M4 Heat Treat

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Edwardshandmadeknives

Well-Known Member
I’m planning to start using some CPM M4 this coming summer. Sounds like it is really a pain to work with, but the specs look pretty good on the finished results. Anyone work with this? I will be plate quenching with aluminum plates, and doing cryo. If anyone has pointers that can jump start the process I would love to hear them. With the price of it, I don’t want to be breaking too many blades or making tons of test coupons. Oh, the plates have the option of pumping coolant through them too if that matters.
 
If you are REAL lucky, it doesnt require some kind of weird multi stage heat treatment like Z-Tuff apparently does. :eek:
 
jmforge said:
If you are REAL lucky, it doesnt require some kind of weird multi stage heat treatment like Z-Tuff apparently does. :eek:
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Well, I’m not familiar with Z-Tuff, so I had to look it up. It’s pretty similar as far as the steps taken. I’m not worried about doing multi step heat treating at all, if it takes two days to do it I don’t care. I was planning on using Crucibles heat treat they recommended. I just wanted to see if anyone had any tweaks that might be nice to know about. If not, then I guess I’ll be doing a few samples under the microscope. I’ll have to keep everyone posted, it doesn’t seem like there is a ton of info on it.
 
Send it to Bos heat treating if you really want to get the best performance. It at 63.5 hardness requires a tester to make sure it is there.
 
Before you commit to CPM M4, you might want to look into why the comp cutting guys switched from it to Vanadis 4E/CPM 4V. Just a thought. Alos, no matter which one you chose, I would look into the "Delta" type heat treatment for either.
 
jmforge said:
Before you commit to CPM M4, you might want to look into why the comp cutting guys switched from it to Vanadis 4E/CPM 4V. Just a thought. Alos, no matter which one you chose, I would look into the "Delta" type heat treatment for either.
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Thanks for the heads up. I hadn’t looked at 4V, but it does appear to have a little more toughness, and a little less abrasion resistance. I make kitchen cutlery, so the slight difference in toughness might not matter, but Crucibles heat treat recommendations look like they are simpler. No mention of cryo. I’m not familiar with the Delta heat treat. I’ll have to see if I can find info on that.
 
Edwardshandmadeknives said:
Thanks for the heads up. I hadn’t looked at 4V, but it does appear to have a little more toughness, and a little less abrasion resistance. I make kitchen cutlery, so the slight difference in toughness might not matter, but Crucibles heat treat recommendations look like they are simpler. No mention of cryo. I’m not familiar with the Delta heat treat. I’ll have to see if I can find info on that.
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As best as I understand, the delta HT uses a low temper instead of the high one up at the secondary hardening hump up around 1000F. It was devised by some folks including Nathan Carothers, Dan Keffeler and Guy from Survive! to overcome the tendency for the high temper CPM 3V to be a tad "mushy" with lest fine edge stability when taken down thin. Mu understanding is that it has been applied to M4 and the 4V/V4E type steels too. If you are crazy enough to make kitchen knives out of this stuff, then that fine edge stability is your number one priority.
 
jmforge said:
As best as I understand, the delta HT uses a low temper instead of the high one up at the secondary hardening hump up around 1000F. It was devised by some folks including Nathan Carothers, Dan Keffeler and Guy from Survive! to overcome the tendency for the high temper CPM 3V to be a tad "mushy" with lest fine edge stability when taken down thin. Mu understanding is that it has been applied to M4 and the 4V/V4E type steels too. If you are crazy enough to make kitchen knives out of this stuff, then that fine edge stability is your number one priority.
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I am crazy enough. Well, at least enough to give it a go. I’ll try some test coupons with both heat treats, and see what happens. This Delta heat treat sounds kinda interesting.
 
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