Bushcraft heat treat

D

D Whitt

Active Member
I’m working on my bushcraft knife and wondering how I should do the quench/ heat treat for a blade that will hold up to chopping and batoning wood..... will I benefit from a differential quench or will I lose strength .... any thoughts ...... I just normalized and did a differential quench and checked the blade on the edge and spine with a file and it cuts on the spine a little and it’s super hard on the edge ..... now I’m second guessing myself ..... should I leave it and go ahead with tempering or should I redo it and just quench the whole thing??????E8CB23E2-880E-44B4-B727-8608CC89582F.jpeg
 
Always temper, it depends on so many things, if you’re gonna baton firewood for some reason or beat on it and chop down trees I’d say temper At a higher temp, if you’re processing food keep the blade in the higher range. 350-500 is a big range but somewhere in there on a fully hardened blade should be acceptable. I’m no expert, nor have I ever made anything from 1095, just going by what I have seen other makers post
 
Yeah I’m definitely tempering I make all my knives from 1095 and I’ve got that process down ....that’s not my question my bad what I was really asking is about the differential quench whether or not it’s pointless or if I will gain some flexibility by doing it so my blade won’t snap if I get rough with it
 
Jon Buescher said:
Always temper, it depends on so many things, if you’re gonna baton firewood for some reason or beat on it and chop down trees I’d say temper At a higher temp, if you’re processing food keep the blade in the higher range. 350-500 is a big range but somewhere in there on a fully hardened blade should be acceptable. I’m no expert, nor have I ever made anything from 1095, just going by what I have seen other makers post
Click to expand...
Maybe I drank more than I thought last night :rolleyes:
 
If you have already quenched that blade you should have tempered it as soon as it was cool enough to hold. Leaving a blade in the quenched state for a long period of time is asking for trouble. The edge quench will give you the maximum toughness out of the blade but less strength. Remember that toughness and strength in steel rise and fall in opposition to each other. A full quench with a draw back on the spine will give more strength in the spine but less toughness. To do a draw back on the temper you can insert the the edge and point of the blade in a tray of wet sand and heat the edge with a torch.

I hope if you haven't already tempered that blade that you don't have cracks in the edge. I would recommend that you temper the blade ASAP if you haven't already done so then etch the blade to see if you spot any cracks.

Doug
 
I definitely tempered it right away I was just wondering since I have never did it like that if I would have trouble but I may just be over thinking it I might just go with it since it’s just for me and not a customer it won’t be a problem
 
Got the scales on now just gotta do a little bit of profiling and clean them up and it’s done first attempt at a satin finish blade it’s not perfect and I’m not particularly happy with it... image.jpg746F20CE-01D7-4439-9A2E-2B3ED1F54EF6.jpegI wish I would have etched it before I put the handles on but oh well ..... there is a slight hamon on the blade from the edge quench which is awesome but hard to see with out the etch .....
 
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