Loading…
29
Quenched a 1095 blade in canola oil instead of my fast quench and the edge chipped out on me
So I ran out of my usual Parks 50 last month and figured I'd just use canola oil for a batch of three 1095 hunters I was making for a coworker's family. Watched a bunch of old forum threads saying it would work fine if you heat it up to like 130 degrees, so I did exactly that and got the blades into it in about a second. Hardness file said they were good, 63 on my tester, so I tempered and finished them out. First one chipped the edge bad when the guy's kid dropped it on a concrete step, and when I broke the second one to check grain it looked like road gravel instead of that fine silk gray. Turns out canola just doesn't cool fast enough for 1095 and I wasted like 30 hours plus a $60 bar of steel. Any of you got a cheaper fast oil you actually trust, or should I just eat it and reorder the Parks before the next batch?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
palmer.jana20d ago
Canola is actually fine for 1095 as long as your section is thin and you agitate hard, which it sounds like you skipped. The 63 reading means the steel got hard, and those chips are from the grain being too coarse before the quench, not the oil speed. Next time normalize three times and watch your soak, because blaming the oil is the easy way out.
10