Thread: An experiment in steel

Originally Posted by Mike_ratliff

Any suggestions for placing a makers mark on it?

You can buy individual hardened letter/number stamps for metal. Here is one website I found googling. Not sure if they would sell less than a set but they can be found individually IIRC.

Thanks for this thread. You make it seem that I could almost do this myself.

NDW, it's not rocket science, well at one level it's not. If you start with good steel and have a good recipe for your process and coincidence is on your side, you can make good blades forever and really not have to know much at all.

Eventually, you'll tire of making mistakes and want more control over the process. Then, the rocket science will begin to intrude into your thinking and tools and eventually it will consume all your free time and money and you'll forget to bathe and eat.

Run from the temptation, it's a disease and there is no cure. Stick to the obsessive compulsive disorders like honing and polishing.

i jsut worry that the edge is too thin to HT and could warp (i HT thick and grind thin to make any warp easy to fix)
what steel is it ?
looks great otherwise

The steel is O1
and I am also concerned that the edge may be too thin...
Of course there's only one way to find out...

I wonder if I should try quenching it spine first, or if I should just try to get the whole blade in the oil as fast as possible...
I'm going to do a little more reading before I heat treat.

Martensite formation occurs at the speed of sound. You want the edge hard even if nothing else is.

Butch's suggestion is always good. If the edge does not "potato chip" or turn wavy and you left it thick enough, even with a little warp, it is possible to grind/file the edge flat again.

I would think, can't guarantee though, that without a lot of heating and beating (grain growth) or hot grinding, turning colors on this piece, you haven't stressed it enough that it will warp on you. There looks to be enough meat on this blade that even if you had 0.200 thousandths of potato chip you could file that away and still have enough blade left to make a good shaver.

In the end, it all depends.

if you want i do O1 HT from time to time
leave the blade about as thick as a nickle and i ll do a few normalizing cycles and then harden cryo and temper it

let me know pay for shipping and i ll do it so long as yoou dont mind a wait till i have a batch of O1 to run

I think I went too thin on the edge, it's about as thick as a dime...
I need to check on the melting point, but I think I can make a brass sleeve to support the edge for the heat treat and hopefully reduce any warpage.

If I have to I can take the blade down to 7/8 or even 6/8 and still maintain the edge geometry...
If that fails, I have the other half of my bar of steel...
I can start over...

A dime is not too thin yet. You might lose some of that to scale in your brick forge, either way, I like the fact that you have Plan B and C ready...

Butch, if my first try fails, I may take you up on that offer for the next try...
Even failure in this project is acceptable, often we can learn more from what didn't work...
I would like to see if a sleeve or metal "guide" can prevent the edge from warping.