprentice, heat treat instructions on drawings often read: Full harden & draw to straw or Full harden and draw to light blue.  That is the level of practice described here.  A modern metallurgist/heat treater would be aghast...

Offline AdeV

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #6 on: May 22, 2012, 12:36:23 PM »
So, assuming we ignore those purple carrots for the time being (irrelevant fact: ALL carrots used to be purple...), does carrot come before or after cherry on the redness scale? I'm thinking after, but would prefer to be sure....
Cheers!
Ade.
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Offline andyf

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #7 on: May 22, 2012, 01:30:16 PM »
I never knew carrots used to be purple, Ade.

Most cherries are basically red (I just know someone's going to tell me about striped ones). Carrot-hot is when the workpiece has gone a bit beyond red; a bit of yellow is beginning to creep in.

Andy.
Sale, Cheshire
I've cut the end off it twice, but it's still too short

Offline AdeV

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #8 on: May 22, 2012, 02:17:14 PM »
Thanks Andy, I guess it's obvious when you think about it... but I wanted to be sure.

OT: It's true that carrots used to be purple. See http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/maroon.html (blame google for that one)
Cheers!
Ade.
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Offline wongster

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2012, 08:59:36 AM »
Anyone has a colour chart of sort? I only get orange the last time I tried.

Regards,
Wong

Offline andyf

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2012, 10:41:58 AM »
If you mean a chart for colours when tempering silver steel after it has been hardened, Wong, here's one: http://www.alexdenouden.nl/08/temper.htm . I'm a bit mystified by the difference between boring bars and boring tools, but it's very hard to tell the 5° C colour differences anywhere between 220° and 250°C.

I think the best practice is to hold the item at the required temperature for some time. My kitchen oven goes up to 280C, so suppose I could use that. I would need an oven thermometer; the oven thermostat and dial are not accurate, which is the excuse I use for my culinary failures.

However, in most cases I just play a flame below (rather than directly on) the item, away from the crucial parts like points and cutting edges, and watch the colours run along until those parts have reached something like the required shade, then remove the flame and allow to cool. Using a flame means that I can't hold the correct colour for more than a second or two, but it really doesn't seem to matter too much on small items.

Bedding the item in sand in an old tin which is heated from beneath gives more control, with slower colour changes. I do this on the gas hob in the kitchen. In fact, I do quite a bit of metalwork in the kitchen. Even when my wife was alive, she was very tolerant, being an engineer's daughter.

Andy

 
Sale, Cheshire
I've cut the end off it twice, but it's still too short

Offline Lew_Merrick_PE

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2012, 11:46:58 AM »
Andy -- Oven thermometers are very slow reading.  http://www.harborfreight.com/ac-dc-digital-multimeter-37772.html is a reasonably inexpensive multimeter with thermocouple (TC) port that will read directly up to 1000°C (order a couple of spare TC's when you order the beastie to save what's left of your mind when one gets munged).  There are easily built up TC reading systems floating around the instrumentation geek websites (sorry, I don't have a link at hand) such that you can accurately read temps up to 3000°C with a $2 (10 for $20) TC.  I have (if anybody's interested) diagrams and schematics for a home-built optical pyrometer (mostly used in a forge).

Back in my college days I was the physics lab machinist.  One of the people there thought it would be "fun" to activate a 5W neon-argon laser whilst I was collumating the lens set.  As a result I am dead colorblind to red -- which makes judging hot things "by color" a bit of a challenge.  Hence my "fascination" with non-color systems.

If you go to http://www.mcmaster.com/# and search for 88645KAC, you will get more information on tool steel (silver steel) than you ever wanted to know (unless you are a crazy design engineer).

Offline krv3000

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2012, 04:41:59 PM »
HI all thanks i had a blond moment its for me next project

Offline PekkaNF

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #13 on: May 24, 2012, 06:35:21 AM »
....
Back in my college days I was the physics lab machinist.  One of the people there thought it would be "fun" to activate a 5W neon-argon laser whilst I was collumating the lens set.  As a result I am dead colorblind to red -- which makes judging hot things "by color" a bit of a challenge.  Hence my "fascination" with non-color systems.

What color you drew on that bastard?

PekkaNF

Offline Pete.

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #14 on: June 17, 2012, 06:15:46 AM »
Anyone has a colour chart of sort? I only get orange the last time I tried.

Regards,
Wong

For carrots or for hardening?

Offline Jonfb64

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Re: silver steel hardaning
« Reply #15 on: June 18, 2012, 09:43:59 AM »
I've read somewhere that you can temper steel in an electric deep fat fryer. I checked on-line but the one's I found only went up to 190C. I don't know if that is hot enough as I've never done any hardening or tempering.