Used to quench in water until I ruined a blade I spent 3 weeks on

For like 6 years I just used whatever water was in the bucket by the forge. Thought that's how everyone did it. Then I snapped a chef knife I was making for a guy in Austin after the third quench. Just a clean split right through the edge. My mentor watched it happen and goes "you using that cold tap water again?" and that's when he showed me to heat my quench oil to 130 degrees. I switched to canola oil that night and I haven't cracked a blade since. The difference is night and day especially with 1084 steel. Anyone else have a bad quench story that forced you to change your setup?

2 comments

2 Comments

noah91721d ago

Cracked a 1095 camp knife right down the middle once because I got impatient and skipped normalizing. Thought I could just heat it up and quench like normal. Wound up with two halves of a knife and a lot of cuss words. Now I always do at least two normalizing cycles before hardening. Learned that one the hard way.

jordan13421d ago

Is it really that critical though, @noah917?