This is an old video looking at forgeside heat treating 1084. Eutectoid, low alloy steels like 1070-1084 can be heat treated quite successfully forgeside without temperature control as long as proper attention is paid to not overheating the steel during normalization or quench and providing a relatively low a quench heat while still reaching transformation temperatures. It's nerdy but I think everyone should do something like this in their own shop for each steel they forgeside heat treat.
awesome video, I follow larrin Thomas suggestions and I normalize 10xx steels 1 time, then do a fast det anneal by going into vermiculite from austenizing temp, then quench from non magnetic temp. grain size is usually super fine. I rarely heattreat in the forge anymore though.
we did this kind of thing in materials class back in Uni, though we cut and polished the samples with an etch before looking at them, lets you get a reall nice view of not only grain size, but the various phases, the grain boundaries and so on. if you want to nerd out more, try that next time, maybe?
Absolutely🤯 this is what makes a master. If you don't have a master smith to teach you you have to experiment untill you get it right. It's like remaking history. Well done 👏
A while ago I was forced to conclude that I needed an Evenheat to HT properly. I won't sell a knife that wasn't correctly heat treated according to the spec sheet. Thanks for your experiments!
Have you read Larrins book? With this being an old video is your process still the same? I did similar tests before reading Larrins book, and I think like many, have completely changed my process afterwards. I wish I could change some of my old videos since they aren't as accurate as they could be. But I think they still offer a good starting point and other relative information, so I left them up. Good Forge heat treating is way harder than it appears. Overheating is the main problem. And you really can't tell heat treatment quality unless you do both a snap test and hardness test. Since grain size isn't relative to hardness. Ill leave the forge heat treating to the experts and just punch some buttons. Too much ocd for me😂
Yes, much trickier than it looks. The smallest amount of overheating punishes.This video was before I stumbled across his website. I haven't read his book.
I did a follow up experiment where I simultaneously overheated two pieces of 1084 for the quench. I quenched one piece right away at a bright orange heat while I let the other piece air cool to red before quenching it. They both got hard to low 60s and both had garbage grain size but there was a slight advantage to the one that was air cooled to red. Which doesn't add any practical information, I just though it was interesting.
I got the book on your advising and now I keep 4 different quench media on hand. P50 is obviously the gold standard for fast quench oils, and AAA for medium... but I just got three gallons of "Quench10" that's supposed to be better than AAA and it has virtually no scaling, but I don't have a Rockwell tester, so I'd love to see a video on that stuff if you get a chance... between removing all the trees from your roof. :)
Double quench does increase toughness i.e grain size. have seen this at a commercial ,Q&T business that does wear and armour plate hard to see in actual measurable grain size (optical microscopy) but it can be seen in charpy impact test results. It's not massive. The bigger issue is that as you have said is poor temp control causes excessive gain growth. The more steps the bigger risk to have over temperature in a normal forge
I was given a forge only treating method that works really well with 80CrV2. normalize, quench (using alloy recommended temp rage), thermal cycle (3x non magnetic air cool), requench tempered martensite, temper. grain looks like glass by eye on the break. from what I've learned you should expect larger grain from a normalization. non-magnetic Thermal cycling in air is meant to reduce grain size which in turn improves the strength of the hardened crystal structure.
Thanks for posting! Very interesting and a good reminder to double check our processes and to verify what we are doing and how it actually affects the material.
A lot of hobby smoths don't have real tighttemp controlled ovens But it is looking like a 2 norm, 2 quench seems like the best combo of time and grain size, especially if you do the second quench at the lower temp you tried.
I'm just learning hard data on HT and quench now, but furiously. So much of what i learned from various people years ago always seemed inconsistent or borderline superstitious. I am definitely putting a thermocouple into the forge im currently working on. Being able to hold a known temperature, even if i have to babysit and hand adjust gas and blower intensity, I know will make HTs and differential HTs infinitely less frustrating. Maybe after ive done a few dozen, I might try doing them by sound and color again if I'm confident I can discern the coloration and trust my forge.
Nice Test! If you want to do two quenches it’s helpful to quench the first time with a temperature a little below your austenitizing temperature. It’s called sharp normalization. But just needed if you did a heavy forging session before. And you don’t need to cool down to room temperature. A auto temper is helpful in that case so just pull out of the oil when you are at a 300celsius area 🙌🏽
Fascinating.honestly it seems like the grain size didn't change dramatically past the first normalization.i would probably just stick with that unless I was doing the temp controlled one.that was crazy
Yes. As unscientific as it is I think this experiment highlights both the limitations and potential of forgeside heat treating even the simplest steels.
Set an overheating threshold and more normalization cycles for smaller grain. I'm starting in this morning testing your science. You're on to something here.
Looking at this I really want to say any difference in grain size was caused by normalization temperature and quench temperature. You only want a little bit above the a1 temperature so cherry reddish and you want 100% austenite conversion so you’d need to hold it at that temp for a bit. On the last sample was it hard? It looks like you might’ve gotten a tiny bit of ductile fracture. I want to say double quenching isn’t a real thing as I can’t think of a reason of how it would reduce grain size but I can ask around. But it hasn’t been covered in any of my classes.
This is an old video looking at forgeside heat treating 1084. Eutectoid, low alloy steels like 1070-1084 can be heat treated quite successfully forgeside without temperature control as long as proper attention is paid to not overheating the steel during normalization or quench and providing a relatively low a quench heat while still reaching transformation temperatures. It's nerdy but I think everyone should do something like this in their own shop for each steel they forgeside heat treat.
I learned a lot. Thank you for all the great information.
awesome video, I follow larrin Thomas suggestions and I normalize 10xx steels 1 time, then do a fast det anneal by going into vermiculite from austenizing temp, then quench from non magnetic temp. grain size is usually super fine. I rarely heattreat in the forge anymore though.
The hard stuff people are reluctant to try. excellent work! Thank you!
we did this kind of thing in materials class back in Uni, though we cut and polished the samples with an etch before looking at them, lets you get a reall nice view of not only grain size, but the various phases, the grain boundaries and so on. if you want to nerd out more, try that next time, maybe?
One test still that would have been interesting to see is as forged but quenched low heat.
Absolutely🤯 this is what makes a master. If you don't have a master smith to teach you you have to experiment untill you get it right. It's like remaking history. Well done 👏
A while ago I was forced to conclude that I needed an Evenheat to HT properly. I won't sell a knife that wasn't correctly heat treated according to the spec sheet. Thanks for your experiments!
Have you read Larrins book? With this being an old video is your process still the same? I did similar tests before reading Larrins book, and I think like many, have completely changed my process afterwards. I wish I could change some of my old videos since they aren't as accurate as they could be. But I think they still offer a good starting point and other relative information, so I left them up. Good Forge heat treating is way harder than it appears. Overheating is the main problem. And you really can't tell heat treatment quality unless you do both a snap test and hardness test. Since grain size isn't relative to hardness. Ill leave the forge heat treating to the experts and just punch some buttons. Too much ocd for me😂
Yes, much trickier than it looks. The smallest amount of overheating punishes.This video was before I stumbled across his website. I haven't read his book.
I did a follow up experiment where I simultaneously overheated two pieces of 1084 for the quench. I quenched one piece right away at a bright orange heat while I let the other piece air cool to red before quenching it. They both got hard to low 60s and both had garbage grain size but there was a slight advantage to the one that was air cooled to red. Which doesn't add any practical information, I just though it was interesting.
I got the book on your advising and now I keep 4 different quench media on hand. P50 is obviously the gold standard for fast quench oils, and AAA for medium... but I just got three gallons of "Quench10" that's supposed to be better than AAA and it has virtually no scaling, but I don't have a Rockwell tester, so I'd love to see a video on that stuff if you get a chance... between removing all the trees from your roof. :)
@@GreenBeetle STEVE! See my reply to 55... maybe check out the Quench10 stuff.
Double quench does increase toughness i.e grain size. have seen this at a commercial ,Q&T business that does wear and armour plate hard to see in actual measurable grain size (optical microscopy) but it can be seen in charpy impact test results. It's not massive. The bigger issue is that as you have said is poor temp control causes excessive gain growth. The more steps the bigger risk to have over temperature in a normal forge
I was given a forge only treating method that works really well with 80CrV2. normalize, quench (using alloy recommended temp rage), thermal cycle (3x non magnetic air cool), requench tempered martensite, temper. grain looks like glass by eye on the break.
from what I've learned you should expect larger grain from a normalization. non-magnetic Thermal cycling in air is meant to reduce grain size which in turn improves the strength of the hardened crystal structure.
Thanks for posting! Very interesting and a good reminder to double check our processes and to verify what we are doing and how it actually affects the material.
Yep!
Pretty interesting experiment indeed, Steve! 😊
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
A lot of hobby smoths don't have real tighttemp controlled ovens
But it is looking like a 2 norm, 2 quench seems like the best combo of time and grain size, especially if you do the second quench at the lower temp you tried.
I'm just learning hard data on HT and quench now, but furiously. So much of what i learned from various people years ago always seemed inconsistent or borderline superstitious. I am definitely putting a thermocouple into the forge im currently working on. Being able to hold a known temperature, even if i have to babysit and hand adjust gas and blower intensity, I know will make HTs and differential HTs infinitely less frustrating. Maybe after ive done a few dozen, I might try doing them by sound and color again if I'm confident I can discern the coloration and trust my forge.
put a thin layer of clay on the thermocouple it will last longer
I did this exact thing for the same reasons when I built my forge 4 or 5 years ago. And now looking back, I would most certainly do it again!
Nice Test! If you want to do two quenches it’s helpful to quench the first time with a temperature a little below your austenitizing temperature. It’s called sharp normalization. But just needed if you did a heavy forging session before. And you don’t need to cool down to room temperature. A auto temper is helpful in that case so just pull out of the oil when you are at a 300celsius area 🙌🏽
Thanks for the tips
interesting stuff ...that last quench ..if you can reproduce it looks like the way to go
and don't use fluorescent lights in your work shop
oh hey UA-cam actually did an advert that was relevant (knife sharpener LOL)
Was it a crappy one though 😂
@@GreenBeetle maybe......wasn't as good as yours put it that way lol
apparently even old people can master it roflol
Great info! Thanks for doing the legwork!
Fascinating.honestly it seems like the grain size didn't change dramatically past the first normalization.i would probably just stick with that unless I was doing the temp controlled one.that was crazy
Yes. As unscientific as it is I think this experiment highlights both the limitations and potential of forgeside heat treating even the simplest steels.
@@GreenBeetle I agree especially since this is how your average person is going to do it anyway.very informative
I watched a British metalogist who runs a forge and heat treatment business, say one normalization is all that's needed.
👍
I think I watched that same video. After doing some more reading however, he seems to be the only one Ive ever heard suggest this in practice.
Very interesting.
Set an overheating threshold and more normalization cycles for smaller grain. I'm starting in this morning testing your science. You're on to something here.
Yeah that last result was pretty darn good for forgeside. Keeping that temp down is soo important.
Looking at this I really want to say any difference in grain size was caused by normalization temperature and quench temperature. You only want a little bit above the a1 temperature so cherry reddish and you want 100% austenite conversion so you’d need to hold it at that temp for a bit.
On the last sample was it hard? It looks like you might’ve gotten a tiny bit of ductile fracture.
I want to say double quenching isn’t a real thing as I can’t think of a reason of how it would reduce grain size but I can ask around. But it hasn’t been covered in any of my classes.
interesting experiment. but a bit short in scope. why stop at 3 cycles and 2 quenches? keep going until you stop seeing improvement.
Yay! Green Beetle!!
Try some 8670
With no heating and 100 water quench's and normalizations... in water I was able to create a very tight rust structure.
🧐
Temp control FTW! 🎉
i use a magnet as soon as it stops sticking i quench
Good method
Interesting. I have to admit, I would have been stumped and still not come up with anything.
High heat creates grain growth
STEVE AGAIN!
STEVE!