My first try with 1095 and differential hardening

Lerch

Lerch

Well-Known Member
I got in my 1095 steel from Aldo on thursday and after being too busy for most of the weekend i finally got a chance to give this a try. I am using Satanite clay and Parks 50 quench oil. I heated the quench oil in a roaster oven to right at 100deg. I ground the steel and then normalized it as was suggested i do, to do this heated the ground blade to 1450deg once and immediatly air cooled until the blade showed no "heat color" I then repeated this process 2 more times at 1425deg and then cooled the blade to hand temp in air. I then coated the blade with satanite like i saw in Mr. Fowlers tutorial.

Here is the base coat on the blade, this is just a extreemely thin coat over the entire blade
firstcoat.jpg


Here is a pic of the top layer of clay, this is right about 1/16" thick
toplayer.jpg


Here is a side view of the knife looking down on the spine. Its 1/8" steel to give you a idea of the thickness of the clay
sideview.jpg


So all goes as planned at this point and since i know at some point i read that at least one person had success putting the knife in the oven with the clay not fully dry i decided to give it a whirl. Not so good!! lol, the clay blew off the sides when the oven hit 700deg, here is a pic of the mess
afterexplosion.jpg


So i re did everything and dried the clay in my oven as it cooled down with the door open, about 200-300deg and falling quickly. this time the clay held and i heated the blade at 1450deg for a 5 min soak time and then quenched in the oil. Now when i placed the blade in the quench ( i held the tang out until it went colorless) the satanite was holding on to the blade fine, but at some point when i placed the tang in the oil and when i took the whole thing out the clay came off in perfect sheets on both sides of the blade.

Here is a pic of both sides of the blade after i pulled it out of the oil .
afterHT.jpg

aferHT2.jpg


and here is a pic of one of the sides of clay that came off
slabofclay.jpg


Well the knife is in the oven now tempering at 400deg for the next 2 hrs. So like i said this is my first try at this and i wont know for sure if i have good tempering lines at least until tomorrow, im curious if any thinks i did anything in particular wrong?? the clay shearing off the sides was a surprise but like i said it held on fine when i was quenching the blade so i would hope that the whole process worked.


thanks
steve
 
Feel good to have it done? Show us the pics when you have it sanded out and etched. It should be interesting.

Doug
 
well no good news as of yet.

well i tempered it at once cycle for 400deg at 2hrs. i was being impatient so i decided to go ahead and sand her down a bit and etch it to see what i had. so far i see no hamon line, nothing at all. this is etched for 20sec in one 16oz container of PCB Etchant and 3 12oz containers of Wal Mart purified bottled water.
DSC_0278.jpg


Okay so im lost and wondering what the heck i am doing wrong. The blade was sanded to 700grit before i HT'ed and i hit it again on the 700grit belt and then hand sanded lightly with 1000grit paper, i didnt really try to much at it with the 1000grit i just wanted to see what the etchant brought out.

please let me know ???

thanks
steve
 
I think you should sand it after the etch.
Maybe I'm looking at it wrong?? I'm sure some of these guys can help you out.

God bless,Keith
 
Everything looks good until the last pic.
I can still see either decarb or scale on the blade. You have to sand past that to clean steel. After temper cycle I go back to 220 grit and then etch for longer than 20 seconds, try at least a minute then wipe and try again for another minute till you see a hint of hamon. Between etches I also clean the blade with a scotchbrite pad. The hamon won't pop out at you most times, turn the blade in the light at different angles. Personally I wouldn't coat the bottom edge of the blade past your design in the satanite, it's always held the hamon low on the blade. When I stopped doing it, the hamon would follow just up under the clay line. You're jumping the gun going to higher grits before you know what you actually have on the blade.

Rudy
 
well i will take it back down to a larger grit first and try again.

When i normalized the blade i got a decent amount of black "scale" on the blade. I scrubbed this off in my sink before i applied the clay, but i did not sand it off. Would this be a issue????

thanks
steve
 
No, it shouln't be an issue but after tempering you should get the blade down to clean metal for the etch. To remove the scale, a couple minutes in white vinegar works wonders and sometimes reveals the hamon when you clean the blade.

Rudy
 
i will try the white vinager when i get home today. I just wondered about the scale being a issue with the way both sides of the clay slid off in whole sheets

guess we will see what we can see tonight!
 
The scale wouldn't affect heat transfer in the heat treat but there's no point in trying to etch the scale and decarb. That's why you need clean steel to etch your blade.

Rudy
 
i ran the knife over my grinder on my 700grit belt for a minute, i didnt try real hard at it , i mostly wanted to just knock off enough for me to see if i had a hamon or not. i guess i needed to do more, i will have a go at it with a 320grit belt later tonight
 
If you look at your last pic......
Everthing that looks like gray or black splotches has to be sanded off. It's either decarb or scale which will not let the etch do it's thing. On your next blade only sand to 220 grit and leave your edge at least .020 or more before heat treat. After temper go back to 220 grit to clean steel, then etch it. After you're satisfied with the results then you can run up the grits with reckless abandon. You're dealing with high carbon steel, not stainless which you can almost grind to finish before heat treat.

Rudy
 
Okay, makes more sense now, all my experince so far has been with stainless and yes i have been grinding it to pretty much finish before HT. I was under the impression that i would get a better hamon if i ground to around 800grit before HT, i wont do that again lol.

so much to learn :)

thanks
steve
 
You have to account for decarb/scale in carbon steels, that's why you give yourself wiggle room for your final grind(s). Also it's kind of a waste of time going to higher grits because you'll be regrinding anyway. Usually I can see a hamon at 220 grit after a dip in vinegar after HT. If the scale is still there, you're just about polishing it at 700 grit, it's pretty hard stuff.

Rudy
 
well this knife may be to thin then, i basically did it the same as i have done stainless, more to come though
 
OKay so after trick or treaters tonight i finally got a few minutes to run this blade on a 320grit belt. After finally being happy that i had all the decarb and whatever off (i finally had to use a 120grit belt since i dont have a 220 right now) i ran it in the ferric for 1 minute. I am amazed at the differance in working carbon steel and stainless, i realize i need to leave the carbon steel a lot thicker before i heat treat as i have to remove a decent amount of steel after HT. anyway here are the pics of the blade after grinding all the crap off, let me know if this is good enough
cleanedup2.jpg

cleanedup1.jpg


and here is the etched blade after 1 minute in ferric chloride and water solution
etched2.jpg

etched1.jpg


well i finally got a solid and pretty even looking etch but as far as i can see there is no temper lines. So im a little lost as to what to do now. I would really like to get this down on this knife before i move on to another one, could i anneal this blade and try again??? From what i was reading it looks like to anneal i would heat it to 1650deg and just let the oven cool slowly all night , would that work and then i could re do the HT ??

thanks
steve
 
Last edited:
That's clean steel Steve.
Before you do anything, try a couple passes with 400 grit then try a few etches for a couple minutes each. Clean the blade between etches with a scotchbrite pad. You may as well try it before another round in the oven, I'm concerned your blade will crack since it's so thin.

Rudy
 
well the second two pics are both after 1 one minute soak in the etchant. I will try to clean them off some tonight and try it again for a longer duration.
 
Okay well i tried again tonight with the original blade as you said Rudy and no luck, as best i can figure i must have done something wrong and there are no temper lines.

So i retried tonight with another smaller blade of 1095 that i was working on. I ground it to 320grit, normalized in 3 cycles, then ground off the scale from normalizing and applied the satanite clay, dried it and HT at 1450 for 5 min and quenched in Parks 50 that was about 110deg. This time one side of the clay fell off the blade when i dropped the whole knife in after the blade went to black heat, the other side slide off when i was washing the blade off. ITs tempering now in my oven at 400deg, im gonna finish 2 temper cycles and then grind it the rest of the way out like i would any other blade. I left this one at about .050" at the blade to account for the added removal after HT.

guess we will see what comes tomorrow. If im doing something wrong im still lost as to what it could be

thanks
steve
 
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