Heat Treatment - Crystal Weaving Foundation

Continuing on implications/deductions given a matrix has CWF microstructure. Sorry for being explicit - many of you probably easily see it and or refused to waste neuron on it.

a) Temper embrittlement mostly goes away because diffusion is nano isolated up until ferrite close & surpass percolation percentage. Weldable is its big implication. Basically heat reduce strength, increase ductitility. Unlike bainitic steel for example, where welding = embrittle heat affected area due to RA convert to martensite and rapid precip particle/carbide coarsening. e.g. Using optimal temper temperature, spring can be strong (i.e. can be thinner) and have longer service life.

b) CWF microstructure has high cohesion and congruence (I invent 'congruence' it's simplify a label in my mind, so please no semantic dance), where dimensional contraction by temperature (reduction in atom radius or electron cloud - whichever you like) won't turn into major jarring compression = dislocation like conventional ht matrix. My video in OP about W2 66+rc (untempered) blade didn't failed when chop bamboo at below -300F. Which mean bridges/infrastructure can/possibility operate in extreme cold temperature without adding steel volume and or added thermal shield.

...
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Marci I think you've made your point. May I suggest that if you don't like the approach or direction or terminology chosen by the OP (for whom English may not be his 1st language) rather than derail his thread perhaps simply not participate in it?

I for one would like to hear what the man has to say. :thumbup:
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Nailed it.
 
Wow Chiral, well put thanks! :thumbup::thumbup: + my boy/ht-helper pitch in :thumbup::thumbup:
chiral.grolim said:
Possibly the start of a revolution in current heat-treat practices... possibly. :)

Luong has been working for quite a while now on variations in HT and quench ("super-quench") of a WIDE variety of steels to achieve results hitherto unheardof in the knife community.

Luong understands the metallurgy involved in the HT process itself.
He understands the basic physics and the forces at work in cutting/chopping.
He understands that what he is testing is performance of the final edge-bevel of his knives and does so within easily comparable ranges (which is more than a LOT of other makers out there who BS about their products but then ascribe "abuse" to tasks as minor as carving toothpicks).
He understands repeatability and has put it to use in his own efforts to find the HT parameters that give the effect he is looking for.
He has publicly demonstrated his results, both positive and negative, when he has them.

So let's see: he's using metallurgy to establish a hypothesis and he is testing that hypothesis through experimentation, he includes controls - factory HT parameters as well as production knives, etc., and geometries well within the range for direct comparison (he has modified geometry as needed to accomplish proper comparisons where needed)... he just needs confirmation of the results that he has achieved by electron microscopy.

Am i asking to go over his lab-notebook so that i can confirm each step involved? No, nor do the reviewers of manuscripts for publication. Am I going to ask for pictures of the "crystal weave" to compare against "controls"? Absolutely.

But he is offering something that is his intellectual property and could revolutionize tool making in a BIG way - not just hobby knives but saw blades and drill-bits. 1) He is achieving hardness levels in steels expected to be unattainable without severe loss of integrity or significant increase in fragility, and then 2) he is using them at very low geometries in ways that would certainly evince the expected fragility... but he is showing significant and often superior durability!

So yes, we need independent "reviewers" of the results he is achieving, and Nathan (also known for playing with the HT parameters of steels, with a professional relationship to Peter's HT in PA) has agreed to be one such reviewer. Luong has asked repeatedly for more,

What's funny is that, I cannot seem to buy one of Luong's magical knives :) Not that i can get my hands on one of Nathan's knives either, but I have actually seen those for sale, Luong's stuff isn't out and about much. He isn't doing this for profit.
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Interested in seeing continued results and reports from independent testers. Do you know if the high hardness via this method has any impact on abrasion resistance, or just resistance to plastic deformation?
 
So one guy discovered in his garage what the NASA, MIT and others never thought about !
I for one would like to see more proof
 
Looking at just matrix strength(removed carbide/nitride/particle) - consists of martensite + interspacing + grainboundary, the latter 2 are weakness (chink in armour) against abrasion and other non-impact wearing. Just from plowing aspect - digging depth (everything the same) will be shallower on a stronger matrix. Akin to plowing packed(stronger) vs loose soil. From previous post above, I mentioned about SiO2 (silicon dioxide aka sillicate), when matrix is over all stronger/harder than SiO2, wear mostly be from non-martensite vectors (chink in armour). I actually have tested where matrix can strategically trade some martensite for nano precip carbides reside in interspacing to shield the matrix from SiO2. Slow wearing to even a slower rate. No, I didn't tested this 100 times nor scientific.

FortyTwoBlades said:
Interested in seeing continued results and reports from independent testers. Do you know if the high hardness via this method has any impact on abrasion resistance, or just resistance to plastic deformation?
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Yeah, they will have some explanation to do once I show the world 'how' :p
Revolverrodger said:
So one guy discovered in his garage what the NASA, MIT and others never thought about !
I for one would like to see more proof
Click to expand...
 
unwisefool said:
Not the first time things like that have happened

Sent from my D6708 using Tapatalk
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It would indeed be epic if he made duch an important discovery
I'm really interested to hear more about his findings
By the way Bluntcut your videos are very interesting
 
As human we cozy ourselves in blanket of limitations. Some of those limitations are actually "I don't know" but got pass around & enveloped with other "don't know" long enough, naturally turned into limitations. For many times in my ht journey, I got quite upset with myself because I believed false-limitations as facts. Perhaps, CWF will erase some low-hanging-fruit of ht false-limitations...

Revolverrodger said:
So one guy discovered in his garage what the NASA, MIT and others never thought about !
I for one would like to see more proof
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Should this thread be in the knifemaker's discussion section?
 
I don't think so. Since it's not really about knives. Edge is just a convenient & cost effective way to test thin cross section of metal.

Welcome to make a thread in KM sub links to this thread.

daizee said:
Should this thread be in the knifemaker's discussion section?
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Thanks.

Hahaha maybe it's just a flea-hill got blown up into discovery proportion (thanks to me) :p

Revolverrodger said:
It would indeed be epic if he made duch an important discovery
I'm really interested to hear more about his findings
By the way Bluntcut your videos are very interesting
Click to expand...
 
Oh I just remember a concrete example of a false-limitation.

Excessive thermal cycle W2, it won't harden unless normalize again. In simpler term: once grain gets too fine, W2 won't harden (just pick a rc above 60).

Yes, I did hopped on the false-limitation wagon on whys xyz that W2 won't harden. And even got not sufficiently high rc even with Super Quench(SQ). OK - super quench has long history of mine, so let's ignore it. For a while, xyz sounds alright but my analytical mind refused to accept that - since austentite matrix got saturated with Carbon and after quench there is no pearlite. WHERE the heck are carbon hidding? no they didn't precipitated into cementite.

But when edge testing - it's soft & brittle at the same time. aha, the matrix is loaded with high percent of retained austenite. Eh? W2 then 52100 too? but this isn't xyz. My eyeballs bug-out from looking at etched samples with a microscope. Well, high RA% it is. I wasn't pleased with myself for xyz indigestion:grumpy:

CWF solved more than just RA for uber fine grain W2.

bluntcut said:
As human we cozy ourselves in blanket of limitations. Some of those limitations are actually "I don't know" but got pass around & enveloped with other "don't know" long enough, naturally turned into limitations. For many times in my ht journey, I got quite upset with myself because I believed false-limitations as facts. Perhaps, CWF will erase some low-hanging-fruit of ht false-limitations...
Click to expand...
 
bluntcut said:
Looking at just matrix strength(removed carbide/nitride/particle) - consists of martensite + interspacing + grainboundary, the latter 2 are weakness (chink in armour) against abrasion and other non-impact wearing. Just from plowing aspect - digging depth (everything the same) will be shallower on a stronger matrix. Akin to plowing packed(stronger) vs loose soil. From previous post above, I mentioned about SiO2 (silicon dioxide aka sillicate), when matrix is over all stronger/harder than SiO2, wear mostly be from non-martensite vectors (chink in armour). I actually have tested where matrix can strategically trade some martensite for nano precip carbides reside in interspacing to shield the matrix from SiO2. Slow wearing to even a slower rate. No, I didn't tested this 100 times nor scientific.



Yeah, they will have some explanation to do once I show the world 'how' :p
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Is this statement basically saying that "CWT" has the potential to maintain higher wear resistance due to limiting the spacing between the grains and their respective boundaries creating, for lack of a better term, a smaller "seam"?

And does your post go on to say that the carbides, if formed under the correct circumstances, could act as a buffer (or protective "patch") for the already minimized "seam" where the minimized boundary does exist? Thus potentially further increasing wear resistance?
 
Conceptual Yes & Yes. However actual data is limited - I will let others to test/verify/explore that. 'how' is to show collective a door because trying to fit other vast room won't fit in my little knife room in the garage :)

I've made quite a few tests where get-confident that precip - Fe3C initially and then AlloyxCy not coarsening as matrix leaking C. There are people out there with better equipment/lab out there to do this with more efficiency & precision than my poky blind attempts. Note - these stuff are consequential of a good matrix foundation.

NJBillK said:
Is this statement basically saying that "CWT" has the potential to maintain higher wear resistance due to limiting the spacing between the grains and their respective boundaries creating, for lack of a better term, a smaller "seam"?

And does your post go on to say that the carbides, if formed under the correct circumstances, could act as a buffer (or protective "patch") for the already minimized "seam" where the minimized boundary does exist? Thus potentially further increasing wear resistance?
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So then if we were to push this out to speaking hypothetically,
How do you see the roles of more "simple" or "cleaner" alloys such as AEB-L moving in relation to those higher in carbide volume (m390/204p, s90v+, et al)?

Would you expect alloys with a higher carbide volume to make the occurrence of this "CWF" to be less likely, harder to pin down, or harder to dial in?
If that is the case, would you expect the more "simple" alloys to experience a resurgence in popularity due to the bump in performance and being the "New Thing"?

Do you expect the uses and roles to be comparable as to what today's uses are, but with higher performance? More of a push to "cleaner" alloys for keen edge capability over working edge holding since the "cleaner" alloys would have performance bumped up to current PM/carbide rich alloys?
- please remember that these assertions and questions are only hypothetical and just trying to get a feel for what the perceived (or hoped) bump in blade performance would equate to, on a users end.
 
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From OP - CPM Rex 121 is among that hardened with CWF and had shown great edge stability - of course relative to its ridiculously high carbide volume.

In Matrix produced by CWF - carbides are strongly embedded so pop/fall-out threshold is higher. Thereby supporting thinner apex - as shown in OP video - chopping hard wood with thin edge geometry.

If slicing(more sawing motion) SiC sand paper or material loaded hard abrasives (but softer than VC), then VC/NbC will yield higher wear resistance. SiO2 got mention earlier because it's the common wearing particles embedded in almost all materials beside jello :D

For push/pressure and chop (which mostly an impulse push) impact works - in general low carbide volume would serves best. However for same works except material is loaded with silicate (such as bamboo), a carbide refined D2 with CWF and tempered for nano Cr7C3 protecting intercells; gb would be optimal - as long as refined carbide is smaller than 1um (rough estimate where carbide/particle no longer a fracture liability when encounter high impulse force/impact). Otherwise there are bunch of other steels range from 3V, **wear, van4e, m4, 4v, cts-xhp, etc.. will do the job well - of course with acceptance of PM 2-4um MC fracture liability (really only when apex is too thin). My test spectrumwear with CWF at high rc shown plenty of edge stability for hard chopping (albeit non silly abusive kinds).

Since I've tested a few of these scenarios, so I wouldn't call hypothetical... just not well test/studies.


NJBillK said:
So then if we were to push this out to speaking hypothetically,
How do you see the roles of more "simple" or "cleaner" alloys such as AEB-L moving in relation to those higher in carbide volume (m390/204p, s90v+, et al)?

Would you expect alloys with a higher carbide volume to make the occurrence of this "CWF" to be less likely, harder to pin down, or harder to dial in?
If that is the case, would you expect the more "simple" alloys to experience a resurgence in popularity due to the bump in performance and being the "New Thing"?

Do you expect the uses and roles to be comparable as to what today's uses are, but with higher performance? More of a push to "cleaner" alloys for keen edge capability over working edge holding since the "cleaner" alloys would have performance bumped up to current PM/carbide rich alloys?
- please remember that these assertions and questions are only hypothetical and just trying to get a feel for what the perceived (or hoped) bump in blade performance would equate to, on a users end.
Click to expand...
 
What amazes me most of your work Bluntcut (I have followed but rarely participated, read more, post less these days) is the shear amount of trial and error and your testing. Thanks for sharing your findings. I for one, and I know others as well, really appreciate it.
 
marthinus said:
What amazes me most of your work Bluntcut (I have followed but rarely participated, read more, post less these days) is the shear amount of trial and error and your testing. Thanks for sharing your findings. I for one, and I know others as well, really appreciate it.
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What marthinus says.
I'll probably never do any heat treat but enjoy reading your findings. Thank you.

Don't get hung up on what somebody describes as "scientific method". Often in science we look at multiple variables at the same time though not ideal it's often the only way possible.
In my former field of plant genetics we looked at hundred thousands of different changes, each one having a different effect. We pick what looks promising, confirm its not a fluke and only then drill down to what the actual variable was and how it might have caused the effect which we have observed.
We called it a shotgun approach.
 
Haven't posted my usual 'I want BCMW knives' (read:Amazed by Luong's work) for a while & it's already 3 pages! :eek:
I think Chiral & NJBillK come very close to understand the implications of CWF.

Luong is giving this to make a better world (imagine thinner lighter stronger bridge). And better knives too ;). I have only happiness if things turned out to be betterment (if there's such word) of less material usage, more efficient usage and result in longer available natural resources for humanity to continue living on this earth ... :thumbup:

And aye to 'shotgun approach'. I studied engineering in college but work mostly in financial industry. Neither here nor there but Luong sharing has always have it's unique twist. Someone said NASA couldn't find it but he could, nothing wrong with that ;)

Edit to add: Marthinus, your future GB might be ground flat and no chipping;)
 
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