hardening 1018

jdm61

jdm61

itinerant metal pounder
Joined
Aug 12, 2005
Messages
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I know that 1018 will never get truly hard, but can it be annealed to file, etc and then hardened up to some degree so that it won't ding or scratch as easily?
 
My best guess is that horseshoes are close to 1018 , and you can get a little hardness with water. Enough to notice longer wearing shoes for arena/dirt work , and slightly less traction on hard surfaces/bald-rock.

Tossing Hshoes in a lot of water or brine, they will get hard enough that there a bear to reshape, maybe thats what you looking for?
 
As long as it has carbon in it it will harden to some degree. I'd say try a small piece, get it hot and then quench it and see how it compares to a control piece.
 
Joe,
A few years ago as a kid I made some burglar bars with mild steel (=1010 to1015) and found it was very soft... having heard about heat treating but not knowing the technicalities of it, i heated the bars on an LPG gas stove top type thing, and then dropped it into the bath filled with water. Clearly I was unable to heat the whole thing at the same time and consistently, but there was undoubtedly a hardening effect, though not substantial. So I am sure if you could get to higher temps with more control, you could get some notable hardening, though as you know, it wont get to knife edge grade.

Lang
 
I was 8in the last class Wayne Goddard taught at the ABS School some years back. It was Intro to Bladesmithing. One syudent grabbed a bar from the wrong steel pile and forged his test knife. It shave hair, cut the free hanging rope, and went blunt chopping the 2x4. Wayne did a write up on it because the blade had hardened sufficiently to pass part of the test.

It doesn't last, though. It's a very shallow hardening. Without something like case hardening, there just isn't enough carbon to make a knife that will stay hard enough to do the job.

Gene
 
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