Diff. Heat Treat on stainless

KellyGlanzer

KellyGlanzer

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I was reading thru some old threads and came upon one on Diff. Heat Treat on ATS-34. Is there anybody doing this? Which stainless and or tool steels are being used.
I never came up with much info thru the search.
 
IIRC, there was a maker in Montana, can't remember his name, who claimed to have developed a differential heat treat for ATS34. I read an article in one of the blade mags about it, but never heard another word. I knew a maker in So Cal who made the same claim, but he just gigured out how to make what appears to be a quench line on the blade.

The So Cal maker heat treated the blade, then took a slotted pipe, filled it with water, and placed the blade in it, edge in the water. That left the spine exposed above the pipe. He then took 2 rosebud tips on an oxy/acetylene rig amd heated the spine. It left a line similar to a quench line. It looked pretty, but to my knowledge, no tests were ever done as to whether it did anything else. Since stainless air hardens, I think all he had done at that point was screw up a perfectly good heat treat job.

I've not heard more about either, and that's been 7-10 years ago. Of course, just because I haven't heard about it doesn't mean I'm current on a whole lot, just that I never heard any more about it.

Gene
 
Don't waste your time even trying you'll just get a blade with screwed up HT.!!
 
Back in January when I was having trouble with 154cm I found a thread similar to to what you guys are talking about- I don't remember if it was this site or another. Anyway, the poster said Paul Bos and a knife maker had developed this method to differentially heat treat 154cm blades (swords? don't remember). Spoke with Paul on the phone about the process and doing something similar to attach a stub or stainless threaded rod to the tang of a 154cm knife- he said the water cooling would work fine for maintaining the original temper of the blade while attaching the stub. The poster referred to the knife maker who was working with Paul as "Dude" if that jogs anyones memory.
 
It would be nice to. It would also be nice to travel greater than speed of light. Stainless requires standards in HT beyond some knife makers equipment let alone differential HT of it. We, us makers, are not going to properly differential HT stainless. The differential can be done to a small extent if we are willing to put up with very deep decarboration. An edge quench of high alloy (stainless), an air hardening steel, would not yield a very flexible spine or enough difference between edge and above liquid quenched areas. Nothing to a degree worth while would be accomplished by using stainless wrap to prevent decaroration because of time necessary to remove wrap for edge quenching. By that time you are too late and without wrap you're decarb'ed very deeply. Even with an evacuated furnace there will not be much differential with a deep hardening steel, especially after proper tempering.

rlinger
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