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I hammered cold steel for 2 years before a guy at the Ohio forge days asked why my edges kept chipping
Nobody in my first group ever said a word about grain growth, so I just heated till it looked orange and got to work. Then last spring I drove out to a hammer-in near Wooster and watched a guy named Pete normalize a 1084 blade three full times before his quench. I tried it on my next four knives and the edge on my main user has held up through a whole deer season without a single chip. Now I soak my heats at a lower color and stop at 1550 instead of pushing it white. It takes me almost twice as long per blade but I stopped throwing away finished knives. How do you all judge your soak temps without a fancy kiln setup?
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taylor95727d ago
I heard a guy on a podcast say you can use the curie point as a cheat, when the steel stops sticking to a magnet you know you're around 1414 and that's your signal to watch color close from there. I've been doing the magnet thing on my 1084 and 5160 since February and it keeps me from over soaking, though it gets tricky on the second and third normalizing passes when everything looks the same shade. Still saving up for a thermocouple setup but the magnet plus dim shop lights has cut my chipping way down.
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