This video may raise more questions than answers for some. Please look through my videos and you will probably find I have done a video on that particular subject too.
I am impressed as I have found most knife makers do not have a any hardness tester and when I showed a photo of me doing this same test on mu y tester on a few groups in FB I was howled down with all kinds of comments and yet no one person showed how they do it. Good to see you are testing every blade as I do.
Such a treat to see you in the shop Sandy. You have an incredible amount of knowledge about knife making and for you to share this valuable information with us is unbelievable. Thanks for sharing. Tony
A very in-depth tutorial as always Sandy…!!! Love and respect your work! ❤️Your dedication and attention to detail is hands on, and it is much appreciated!!👍The end result is absolutely stunning 🙌 Your last build on that English Yew Knife was exquisite🙂
Yet again another great video and info,also picked up some good tips from the way I have recently HT, the ATP-641 did give me a bit of a scare 😉 and also think I am doing the rod test wrong to 😕 look forward to speaking to you this afternoon. Many thanks for all your help Regards Davy Thomas
Just watched this Sandy . So interesting !!! Love the dedication in every way that you give to your knives . So so so pleased to be the owner of your Jacklore Classic . It's a work of art !!
Its so good to see a knife maker not use a file to test for hardness. So many youtubers use a file run it across the blade a go yep its hard. Thanks for the video.
You look after yourself bonny lad. Always remember - whatever surgeons may come up with , you'll always look golden to some of us ... Be well , stay well ... all of you ..
Hello Sandy ,how are you,not spoken for a good while now. Hope Mandy and the family are all good. I always quench my knives standing on one leg and have found this makes my knives stay sharper longer and indestructible (Ha Ha) spot on info as always. Cheers Jason
@@Jackloreknives I know what you mean about getting older,I had my 48th birthday last Thursday then did my back in on Friday lifting a bag of hay (it was a ton bag of hay,Ha)
Hardness is something that I have to consider how the knife will be used for. I made a knife for the express purpose of fighting a bear if it attacked the user who fished in the back country in the Blue Ridge mountains. He said he'd come close to bears. I made the knife out of 2" by 1/4" thick 1080 tempered back to around HRC 50 so it would flex if it hit a bone. It was an Arkansas Toothpick type style double edged and the biggest knife I ever made. It was also just about the best knife I ever made. I would have made it out of S5, but I didn't want to have to buy 72 inches of 2" x 1/4" because I'd still have 48 inches left to this day. That is the only knife I ever made out of 1/4" thick steel. Most of my knives are 1/8th or 3/32nds thick and once in a while a Bowie type of 3/16ths.
The bear fighting knife would have probably been better off with a differential temper, an extra springy spine with a hard edge is pretty much ideal for knives that are meant to take extreme levels of abuse but are still needed to actually cut things.
Honestly you'd have been better off with a harder tempered 5160. Depending how hot you tempered you may have run into the tempered martensite enbrittlement range of 450-650f where it's both softer AND more brittle than before that point. A tougher steel made hard is tougher than a hard steel made soft, unless you get into marteming and austempering shenanigans.
@@mikafoxx2717 I used an oven and did a single cycle to spheroidize the steel as I double checked and it didn't come that way, it was hot roll 1082 nominal and came inconsistent. I got it from the Blacksmithing Shop at Mayfield Community College. I contemplated making it out of 1080 with a 15N20 core, but had never forged a double edge before. I heated it to 1470 for 12 minutes and quenched in brine at 120 degrees. Then after a quick wipe immediately placed between 2 blocks of dry ice overnight then tempered it at 700 degrees for 2x 2 hours. I used the same formula I did with machine parts, but used a -40 freezer as using dry ice mixed with alcohol only gets down to around -75-85 and wastes a bunch of dry ice. Placing the blade between the blocks gets it down to at least -105.
Looking forward to seeing the knives in full splendor. But regardless of how much I love these insights into the creation of your knives, the stress test was actually a bit painful to watch 😃😧
How does someone harden and temper a piece of steel if they don't know what steel alloy it is? Like if they were trying to make a knife out of a metal file/rasp?
I know Jack All about Knifes (excuse the Pun) Sandy buy enjoy your Vids esp this one , does it have to be Oil because of the Viscosity for the cooling? Love the Detail n time you put into them after they are Formed , its not Something thats seen
Hi there, just wondering do you let knives warm up in the oven as the oven warms up. Or do you heat oven up before putting knives in? I'm talking about heat treating oven not tempering. Thanks Peter
These days I just preheat the kiln to hardening temp. Put the knives in and time your soak time from when the kiln returns to hardening temperature. The only pre heat treatment cycle I run is a strain relieving cycle
Much darker. It all depends on where your as quenched hardness is and also if you have any contaminents on the blade or in the oven. All this will effect temper colours, you can't absolutely trust colour so you will need an accurate thermo couple. Sandy
For best results the tank must face east to west, it must go in at midnight on the dot when a full moon is out, you can hear a dog barking and after a fish supper But seriously, very consistent results and to test each one is going above and beyond. No mass manufacturer could have such high quality control
@@Jackloreknives the 'EDC' folding knife collecting community in the U.S. seems to be having a flap right now over Rockwell hardness of M390. Independent tests seem to show Italian factories especially (e.g. Lionsteel) as producing not up to many's expectations of what M390 and these super steels are capable of. Edge retention is an easy test for youtubers to carry out so it seems to be the thing they care about. They're not amused when a chinese D2 knife is harder than a Western $500 'super steel' folder. Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of it all but sub 59 does seem a bit low for these steels in this market.
With 01 it doesn't appear to make any difference. I would not advocate leaving them in there for excessive amounts of time but I have left test samples soaking for an hour without any detrimental effects. Ofcourse you have to protect from decarburisation and ensure you have an accurate kiln so as not to overheat the blades. So long as you keep the blades in the lower part of critical range(780 to 800 centigrade) you will not get grain growth. I am not a metallurgist but understand that the addition of Chromium in the steel will keep the size of the grains small (called pinning the grain boundaries) unless you go above the critical range. Overheating 01 will cause grain growth However other steels will not behave in the same way. 1095 would grow grain if left for prolonged periods so I understand.
@@Jackloreknives thank you for details. I have't used O1 , I'm from Europe and is not so easy to get it here. Keep up the great work and awesome videos.
Hi, Hopefully your still checking these older video's. I have a quenching question. I notice when you do a batch you appear to do one after another. Don't you need to let the oil cool after each one back into the proper temperature range? It would appear in the video that when you do the second and 3rd blades that the oil would be to hot. Just looking for clarification. Thank you in advance.
Hi Jim, Good question, here's the answer I have a quite large quench tank and even after the last blade has been quenched the oil really hasn't heated up much to make any difference. With 01 you have around 8 seconds to drop the temperature from the Austenitizing temp to around 600C which is where the pearlite knee starts. You'll drop that temp fast enough even in hot oil but having now quenched a couple of thousand knives I like my quench bath oil temp to be around 40C when I start and it'll be around 55 to 60 C when the last blade is quenched. I check each and every blade for full as quenched hardness and expect 65 to 66 HRc with every blade. There is no difference in hardness values from the first to the last blade. I also aim for a final as tempered Rc value of around 59 and to achieve this I'll be tempering above 250C .If your not able to soak your blades you may find your as quenched hardness values may be lower and therefore a subsequent lower tempering temperature will necessary to facilitate your required RC values. You don't want your 01 knives too hot, the lower end of the austenitizing range is what your after, and a good long soak at that temperature to ensure all the carbides melt is needed to get the best from this steel. Sandy
@@Jackloreknives Thanks Sandy, that makes perfect sense and I didn't even think about the size of the quench tank. I have 2 different tanks I use. 1 large and 1 smaller. I use the smaller one when doing smaller knives which I do a lot of. I may need to rethink that because using my large one would then allow me to do one right after the other with having to let the oil cool. My small tank is a 1 gallon paint can and my large one is a 5 gallon ammo container. Thanks for responding that helps me out a lot. Cheers!
