Thread: Help - I possibly Found some useable razor blanks

Mike Blue hardened all mine so he may chime in shortly. They were very hard when he got done! so, of all the smiths, he would know for sure what the cycle hardening and tempering would be best. It was more than just a hardening and tempering in two steps.
~Richard

I PM's our Master Heat Treatment guy, Mike Blue and his reply was this:

"Hello Scott,
Those blanks heat treated quite nicely without a lot of hassle. I austenitized to 1500 F and held to soak for five minutes then quenched in canola oil. Rc was around 60, but my notes are not right in front of me."

This is what they will get then, I will report back later with results. Mike uses salts for his heat treatment and has infinite control of his equipment & I work with fire...but I am sure I can get close enough that your stones or face would never know off the blades.

For those who don't know Mike, he has forgotten more than I will ever know about heat treating...a true master and gentleman. We are blessed to have him a member here on SRP.

Addendum: a question came up about tempering these blades. I recommend starting at 375 F for two hours. If the scale is ground off there should be a light yellow/gold color from superficial oxides that will confirm a ballpark target point. No, I don't triple temper or other mysterious methods. The rule is: get the blade hot and quench, temper once and done for simple carbon steels.

High alloy (read stain resistant or complex alloy tool steels) steels are something I do not do very much. HT and tempering of those materials have different rules.

Yes, I have a complete salt bath setup for precision's purposes. The initial batch of test blades from Herder that required heat treatment were also tested in a simple canola oil quench that proved more than adequate to achieve hardness. As I recall, the oil was room temperature say 60F at the time. No prewarmed oil was used. The salt baths have their uses but not everyone can afford this kind of setup.

Austenitizing in a forge environment means there will be some scale to remove after heat treatment. Austenitizing in salt baths reduce this requirement.

I hope this clarifies some items.

HT is done, just came in to temper. My oil was at approx 50F (same temp as it is outside), so I heated the oil to "warm" with a couple of rods that I keep around for such purpose. I kept forge as close to 1500F as possible, but didn't keep the probe in the fire while the blade was in. I would check and it stayed pretty constant once stabalized. Each blade would take a few minutes to heat up and I would start timer once they started to coalesce (sp?). The only part that may not be hard will be the monkey tail as this is where I used the tongs. I believe one blade warped, but will give them a good looking over once they have tempered...which they are doing as we speak.

I will get pics up, they are final ground now & I've hit the buffer once to see where they need some hand sanding before final buffer and scales.

Originally Posted by shooter74743

I will get pics up, they are final ground now & I've hit the buffer once to see where they need some hand sanding before final buffer and scales.

Final ground & one trip to the buffer in the shop on black buffing compound. The pics will show finger prints, wax and so on on the blades...but you can get the idea. Now to get to making some scales...did I mention that I'm a steel guy and not so much a scale guy?

Anoother pic for you...

Originally Posted by shooter74743

Final ground & one trip to the buffer in the shop on black buffing compound. The pics will show finger prints, wax and so on on the blades...but you can get the idea. Now to get to making some scales...did I mention that I'm a steel guy and not so much a scale guy?

I think it was MikeBlue that posted somewhere that it is a US thing to create a product from start to finish. Maybe you should match yourself up with a scale maker.