You can purchase a cheap toaster oven at Goodwill or a garage sale for around $10-$15 bucks. The temp wont be accurate but test after you temper. Once you get it set right for 5160, leave the temp control alone for future tempering.

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You can purchase a cheap toaster oven at Goodwill or a garage sale for around $10-$15 bucks. The temp wont be accurate but test after you temper. Once you get it set right for 5160, leave the temp control alone for future tempering.

I meant that I didn't have a high temp oven for doing a proper anneal--reducing temps super slowly over several hours. For the "anneal" I put the blade in the forge when I shut it down and let it cool slowly...it kind of works, but not as good as a high temp oven, I'm sure.

For tempering I just use my kitchen oven right now--seems to work alright. I hope to give LT salts a try in the near future. From what I understand, with the salts you need less soak time since the steel gets up to temp almost immediately. You can probably use higher temps as well, since you have more control over temp and time at temp. Is 20 minutes at 375 F a good starting point for salts?

My main question for this thread concerns the heat cycling procedure (unless someone spots something wrong in other parts of this protocol). I'm currently using a charcoal forge, and my temperature control (eye) is getting better...and I should be building a propane forge built this summer (and possibly a salt pot, if I stay focused). I'm interested in making choppers with a spring back, so that's why I'm going with a full quench and then drawing the spine. I've heard that triple quenching at hardening is worthwhile, but I'm hoping to avoid that with good thermal cycling before grinding, since quenching after all that grinding and polishing is so stressful for me. At hardening, I'd rather just do it right once (which HT salts should help a lot with, since it will allow me to soak longer).

Is my thermal cycling overkill? Are my temps too high?

Any advice is welcome.

Steve

Steve, I use a gas forge, but it is very controllable, and I am very familiar with it. That being said, I do normalizing right after forging. Heat to 1600 and cool in air until black, then do one at 1500 and air cool until black, then a final at 1300 and into vermiculite. I will then grind to 120 grit and do a stress relieve at 1250 to 1300 and air cool. Then quench at 1500, with a soak time of two to five minutes, in 100 to 120 canola oil. Peanut oil will work also. I then clean with an A160 trizact belt and into the oven. Tempering is at 400 for two hours, allow to cool, and two more hours at 400. I then do a clean up grind at 120 grit and draw the spine in a water bath with an adjustable limiting plate. I draw a minimum of two times, most of the time three. I also draw the tang. Then I go on and grind to 400 grit and sharpen and test the edge. Chipping means up the tempering by 25 degrees and test again. Kind of caveman, but it works for me.

Good luck

Brion

|quoted:

Steve, I use a gas forge, but it is very controllable, and I am very familiar with it. That being said, I do normalizing right after forging. Heat to 1600 and cool in air until black, then do one at 1500 and air cool until black, then a final at 1300 and into vermiculite. I will then grind to 120 grit and do a stress relieve at 1250 to 1300 and air cool. Then quench at 1500, with a soak time of two to five minutes, in 100 to 120 canola oil. Peanut oil will work also. I then clean with an A160 trizact belt and into the oven. Tempering is at 400 for two hours, allow to cool, and two more hours at 400. I then do a clean up grind at 120 grit and draw the spine in a water bath with an adjustable limiting plate. I draw a minimum of two times, most of the time three. I also draw the tang. Then I go on and grind to 400 grit and sharpen and test the edge. Chipping means up the tempering by 25 degrees and test again. Kind of caveman, but it works for me.

Good luck

Brion

Brion,

Thanks for responding. Your procedure is much more straight-forward than mine--I think I complicated things by combining several different protocols I found on this forum and others. I'll give your method a try!

Steve

Steve,

Brion's method is pretty much what we were taught in the Intro Class I attended in April. Eight out of nine knives passed. One knife fractured on the edge during the bending. The MS felt the student didn't draw the spine far enough toward the point or half way through the blade. I've been using this method with 5160 since the school. Working well for me.

Bob

Bob,

Excellent. I still haven't been able to attend a basics class, but what Brion described matched very closely what I've seen. For some reason I like to make things more complicated than they need to be.

With 5160, is there any reason to consider quenching during heat cycling? I understand that with 1084 a quench can help refine the grain, but is this something that works well with 5160?

Steve

Steve,

That was never suggested by the MS's that taught us for any of the common types of blade steels we use. We were told to forge, normalize three times allowing the blade to go black between each heat, grind 36 and 60 grit, one heat treat with a full quench, check the edge with a new file, three oven tempers at 375 to 400 degrees for one hour each with a file check after each cycle when the blade cooled off, grind with 120 being careful not to over heat the blade. We then used either a propane or oxy/acet torch to draw the tang from the tip to 1/2 way through the ricasso being careful to make sure we stopped as the ricasso turned blue at the 1/2 way mark. We had a wet rag wrapped around the ricasso and blade as we. Drew the tang. Next we drew the spine three times with about 1/4 of the blade in a water trough/bath, while we had a wet paper towel wrapped around the last couple of inches to prevent making the point to soft. We drew it to blue 1/2 way to the edge cooling in the water and grinding the color away each time. Next we did our final grinding and convexed the edge using 400 Jflex. Once we got a good wire burr established, we took the edge razor sharp using either the buffer or a leather strop. We chopped a little and checked the edge for rolling, if it did, back to the grinder at 400 and then strop. Only a couple of the blades had any edge issues and were easily corrected.

Having severe hearing loss, and wearing ear plugs to boot, I did not hear Tim yelling stop while I continued to bend my blade well past 90 degrees without any issues. I'll post some pics later as I don't know how to do them on this iPad.

Bob

Steve,

Here are three pics of my bend test and the blade afterwards. It sprang back nicely.

Bob

Steve, contrary to other opinions, I do not see the need for multiple quenches with 5160 or 1084. If the normalizing was done correctly the grain should be fine. The only reason would be if the blade did not get hard the first time. I do sometimes do a second quench, but that is with W2 or 1095, and I do not like the hamon I got.

Brion

Robert, looks like you had the Jim and Tim class. Good bend.

Brion

Brion,

Yes indeed! They worked well together. We had a blast. Highly recommend the class. Well worth the time effort and expense. Looking forward to taking more classes in the future. Also planning on attending some Hammer Ins this fall and next spring.

Bob

I'll second what Brion said. My normalization process is pretty much the same. I've snapped a lot of blades to check the grain structure...this method works. Don't be afraid to check yourself by breaking one.

Ben