It was time to check grain

Honestly it looks a little course to me. The grain should look silky and smooth. I have to ask the normal questions when it comes to grain. Is this forged or stock removal, did you do any normalizing, what type of steel, and what process did you use to get that result...
 
I needed to test it because this is the first steel I have used from a different supplier. Because it was a first test I did no normalizing. It is stock removal hardened in a forge using simple HT. The next one I will normalize to see if it helps. I have seen worse grain but I normally get better.
 
JeremyBartlett said:
Honestly it looks a little course to me. The grain should look silky and smooth. I have to ask the normal questions when it comes to grain. Is this forged or stock removal, did you do any normalizing, what type of steel, and what process did you use to get that result...
Click to expand...
Looks fairly course to me as well.
 
About the best way I've found to tell if grain is like it should be is to break an old file and hold that broken file next to the broken test piece. If it looks like the broken file, then it's good. The file will look like a greyish color with almost actual grain visible to the naked eye. Seems like I can see grain in that, so a tad coarse?

Rather than profiling a full blade why not a test coupon for checking grain?
 
KenH said:
About the best way I've found to tell if grain is like it should be is to break an old file and hold that broken file next to the broken test piece. If it looks like the broken file, then it's good. The file will look like a greyish color with almost actual grain visible to the naked eye. Seems like I can see grain in that, so a tad coarse?

Rather than profiling a full blade why not a test coupon for checking grain?
Click to expand...

Testing was an afterthought because I did not remember I had not tested the new steel until after I profiled it. I decided to sacrifice the knife to check the grain.
 
Agree with the others. It looks pretty coarse to me.

What type of steel? Was it tempered?

I hope Kevin sees this and weighs in and I don't want to speak out of turn but I believe if a visual inspection of the grain is the goal, it should be un-tempered so you get a good clean snap and not the distortion or stretching/tearing that might occur with the extra toughness that tempering would add.
 
It was not tempered just quenched and broken once it was cool. I think a couple of normalizing cycles may help it out. It’s 1080. The upside is it broke like glass.
 
Were you able to measure the Rockwell hardness?
It looks coarse to me as well.
Sending out the Kevin signal...
 
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