Thread: web site and learning

...and easy it is not! This requires a lot of knowledge, and technique - but with mentors like yourself, Mike, and Josh, it makes something like Charlie is attempting feasible - and makes the rest of us VERY interested in giving it a go ourselves!

Thanks again for the great explanation, Mike!

Mark

To elaborate a bit on something Mike mentioned... It is possible to get a blade that seems fully hard only to have the hardness drop off at a lower tempering temperature than you'd expect. If you feel like the steel is getting really hard in the quench--in other words, the file isn't biting in--but then it ends up being fairly soft, then there may be something going on with the austenizing process. Too hot, not hot enough, not enough soak time for the particular steel alloy...

Kevin Cashen talks about this a lot with O1, which needs a long soak. He hears from guys who only temper their O1 at 350 F or so, and it's not brittle. There's something wrong there.

I tend to look at 400 F as a baseline temperature for tempering, at least for the steels I use. If the blade seems too hard after 400, I'll go to 425. If a steel seems too soft after a 400 F temper I would get mighty suspicious.

If I had to guess, I'd say that your saw blade steel has a high alloy content and needs more soak time. It would be great if you could hold it at temperature for five to 10 minutes.

Without some way to control the temperature, it seems like it would be pretty hard to nail down a good heat treatment for a mystery steel. In the future, you might want to consider getting some good 1080 or 1095. A piece big enough for a blade would cost less than $1, and you would know what you were dealing with.

I do understand the romance of shaving with a piece of old sawblade, though...

Josh

I have thought of using known steel, but have not done it yet. I would like to make the saw steel work better. It is a challenge and I have that donkey stubbornness. I am not super worried about the hardness. The first razor that I made that came out at 50RC is a great shaver. I was really shocked when I found out that it was that soft. It went against my preconceived notions of what would work.

I am more of a by the seat of my pants, TLAR engineering (that looks about right) type of person, but I will make some samples and do some empirical testing to see if can improve.

Charlie
Stubborn in Texas