Kevin, A lot of people use linseed oil (or boiled linseed oil) to finish wooden handles that aren't stabilized but that's not really food or dishwasher safe.

I think it's a general rule that you don't want to put good knives in dishwashers. Not only is the 180 degree final rinse, or possibly higher heated dry, possibly going to temper your blade edge over time but it's also going to weaken your glue on your handle.

I'm sure you've researched AEB-L before you use but it is an air hardening stainless steel that is pretty picky about heat treat temps. It's what I use, and I don't have a heat treat oven (yet, currently working on a build) but I only have a single burner propane forge that barely reaches 2000 degrees on lower psi settings. My temps, though not accurate are usually within 50 degrees based on my heat gun. This is still not ideal, though I do beat the crap out of my blades after heat treat and tempering and file checking to make sure they're good. AEB-L also needs a cryo treatment after heat treat and before tempering.

None of that was info that you were actually asking, just wanted to forewarn you in case you weren't aware of what you're about to get into.

I'm sure someone with more experience can chime in and give you a better answer about using wood, or correct me if I'm wrong about dishwashers, that's just my 2 cents.

I would agree with Dustin on the dishwasher. Natural handle materials, even stabilized wood, should not be put in a dishwasher. The heat and prolonged exposure to water are never good companions with natural materials or with the commercially available epoxies we use. All of my knives come with a printed page of Care and maintenance instructions that contain the following:

Always hand wash and dry the blade after each use. Do not put it in the dishwasher. The handle is natural wood and cannot take the prolonged exposure to hot water and harsh detergents in most dishwashers.

That being said, I do know that some people use synthetic materials, like micarta, and have said they do not experience damage from a dishwasher, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Aeb-l will rust over time. Also there is no reason to put any hand made knife in a dish washer. Only takes 1min to wash it by hand, dry it, and put it away till next time.

I applaud you wanting to make knives for the women in your family Kevin, however as has been said, knives are not dishwasher safe and you really cannot make them dishwasher safe. Just show them how to hand wash and dry them. No dishwashers for knives. On to the AEB-L steel, not the best for forging. It will air harden and has a narrow forging range, very narrow. Can you forge it, yes, should you, not really. AEB-l really needs to be heat treated in a heat treating oven and benefits from a cryogenic treatment.

Brion

I have forged AEB-L it is fussy and feels like hitting a brick.The post forging heat treat is difficult as is finding information on normalizing and refining grain. the hardening is not possible to do properly with a out a kiln. I find the Nitro-v to be a easier forging steel, thought he heat treat is still complex.

No coating or treatment will protect wood from a dish washer, in fact no handle scales will hold up for long as the glue join will ALLWAYS fail and the handle will separate.

that said I have made several designs in an attempting to make a dish washer safe design. the most success full was an all steel parring knife i made for my wife out of nitro-v it has had a small amount of rust form in the forged areas but other wise has been unchanged in the year or so that she has had it.the other was a cast in place plastic handle , this seems a good avenue to pursue as the one handle I managed to get made has held up well and has not degraded in the washer. how ever the molds and a pain and expensive to produce, the food safe plastics have complex and time consuming cure cycles and require casting under pressure.

MP

The reason i was hoping for Dishwasher safe is AEB-L really holds its edge very well i made the attached blade for my mother last Christmas and I use it quite often, however, i have only had to sharpen it 3 times and i have used it to turn whole raw roasts into stew meat. however since i do not want to use micaria and G10 (as i do not have enough) i will inform them that its hand wash only. Note: this is a picture of the blade after i finished mounting it i cant find it at this time.

Dustin Serpa: Actually acording to NJSB's provided HT data your its better to temper then cryo. it takes about 3 days for stainless steel's to fully 'stabilize' so even with temper its still somewhat unstable. (someone please check my work here as i am not in mood to crack open my copy of Verhoven to confirm) however i both do not know were to get dry ice and do not really need the extra 3 RW hardness the cryo will get me. LINK: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0_bM1je-gJhMmRXOHpCTlVMN3diYlp6VHQ2RV9BcW5YZGJV/view

Brion Tomberlin: I am likely one of the few people who actually attempted to forge Cast Iron. mainly because I just wanted to see if it could be done which it can, however, it is extremely hard to move and behaves like wrought iron and i managed to draw a piece of square cast somewhat flat a couple of times (did not have enough to make a blade from it). so after forging cast iron nothing really feels hard to move anymore.

|quoted:

I have forged AEB-L it is fussy and feels like hitting a brick.The post forging heat treat is difficult as is finding information on normalizing and refining grain. the hardening is not possible to do properly with a out a kiln. I find the Nitro-v to be a easier forging steel, thought he heat treat is still complex.

No coating or treatment will protect wood from a dish washer, in fact no handle scales will hold up for long as the glue join will ALLWAYS fail and the handle will separate.

that said I have made several designs in an attempting to make a dish washer safe design. the most success full was an all steel parring knife i made for my wife out of nitro-v it has had a small amount of rust form in the forged areas but other wise has been unchanged in the year or so that she has had it.the other was a cast in place plastic handle , this seems a good avenue to pursue as the one handle I managed to get made has held up well and has not degraded in the washer. how ever the molds and a pain and expensive to produce, the food safe plastics have complex and time consuming cure cycles and require casting under pressure.

MP

the reason i am sharing this blade here is because for the most part its all held together by peeing riveting the 14 pins the only use of glue was because i could not drill another hole in this steel to attach the bolster with a pin. Its gone thre the dishwasher quite a few times its still nice and tight thanks to the mechanical connections.

I am glad you find AEB-l to have good edge holding, but i think you are misunderstanding NJSB spec sheet. 1st the equalizing at 1500 is very important, as is the temp and TIME at hardening, as in over shooting by 100 deg will ruin the steel. 2nd Cryo in not 100% needed though is it recommended. more so if the hardening is sketchy. 3rd you have no way to normalize or reduce the grain size from forging. this is not any thing like carbon steel, recommended to me was a LONG soak (30-45 min) at 1300 degf this can not be done reliably in a forge with out a digital controller. if you managed to build carbides in forging them this may or may not break them up, A higher temp cycle may be needed to do that. this is not a simple steel to heat treat.

will it harden from a forge .. sort of. not well or reliable but yes, it will "harden" straight from forging. not something i would want to count on even for a family member.

I recommend if you're going to work with AEB-l send it out for heat treat or get the equipment needed to heat treat it properly.

MP

|quoted:

I am glad you find AEB-l to have good edge holding, but i think you are misunderstanding NJSB spec sheet. 1st the equalizing at 1500 is very important, as is the temp and TIME at hardening, as in over shooting by 100 deg will ruin the steel. 2nd Cryo in not 100% needed though is it recommended. more so if the hardening is sketchy. 3rd you have no way to normalize or reduce the grain size from forging. this is not any thing like carbon steel, recommended to me was a LONG soak (30-45 min) at 1300 degf this can not be done reliably in a forge with out a digital controller. if you managed to build carbides in forging them this may or may not break them up, A higher temp cycle may be needed to do that. this is not a simple steel to heat treat.

will it harden from a forge .. sort of. not well or reliable but yes, it will "harden" straight from forging. not something i would want to count on even for a family member.

I recommend if you're going to work with AEB-l send it out for heat treat or get the equipment needed to heat treat it properly.

MP

Now this one has a few more questions i was planning to apply clay after doing 4 rounds of thermal cycling then apply clay before Austenizing it and quench it in oil as that's what I did with the one above...and I suck at blue backing blades and also blueing stainless can causes k carbides to form. However, i, fortunately, have a second smaller width bar of this material that I can make some test pieces out of to make sure I get the material hardened right with no cracking. well, I do not have a temperature gauge other than hot metal in a forge. however, I run a propane forge with a PSI gauge that is marked in increments of 5 and goes up to 30PSI, and also has some copper which melts at 1984F. so I can get a psi reading off the gauge at a temperature just lower then 1984F so is 34F over the temperature with a somewhat shorter soak time going to be as devistating to the integrity of the steel when quenched?I melted a copper tubing kit for a fridge water dispenser over the summer using my forge and managed to get the copper hot enough to melt in the forge then instantly solidify after pulling it out so I can carefully take it from copper melting to just under copper melting point with some accuracy. so i can get it very close to that 1950F, and it is several steps to the quench oil so it will have cooled a bit in the few seconds it takes me to get to my oil.

PS: also do you let stanless cool to normal quenching tempratures after getting it hot or do you quench it at that 1950F?

Kevin applying clay will do nothing with this steel. You have to bring it to 1500 and hold at that temp for 15 minutes, then ramp as fast as possible to 1950 and hold for 15 minutes. It is a deep hardening steel the clay is not needed. This is a different animal from regular carbon steel. You will have a very hard time reliably heat treating this steel in a forge. Like Matthew, I recommend sending it out for heat treating if you do not have a heat treat oven. You do not let it cool to 1500 before quenching, you quench at 1950 either in air or oil and then a cryo treatment is recommended, usually after the first temper cycle.

Brion

how are you thermo-cycleing? if you are treating it like carbon steel you may have damaged the AEB-l and done nothing positive for it. AEB-l is air hardening, clay is both not necessary and will lead to a reduction on toughness. you also never want to partly harden any stainless, harden-able stainless steels loose rust resistance when annealed.

I an 100% guarantee that you will not be able to hold temp in any forge well enough to heat threat this. yes over shooting by as little at 25deg will produce poor results, cycling as you describe will give poor results even with shorter soak times.

I see this idea all the time of i let it cool to the right temp then quench.. or as you stated " it is several steps to the quench oil so it will have cooled a bit in the few seconds it takes me to get to my oil." that is not how it works.. once removed form the heat that is the moment the quench starts. If a particular steel needs to harden from 1450 and quench in 7 secs then that starts as soon as the steel is no longer being heated. That means that is you heat it to 1650 wait 2 seconds to drop to 1450 then quench and it takes 6 seconds in the oil you quenched from 1650 in 8sec.

yes you quench from 1950, that is the austenizing temp. Honestly that you ask this tells me you are not prepared to heat treat this steel.

again i recommend sending it out.

MP

|quoted:

how are you thermo-cycleing? if you are treating it like carbon steel you may have damaged the AEB-l and done nothing positive for it. AEB-l is air hardening, clay is both not necessary and will lead to a reduction on toughness. you also never want to partly harden any stainless, harden-able stainless steels loose rust resistance when annealed.

I an 100% guarantee that you will not be able to hold temp in any forge well enough to heat threat this. yes over shooting by as little at 25deg will produce poor results, cycling as you describe will give poor results even with shorter soak times.

I see this idea all the time of i let it cool to the right temp then quench.. or as you stated " it is several steps to the quench oil so it will have cooled a bit in the few seconds it takes me to get to my oil." that is not how it works.. once removed form the heat that is the moment the quench starts. If a particular steel needs to harden from 1450 and quench in 7 secs then that starts as soon as the steel is no longer being heated. That means that is you heat it to 1650 wait 2 seconds to drop to 1450 then quench and it takes 6 seconds in the oil you quenched from 1650 in 8sec.

yes you quench from 1950, that is the austenizing temp. Honestly that you ask this tells me you are not prepared to heat treat this steel.

again i recommend sending it out.

MP

Thank you for answering I asked to ensure make sure i understood the HT info provided by NJSB as i am still learning my metallurgy. I am asking more questions so i can better understand the steel. i was planing to give it a soak at the recommended pre soak time and then letting them cool i do it 4 times for both 10xx series and w2. I am challenging your opinion about the forge because i have used an older version of one of these http://www.atlasknife.com/product/atlas-mini-forge-v2-stainless/ to soak W2 at hardening temprature for 10 min. How does the air hardening on this steel, does it get fully hard or does it get to hard to drill threw?

also, I am not forging them a hunter utility knife I am making them chefs knives and in my mind, a chef's knife has far different requirements then the latter. honestly, I just ordered the DVD on knife design as it's hard to find literature on how how to desing a blade for a specific task other than just copy what's on the market.