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Right. There are some who use quenchants that are faster than necessary, and certainly a little pearlit in the spine isnt a real concern. However there are those that usea quenchant that is too slow for the sake of not overstressing the steel, and that causes its own problems, and excessive...

I think microstructure is the primary concern, as that dictates the properties.

I cant say I see it as a trend, but its worth discussing. The quench needs to be just fast enough to miss the undesirable phases, in our case typically pearlite and bainite.

It's M2. Less than 1050 F won't do me any good. It is surprisingly tough at such a hardness. I made a test blade of it a couple years ago (puukko style) and dug a hole through a 1x6 and was able to baton with it using a hammer and it didn't break, but it did dent the hammer face. That piece...

My steel is 64 to 66 now, and I really have no way to soften it.

Do nakiri and usuba use the same high hardness steel as other Japanese style blades?

The steel is already hardened. Zknives is my main source of info. I was under the impression a usuba was a general use knife, not specialized for katsuramuki. My steel is 3/32" thick, but a full flat grind nakiri isnt an option. Whatever it ends up being it will be saber/partial height grinds.

I have a kurimuki I'm working on with that backbevel. If that works I'll try it with a usuba.

Is there such an animal? I want to try one but dont have the gear for a proper hollow relief on the back. Is a 2° back bevel an acceptable alternative, or a full double grind, n/either one?

The basic procedure is in Verhoeven's section on stainless in his book for bladesmiths. It applies to any stainless, but some work better than others, and he really likes AEB-L/13c26. He basically says you can get pretty good control over retained austenite by adjusting the austenization...

If you want a stainless to avoid cryo and cold, might I suggest 13c26 or AEB-L. There is a procedure out there to minimzethe need for cold through control of austenization temperatures and multiple tempering. If you're sending it out, just get the whole shebang, but if diy, its worth looking...

We must all be talking about different types of burrs. I've never been able to strop off a burr on leather unless it was power stropping on the 1x30. All I do is scratch up my leather. I've also never been able to satisfactorily remove a burr drawing through wood. It's always still there.

I was trying to keep things perhaps a little too simple. When I say adequate cooling speed, I mean fast enough to miss the pearlite high temperature area on the CT diagram, or anything else below it except martensite. Naturally, that means "adequate" for 1095 is complete overkill for A2...

When power sharpening, I remove the burr at the end. When hand sharpening, I remove it on the coarse and medium stones, then take care not to reform it on fine and extra fine.

I deburr with a power stropping with leather on my belt sander when power sharpening. When hand sharpening I do a couple of LIGHT passes on the medium stone (1000 water stone or medium Sharpmaker) at double my normal sharpening angle.

I was looking over some threads and came across a topic that might be good to discuss. Some posts recently led me to believe that there are some new comers who believe that quenching steel faster will lead to a higher hardness and that even something like 1018 low carbon steel could be...

I must say, I don't really think that uneven cooling is that much of an issue for knives, especially with all the plate quenching, air hardening, and oil quenching going on nowadays. The greatest common spine thickness is about 1/4". Based on work by Verhoeven, we know that the cooling speed...

I think most heat treatments are chosen for the edge. When we talk about hardness, carbide size, grain size, edge stability, etc., those are all chosen for the edge. They don't hurt the spine, especially in a pure cutting knife, but they are chosen to give the edge the desired properties...

There are many ways to edge quench. My comments about thermal gradients are mostly directed at heatng all or a portion of the blade, then quenching a narrower section. As a heat treating method, it is the only way to accomplish some goals. However, in the context of this thread, it cannot...

It would take a little investigation to see whether the extra heat in the spine would autotemper or just slow cooling down. If the latter, which I think is likely, it could have an effect on the purpose of the quench, ie. hardening. A great deal of the stress of quenching steel comes from the...