Thread: Blade Steel types for razors

and if you don't know what your doing at the forge you can reallyl hurt the steel
try that on a grinder (white hot and sparking )
right now i know im more prone to mess ups at the forge then i am on the grinder so im going to have a JS (testing MS this year ) help make sure i got it right

Originally Posted by L R Harner

and if you don't know what your doing at the forge you can reallyl hurt the steel
try that on a grinder (white hot and sparking )
right now i know im more prone to mess ups at the forge then i am on the grinder so im going to have a JS (testing MS this year ) help make sure i got it right

Too hot is an issue, as is too cold. If the steel gets too cold while you're hammering it, it can develop cracks that'll cause heartbreak when you quench the blade later...

Overheating is more of a problem with coal than gas. I'm using a small gas forge, and I can't even get to welding temps, much less sparking.

Josh

i plan on a gass set up too when i can get the space in the shop for it
but any how lots of different ways to mess the steel up a bit

so get known steel learn all you can about it and take your time
maybe a list of razor steels might be helpfull
list not in order and not the end all be all

W1
W2
O1
52100
1065-1095
cpm154
abel sp?

any one care to add i know i missed a few and some are better then others but this might get the ball rolling

That's a pretty good list. Has anyone tried the ever-popular 5160?

I'd add L6 to the list as well. Tim Zowada uses it in his pattern-welded blades.

I've read that 52100 is another steel, like O1, that requires more sophisticated temperature control during heat treatment to get the most out of the steel. I have no personal experience with it, though.

Josh

i was planning on going to 52100 but found a good source of W2 (40lb) for now that will be my razor stock

now this said i have a computer controlled kiln and LN dewer and parks 50 for my heat treating needs so im not real worried about times and temps just so long as i know what there to be (or get me in the ball park)

guess the next step after the steel list is to share the heat treats that work

I can definitely agree that 52100 is picky about it's heat treating temps. I bought a billet of damascus that had a few layer of 52100 in it and the blades just never got as hard as I wanted. Don't know what I did wrong.

what do you use for quench and what temp did you quench from. thats the big 2 trouble shooing not gettign hard

now that said do you know for sure what the Damascus has in it (some have been known to have too much lower carbon and nothing can save that ) was it a well known maker or a maker you trust
case in point i was at a show and a table just down from me had stacks of Damascus but he would not tell any one what was in it. latter found out 2nd hand that he was using too much low carbon and while great fro guards and bolsters (just not blade steel)

52100 requires a higher austenitizing temperature to get all the carbon into solution.

See here: http://www.ovako.com/Data/r2283/v1/P...ation_803Q.pdf

While they use their "brand name" this sheet is for equivalent to 52100 steel.

I'll reiterate, 52100 is tricky.

The way I understand it, lower-carbon alloys need higher temps and some soaking to get all the carbon possible into solution. For example, 5160 only has .60 percent carbon, which is on the low end for a blade steel. You need to get all that carbon working for you. With 1095, which has .95 percent carbon, you don't necessarily need to worry about dissolving the maximum amount of carbon to get full hardness.

Steel, incidentally, can only hold about .85 percent carbon. More than that and you end up with the carbon segretating itself out into carbides. So if you hear anyone talking about how they doubled the carbon content for better hardness, they probably don't know what they're talking about.

Josh

The vendor gave me a list of the component steel alloys, but I don't remember all of them, about 5 or 6 different kinds.

My forging setup is rather low tech, and I use the magnet trick for determining heat treat temps, so that is probably a good portion of the problem. But I followed the maker's instructions and he didn't stress the need for exacting temp control.

Either way, I've pretty much stuck to simple carbon steels for the most part, and haven't had much trouble so I suppose that's the best route for me currently.

(I should have a cool knew project to share next week... inspired by the land of the rising sun)