Normalizing or stress relieve stainless steel

[Revolverrodger]

As the title states I was wondering if it is necessary to normaluze or stress relieve stainless steel knives made by stock removal.

Would it reduce the risk if warping a blade ?

 

[shqxk]

I believe you cant normalizing stainless or high alloy steel the same way as you do with typical carbon steel. Heating it above critcal temp and lets it air cool with just hardened it.

Stress relieving is way to go but I dont think it gonna help much. Better to dont grind to aggressive and to finished it in even geometry as much as possible before heat treat.

 

[john april]

once i started normalizing/grain refining/stress relieving high carbon steels, i got 90% less warps. it rarely happens now. i am not sure about stainless. i do mostly stock removal, so i assumed my high carbon steel would have no stresses like a forged blade would have. i was corrected at a knife show by an abs master smith, who explained the steel was forged at the factory, so it did indeed contain stresses. i have been doing it ever since. i have seen stainless damascus, and forged stainless. i wonder how those guys do it? i guess it comes down to how the steel was made. cpm stainless is a powder, maybe it does not get forged, just melted and poured ?

 

[scott.livesey]

crucible in their 440C data sheet says nothing about normalizing or stress relief. in their 154cm data sheet, heat to 1200F, hold two hours, air cool. so check the data sheet of the steel you have. just grinding the blade shouldn't make any difference. but lots of folks love heating steel for hours before hardening. if you are worried about warp, plate quench in a vise.

 

[Larrin]

Normalizing and stress relieving are two different things. Normalizing is not recommended for air hardening steels.

 

[samuraistuart]

If you normalize stainless steel, you end up hardening the blade in the process. But you can stress relieve them at 1200f for a few hours.

 

[Revolverrodger]

Ok thanks for the info
So how do you guys stress relieve stainless steels like aebl and nitro-v ?
Thanks

 

[scott.livesey]

find the steel data sheet. Sandvik does not list stress relieve for any of it's stainless steels on the website. we don't even know who makes nitro-v. as said, Crucible says for most of their stainless, heat to 1100-1300F, hold for 2 hours, cool in still air till steel is room temperature. make a blade without stress relief, HT per manufacturers suggestions, and see what you get.