Wow Sandy, you almost have to be a full fledged metallurgist in order to build the knives that you build. You put so much exacting science into your process. There is no wonder why your knives are so highly sought after and so highly coveted by the knife lovers all over the globe. Thanks for continuing to put these videos out, they are so informative and so interesting to view. Take care my friend. See you on the next one.
Nice little vid that Sandy, I see what you mean with that new compound you tried hopefully you will be able to get some of your normal stuff soon which will be much better for you. Stay safe and well love to you all and carmen ♥️♥️♥️👍👍👍
Only one way to find out if a product works as well as you want it to mate....never know til you try. Great video. Once again, goes to show how much time goes into a build. Each blade being brought out and cooled individually, hand rubbed checked and checked again...something that many font appreciate
Quality control Sandy and your top shelf mate, the consistency in your work is amazing and that is what people look for, that is why people want your knives, they know quality.
Jackey Boy . Im going to pass something on to you . I learned 40 years ago with leaf spring the tried it with O1 .. I always used a #5 rose Bud . For heat treating . Using a table in oil to quench about a half inch up from the edge . I had water up to 155 degreese once I quench the blade and it was at a black heat Id stick it in the hot water and it would Blow all the scale off the blade , Leaving a lovely slate Gray .. try it on scrap and see .
Phenomenal job Sandy. The focus and attention to minute detail is mesmerising. Just looked at the web site and seen the prices. Seems to me its the customer getting the pound of flesh. Dining room, eh? You clearly have a more tolerant XYL than me! 73, M0YZT, Howard
@@WiltshireMan Once upon a time, in jest, I demanded a cup of coffee to be delivered to my radio room. I still wear the skillet indentation. Nonetheless, I wouldn't swap her for the world!
see that you quench a few blades in the oil tank. does it make any difference from the first quench to last with the temperature of the oil heating up?
You quench several blades at one time. Every time you dip a new blade into your oil, it obviously heats the oil up considerably. Doesn't the oil getting significantly warmer, effect the hardening consistency of the blades ?
I enjoy your videos, and I have a question. Why do you use O1 steel? I’m very new to making knifes, so I don’t understand all the nuances. I also don’t have a heat treat oven, so I am limited to simpler heat treats for now. Cheers!
My guess: O1 takes a very keen yet robust edge which is great especially for skandi grinds or kitchen knifes and its easy to sharpen. For makers it's generally easy to work with especially in heat treat. O1 was specifically developed as sort of a general purpose industrial tool steel that can be processed easily without incredibly specialised heat treat equipment/processes. It's actually fairly widely suggested as a beginning knifemakers steel due to the ease of heattreat. To get the absolute most out of it you want to dial in your process and use some more sophisticated equipment. But you can easily get away with a charcoal fire or propane torch, a brief soaking and dunking it in plain ol vegetable oil. It will get nice and hard deep into the workpiece as long as you reach critical temp and don't overshoot too much
Maybe if you reduce your soaks a bit you could get some better use out of the new compound. O1 shouldn't need a 25 minute soak anyway with such thin cross sections as you have with a knifeblade. I'm sure your blades perform just fine but did you compare grain structure at different soaks? Anyways. I'm fairly impressed by the consistency of your temper colors. Goes to show that your tempering oven does a very good job.
The longer soaks do give better and measurable improvements. Austenitising at lower end of the critical range means the longer soak is required. I have run many experiments over the years including the metcalf experiment to determine best grain size/ temp/ soak times. I could reduce soak times to 10 minutes and increase hardening temp to 810 and still get a 65Hrc reading but I wouldn't achieve that hardness when austenisng temps are slightly lower unless the soak is increased. Grain size is uniform and very smooth. I choose a slightly lower austenitising temp to avoid grain growth. But as I say this does require a longer soak to get those hardness values up. Here is an example of the metcalf experiment I ran a few years back: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V81BSEv2OgQ.html
I had that decarb issue and i was using my kiln wrong! Using the ramp speed 9999 on the evenheat means the kiln coils are at full throttle and overheat the steel where you get deep decarb. PRE HEAT your kiln and set you ramp speed much slower, I use condursal z1100 and with the pre heated kiln I get very little decarb now.
You've had that EVENHEAT a long time Sandy, so I expect you're really happy with it. I have a question on the compound. I saw you did not dip the whole blade into it for a coating. Any reason not to coat the whole chunk of steel? :-) ATB
There just is no need Nicholas as the decarb just effects the surface and will mar the finish if left, however beneath the scales the steel is not finished to such a high level, it is coarsely keyed up to take epoxy and that coarse abrasive will scour through the decarb anyway.
Whats the reason for 20 min at austenizing temp? I never heared someone recommanding such a long time. In fact the opposite holds true. Grain growth has never been an issue for you? So from watching your videos for a long time I know you do what you do for a certain reason. But here it is totally unclear to me why you do it 😂👍
With 01 you will only get grain growth if you overheat. The presence of chromium in 01 limits the grain size. However if you soak simple steels like 1095 then yos you will get grain growth
PS the reason to soak for longer is to get the carbides into solution. You get a more uniform heat treat. I suggest you check out Kevin Cashen 01 heat treat, he has written a wonderful article on it
@@WiltshireMan I know the reason for soaking but to me it appeared unecessarily long. I thought 8 min should be more than enough for a 4mm thick blade. Interesting to know that Cr keeps it from developing grain growth unless overheated. Not a metallurgist myself.
