Steel won't harden need help.

One thing that you have to consider is the precision of your calibration blocks. If they are supposed to be ±1.0 then you are a little out of calibration. If they are ± 2.0 then you still are within tolerance. Even if you are outside of tolerance with your control blocks I don't think that it would account for your tester reading the blade that far out. If you have tested out toward the edge of the blade and have gotten the same results I would have to lean towards someone mixing the steel up with some structural stuff. Being that you can't look at a bar of steel and tell what it is I'm surprised that this doesn't happen more often.

Doug
 
I just did a couple of test blanks today using 1084 steel from Aldo - thickness a bit over 1/8", did a water quench and came out of quench about 66Rc. Do a test blank with plain old water quench and test that. If it doesn't get up around 65Rc, I'll bet that really isn't 1084, but a mild steel.

Good luck, Ken H>
 
Mark, I'll just bet that's mis-marked steel and is some low carbon like 1020 or something along those lines. That sure is frustrating when sometime like that happens.

Have you tried spark testing any of the steel?

Ken
 
Test or sample piece.

When doing weld tests they always called the piece a coupon, that's why I use the term.
 
Possibly related. One of my customers recently called with HT problems on some ALDO 1084 1/4 x 2 that he bough from me. He is HTing in kiln, quenching in DT48 and using a Rockwell tester. What he's doing is working for 1095 - but with this bar, he's getting 30s and 40s. All I had left in 1/4" was a small piece of 1 1/2", so I made a coupon half at 1/4" and half at 1/8" and processed it. Out of the oil (mine is P50) it was RHC66 at the 1/8 section and RHC 64.5 at the full 1/4" thickness. He's sending me a scrap off his 2" bar and I'm going to try hardening that one.

I'm just posting this in case more have had similar experiences - we may be able to narrow it down and save some other makers the headaches.

Rob!
 
Rob, please do update this when you get the sample - I've got a 4 ft length of Aldo's 1/4X2" 1084 myself. I'll try to cut off a 2" coupon myself and test it with canola... or maybe just a simple water quench to make sure it does harden up before I actually make a blade from it.

Thanks for the heads up.

Mark - did you determine anything from the spark test?

Ken H>
 
KenH said:
Mark - did you determine anything from the spark test?

Ken H>
Click to expand...

I did the test and it looks like #3 so I assume it was miss labeled.
spark.gif
 
Thanks for the update Mark - looks like you've nailed it. That is a good pic of different types of steel.

Ken H>
 
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