The Sam Cade Thread of Knifey Goodness

[Sam Cade]

Indeed.

I may have erred on the side of tip strength, since I plan on beating on this one.

There is enough meat on the spine that we could drop the point it if we wanted to.

On a related note, heat treat was:

Soak for 5 min.

Normalize.

Diminishing Thermal Cycles x3

Heat and quench.

Temper twice at 375.

It is in the oven right now on the first temper.

 

[hso]

Sounds good!

 

[Deltaboy1984]

Enjoying seeing these these examples of your work.

 

[Sam Cade]

Sounds good!

It could have used either more cycles or higher temperatures I think. It is still mighty hard.


I'm getting more chips than deformation when abusing the edge.

Grain on my tabs that I HTed and broke looks pretty good, about what you would expect.



John and I have a pretty big (heh ) 80crv2 chopper profiled and ready to grind but I need to get the bugs worked out of the HT.

 

[Deltaboy1984]

Keep it up.

 

[Sam Cade]

Yay, G10 haul.

"Off-white" evidently means "slightly less green".

Indoor Lighting:

My tiny broken pelvis'd minion describes the colors as "Beigey Greyish Greenish" and "Greenish Egg Yolk."

I would have gone with "Stormcloud" and "Ghost Jade".

 

[hso]

Love the T-shirt, but I think you need a different shade of nail polish there boy-o!

 

[hso]

BTW, chips = bad.

 

[Sam Cade]

Obviously.
I set the edge bevel very thin to induce failure. I was interested in the how it would fail since HT is a bit of an unknown for me.

 

[hso]

What did you say you're using for your HT oven?

 

[hso]

Would a little soak at heat help take the hardness down enough to guage where final HT should be?

 

[Sam Cade]

What did you say you're using for your HT oven?

Oven portion of a GE home range. I use multiple in oven thermometers to bracket the portion of the rack that the knife is going to rest (spine down) on and occasionally verify temps with an IR gun.

 

[Shanghai McCoy]

You have a minion..?
He really IS an evil genius guys!

 

[hso]

Kitchen oven? You're tempering in the oven after the HT/quench, but what are you using to heat up to critical before the quench (also, what are you quenching in?)?

 

[Sam Cade]

but what are you using to heat up to critical before the quench

Weedburner propane forge.

(also, what are you quenching in?)?

120-130 degree canola.

 

[Sam Cade]

OK...definitely undershot the temper heat.

 

[hso]

400=450 for tempering?

 

[Sam Cade]

200-300 for tempering

That is Metric/SI.


But yeah, 475 F for the high 50s.

Edit: That would be starting from full hardness of course.

 

[hso]

Yup, noticed that, which probably explains YOUR undershooting the tempering temp.

 

[Sam Cade]

Ok, if my testing files technique is sound, the blade is 60 RC.

Hrmmm....

 

[hso]

Are those the 40-65 set?

Lots of variables in the use of the file sets can throw the estimate of hardness off a lot of points. How new the file, how strong the person, the subjective nature of testing. I'd assume that you might estimate hardness lower than I might with a test set of files due to your greater strength and more recent use of tools and that might be several points.

OTOH, is this material brittle in the 55-60 range?

 

[kieranklein]

It shouldn't be. It is referred to as 52100 lite. Tough as nails steel. From what I have read previously it does need some soak time during heat treat. 5-10 mjnutes

 

[hso]

Could be harder than 60? Maybe edge geometry that thin (but then why wouldn't it bend)?

Sam, have you done a brass rod test on the edge?

 

[kieranklein]

My guess is it got either too hot in the heat treat or or low in the temper.

 

[Sam Cade]

Sam, have you done a brass rod test on the edge?

First thing I did. No chipping there.

The chipping is coming from chops on copper wire backed by clean scrap timber. Something that my thinned 5160 RTAK2 can handle with only a little edge deformation.

Are those the 40-65 set?

Yup. One of those color coded boxed sets that the materials guys all carry around.

My guess is it got either too hot in the heat treat or or low in the temper.

I'm convinced it was a too-cold temper.


I'm bumping my temper up to 400 and we will see how this goes.