Thread: O1 heat treating problem

Originally Posted by niftyshaving

An anti scale compound can be a thin glaze of pottery mud (slip) mixed with carbon (powdered charcoal).
Commercial products exist.
The goal is a thin layer that keeps oxygen in the furnace from burning off the carbon in the steel but not so thick
to be a concern at quench time. This has a lot of value on the initial high temp heating including
slowish heating to relieve strain.

Sorry I misunderstood this. I do not use such a compound. It sounds good. How much influence the standard HT process? What brand would you recommend?

Originally Posted by niftyshaving

Preheating and strain relief is worth paying attention to.
The initial heat and quench should max out the hardness of the steel (and brittleness). Tempering is to
calm the brittleness and chipping. Modern hones can sharpen harder steel so a thick spine and sturdy
edged razor can be a lot harder than can be sharpened on an old school Arkansas stone. Your design
and grind will bound the ideal hardness.

What do you mean preheatin? The furnace, end/or quenching oil?

Thank you for your useful advices!

Here is a useful chart for you. If it is not clear enough for you, pm me your email and i will send it to you via email.

Thank you so much, it is very useful for me. But just now it was broken the thermocouple in the furnace. Yesterday ordered a new one.

An other useful pic from the Wikipedia:

It seems to succeed. I will refine the edge, but everything looks good.

This is worked for me:
I leaved 1.5 mm thikness of the edge.
soaking: 805C / 1480F, 8 min.
quenching oil: 50-60C / 130F, 20 sec
tempering: after cooling to room temperature, 200-205C / ~400F, 2x1h (between cooling to room temperature)

After the shave test:



Thank you for all the help!

Blade looks great! Sounds like you got it right this time.

Thank you very much!

....and couple of hours later (sorry for the bad pic):

Update!

I created the original razor again.

My process:
I leaved 1.5 mm thikness of the edge.
soaking: 805C / 1480F, 8 min.
quenching oil: 55C 20 sec
tempering: after cooling to room temperature, 210C 2x1h (between cooling to room temperature)
After this I sanded a few tenths of millimeters from the edge.

Conclution after the test: I got the best, smooth, sharp edge ever. I am very happy, and thank you for your help!
The owner is also very satisfied with the razor.