This is case hardening, still used for screw heads, gun parts etc. It’s a very very fine layer of high carbon steel, useless for sword making, but maybe usefull for homemade files or short term use cutting tools, if you cook it for longer than 2 hours. If you want hardness, why temper it? Don’t cook it in the oven after quenching. If you want carburised steel by cementation, you need to cook it for 1 to 6 weeks depending on the thickness of the bar to make blister steel and gain 1% of carbon in your steel. If the steel is low in phosphorous, it becomes a good material for Huntsman crucible steel to homogenize it.
So I do a lot of tinkering in my spare time and I'm currently seeing if I can carburize a cold rolled steel rod to give a hydraulic press I'm making just a little bit more rigidity. I was going to school for science of biology as a cookie cutter pre-med route and I can see you are not just doing this to prove to yourself but share your data with others. Thanks man that's what science is but I'd like to make some suggestions should you consider reconducting this experiment. Take your control and change only one variable per experiment. That means, salt or flour, clay for both or none at all, heating both for two hours regardless if one is to attempt to absorb carbon or not. As it stands was it the sodium or the chloride from the salt, was the flour enough of a carbon source since it also is a carbon based life, was there remaining water from the clay that allowed hydrogen to effect the iron, and the list is endless. I think we know where most of the carbon is located within the ingredients but one things I've learned is science is a bureaucracy. No matter how redundant it may seem adding steps to isolate the sole cause of the hardening or if your lucky/unlucky you find adding salt alone decreased hardness but with clay it overall increased. Just making something up at the end to illustrate sometimes data just raises more variables to try, more questions, and most importantly another failed hypothesis allowing us to try try again. I'm not a "scientist" hell I dropped out before finishing my bachelor's degree but during the time I was working on getting paper to say I'm not big dumb I wrote many "scientific research papers" hypothesis, methods and materials, ect ect. I think you may benefit from refreshing yourself with the scientific method and applying it to your work. I hope that was helpful and came out correct. Oh lastly there's hardness testing methods that are cheap and more reliable than a file of unknown sharpness and pressure (precisely) applied. One I'm thinking of is a file set of varying hardness to get a number to log. Not to say what your did clearly worked the file cut half as deep so I am impressed. Anyways, I just wanted to add that Incase it may be helpful with your future endeavors.
Good ideas. As a further experiment I wanted to try the strike test with a 1080 steel knife we made...but a couple of things held me back: 1. I didnt want to ruin the knife (just in case the carburized steel was harder) 2. the knife was only about 4mm flat bar, while the carburized material was about 8mm
Interesting from a metalurgy perspective but considering you can get a piece of proper blade steel of guaranteed composition (1084) that is 38x3.5x1000mm long for $30 plus postage (in Australia) saving $10 to add several hours to the process seems like a lot of effort to go to for a questionable result! It would be interesting to hardness test it and then grind or machine down 0.1mm at a time and keep testing it to see how deep the hardening goes. If it is for a working blade, you want to be able to sharpen it several times without exposing the soft core. If price and availability of steel is an issue, just get an old trailer spring from a wrecker.
Thanks Ben. Good points made. The 6mm thick billets on NordicEdge were $80 when I embarked on this experiment. I notice they are now on sale at $60. At that price I would have used that steel and saved the extra effort. However for anyone who has some old rebar or scrap metal at home (which is effectively free) this now presents a useful option. And while I would love to try to belt out my own excalibur from a leafspring, I unfortunately do not have an anvil.
I expect the flour burns up to produce more carbon adjacent to the steel inside the clay wrap. And it holds everything together as a paste at the start. I am not sure of the role of the salt - I took that mix from another video online.
I've ALSO _seen_ the same "Carbon-paste & Steel "wrapped in STEEL FOIL to keep oxygen away just as its used in Forge-Welding Stainless Steel . This allows the INITIAL PRESS to take place with the WRAPPED coupon , allowing a greater amount of carbon uptake . Using the clay WITH the CARBON source, and THEN Damascus-layering it with the NON-Carbon PRE-treated steel , SHOULD make for an INTERESTING final result 👍! Now THAT is something I'd LIKE to _see_ if you're interested in ideas for "possible content" 👍! Enjoyed the Vid ! THANKS! - Chuck .
It's more of a trade knife, a Indians trade . Junk metal caseharden . That is why the natives only sharpen there knife on one side. As the core was soft junk iron. Say About 1820s blacksmithing
With all due respect, you are repeating incorrect conclusions about historical Damascus steel. It was a crucible steel and was most definitely NOT case hardened as you stated. The misconception you are spreading was likely caused by examination of the depth of hardness by "experts" who don't know that low alloy steels are shallow hardening and will appear case hardened after quenching, especially if they were only edge quenched, partially quenched, or differentially hardened. The Vanadium content of historical Damascus lends greatly to the properties that create this misconception... and I assure you, it's a misconception. And fyi, never swirl a blade like that when you quench: you only worsened the pockets of incomplete quenching around the vapor jacket when you did that; instead, do a casual stab and retract inside the quench, back and forth or up and down in the quenchant to keep oil on the surface of both sides evenly throughout the hardening curve time.
Actually, what I said was "This was part of the process used to make Damascus steel" - meaning carburizing. According to Wikipedia, carburizing of the Wootz steel ingots used to make Damascus blades was done using woody biomass and leaves. Thanks for the advise on quenching.
@@leemelbourne3297 Even if you try to reframe your statement that way, it won't make sense, because they didn't start with a Wootz steel ingot and then carburize it, especially not in the manner you used: they started with iron, biomass, and sand, and created the steel ingot from them, carborizing the iron into steel in the crucible, with the sand on top to form glass during the burn, so at the very least you badly misspoke, giving the impression that you vaguely know something about it, but just enough to get yourself in trouble, as my dad used to say, lol. And you're welcome. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, or whatever applies, sir. :)
@@leemelbourne3297 To clarify my reply: Wootz was created in a crucible, liquifying the Iron and the source(s) of Carbon... not adding the Carbon by carburizing diffusion as you stated (at the very least by direct implication if not explicitly)... a completely different process, so your statement was incorrect because that wasn't part of the process of making Wootz. And in order to reframe your statement to a generalization about all processes of adding Carbon, then it applies to every type of steel ever made, so it wouldn't make sense to single out Wootz... unless you were under the mistaken impression (as nearly EVERYONE who talks about Wootz is) that it was made by the process you were discussing. If you read/watch/hear ten thousand things about Wootz from self-proclaimed experts, you'll be lucky to hear five correct things... and the most popular things that get spread are the most incorrect.
This is case hardening, still used for screw heads, gun parts etc. It’s a very very fine layer of high carbon steel, useless for sword making, but maybe usefull for homemade files or short term use cutting tools, if you cook it for longer than 2 hours. If you want hardness, why temper it? Don’t cook it in the oven after quenching. If you want carburised steel by cementation, you need to cook it for 1 to 6 weeks depending on the thickness of the bar to make blister steel and gain 1% of carbon in your steel. If the steel is low in phosphorous, it becomes a good material for Huntsman crucible steel to homogenize it.
Were you following Clickspring’s method? Looks similar to the recipe he used. I gave it a go on a small jewellery hammer I made, worked nicely.
The salt decreases the melting point.
So I do a lot of tinkering in my spare time and I'm currently seeing if I can carburize a cold rolled steel rod to give a hydraulic press I'm making just a little bit more rigidity. I was going to school for science of biology as a cookie cutter pre-med route and I can see you are not just doing this to prove to yourself but share your data with others. Thanks man that's what science is but I'd like to make some suggestions should you consider reconducting this experiment. Take your control and change only one variable per experiment. That means, salt or flour, clay for both or none at all, heating both for two hours regardless if one is to attempt to absorb carbon or not. As it stands was it the sodium or the chloride from the salt, was the flour enough of a carbon source since it also is a carbon based life, was there remaining water from the clay that allowed hydrogen to effect the iron, and the list is endless. I think we know where most of the carbon is located within the ingredients but one things I've learned is science is a bureaucracy. No matter how redundant it may seem adding steps to isolate the sole cause of the hardening or if your lucky/unlucky you find adding salt alone decreased hardness but with clay it overall increased. Just making something up at the end to illustrate sometimes data just raises more variables to try, more questions, and most importantly another failed hypothesis allowing us to try try again. I'm not a "scientist" hell I dropped out before finishing my bachelor's degree but during the time I was working on getting paper to say I'm not big dumb I wrote many "scientific research papers" hypothesis, methods and materials, ect ect. I think you may benefit from refreshing yourself with the scientific method and applying it to your work. I hope that was helpful and came out correct. Oh lastly there's hardness testing methods that are cheap and more reliable than a file of unknown sharpness and pressure (precisely) applied. One I'm thinking of is a file set of varying hardness to get a number to log. Not to say what your did clearly worked the file cut half as deep so I am impressed. Anyways, I just wanted to add that Incase it may be helpful with your future endeavors.
Good ideas. As a further experiment I wanted to try the strike test with a 1080 steel knife we made...but a couple of things held me back:
1. I didnt want to ruin the knife (just in case the carburized steel was harder)
2. the knife was only about 4mm flat bar, while the carburized material was about 8mm
I LOVE IT!!! THANK YOU for taking the time for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Always informative no matter you are demonstrating Lee 👍
Cheers
Rob
LOL. Thanks very much Rob.
Great stuff, thanks❤
Now, if we can just implement this strengthening process, on the family car.
Very informative ❤❤
Super informative thank you
Interesting from a metalurgy perspective but considering you can get a piece of proper blade steel of guaranteed composition (1084) that is 38x3.5x1000mm long for $30 plus postage (in Australia) saving $10 to add several hours to the process seems like a lot of effort to go to for a questionable result! It would be interesting to hardness test it and then grind or machine down 0.1mm at a time and keep testing it to see how deep the hardening goes. If it is for a working blade, you want to be able to sharpen it several times without exposing the soft core. If price and availability of steel is an issue, just get an old trailer spring from a wrecker.
Thanks Ben. Good points made. The 6mm thick billets on NordicEdge were $80 when I embarked on this experiment. I notice they are now on sale at $60. At that price I would have used that steel and saved the extra effort. However for anyone who has some old rebar or scrap metal at home (which is effectively free) this now presents a useful option. And while I would love to try to belt out my own excalibur from a leafspring, I unfortunately do not have an anvil.
On the expense of high carbon steel, plain high carbon steels are inexpensive, if you can find the right supplier. Tool steel is still costly.
LIKE !
How the salt and flour helping steel to get more carbon ?
I expect the flour burns up to produce more carbon adjacent to the steel inside the clay wrap. And it holds everything together as a paste at the start. I am not sure of the role of the salt - I took that mix from another video online.
and use up oxygen?@@leemelbourne3297
I've ALSO _seen_ the same "Carbon-paste & Steel "wrapped in STEEL FOIL to keep oxygen away just as its used in Forge-Welding Stainless Steel . This allows the INITIAL PRESS to take place with the WRAPPED coupon , allowing a greater amount of carbon uptake .
Using the clay WITH the CARBON source, and THEN Damascus-layering it with the NON-Carbon PRE-treated steel , SHOULD make for an INTERESTING final result 👍!
Now THAT is something I'd LIKE to _see_ if you're interested in ideas for
"possible content" 👍!
Enjoyed the Vid !
THANKS! -
Chuck .
can this be done with 300 series stainless?
Good question. From this document I found it seems you can: www.worldstainless.org/Files/issf/non-image-files/PDF/Euro_Inox/Surface_Hardening_EN.pdf
Mantab 👍👍 from indonesia 👍
It's more of a trade knife, a Indians trade . Junk metal caseharden . That is why the natives only sharpen there knife on one side. As the core was soft junk iron. Say About 1820s blacksmithing
With all due respect, you are repeating incorrect conclusions about historical Damascus steel. It was a crucible steel and was most definitely NOT case hardened as you stated. The misconception you are spreading was likely caused by examination of the depth of hardness by "experts" who don't know that low alloy steels are shallow hardening and will appear case hardened after quenching, especially if they were only edge quenched, partially quenched, or differentially hardened. The Vanadium content of historical Damascus lends greatly to the properties that create this misconception... and I assure you, it's a misconception. And fyi, never swirl a blade like that when you quench: you only worsened the pockets of incomplete quenching around the vapor jacket when you did that; instead, do a casual stab and retract inside the quench, back and forth or up and down in the quenchant to keep oil on the surface of both sides evenly throughout the hardening curve time.
Actually, what I said was "This was part of the process used to make Damascus steel" - meaning carburizing. According to Wikipedia, carburizing of the Wootz steel ingots used to make Damascus blades was done using woody biomass and leaves.
Thanks for the advise on quenching.
@@leemelbourne3297 Even if you try to reframe your statement that way, it won't make sense, because they didn't start with a Wootz steel ingot and then carburize it, especially not in the manner you used: they started with iron, biomass, and sand, and created the steel ingot from them, carborizing the iron into steel in the crucible, with the sand on top to form glass during the burn, so at the very least you badly misspoke, giving the impression that you vaguely know something about it, but just enough to get yourself in trouble, as my dad used to say, lol. And you're welcome. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, or whatever applies, sir. :)
*carburizing*
@@leemelbourne3297 To clarify my reply: Wootz was created in a crucible, liquifying the Iron and the source(s) of Carbon... not adding the Carbon by carburizing diffusion as you stated (at the very least by direct implication if not explicitly)... a completely different process, so your statement was incorrect because that wasn't part of the process of making Wootz. And in order to reframe your statement to a generalization about all processes of adding Carbon, then it applies to every type of steel ever made, so it wouldn't make sense to single out Wootz... unless you were under the mistaken impression (as nearly EVERYONE who talks about Wootz is) that it was made by the process you were discussing. If you read/watch/hear ten thousand things about Wootz from self-proclaimed experts, you'll be lucky to hear five correct things... and the most popular things that get spread are the most incorrect.
@@stevealford230 Chill dude. Just quoting from here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel