That heat treat soak time was my week-long enemy

I spent 5 days trying to harden a batch of 1095 blades and kept getting soft edges. My quench was fine, my temps were in range, but I never held the soak long enough before the quench. Turns out my 1/4 inch stock needed a 10 minute soak at 1475, not the 3 minutes I was doing. First blade after that corrected soak came out glass hard and took a file like it was air. How do you all figure out soak times for thicker stock, trial and error or a chart you swear by?

1 comments

1 Comment

kai77914h ago

Slammed into the same wall with 3/16 inch 1084 last year. I was convinced my oil was the problem, dumped two gallons of fresh parks 50 down the drain before I finally checked my soak. Now I just run a test coupon with a scrap piece from the same bar, quench it, and file test it before I commit the good blades. The chart in my shop manual gets me close, but that test coupon is the only thing I actually trust. Funny how one extra minute of soak makes the difference between crap and glass.