Pulled my first real usable blade out of the forge last night after 4 months of trying

Finally got a knife that held an edge instead of chipping to hell, turns out I was overheating the steel before quench and just had to watch the color closer, has anyone else messed up their heat treat that bad starting out?

2 comments

2 Comments

sandra_black3d ago

Heat treat is where the real magic happens, and it's easy to screw up. Overheating before quench was my same mistake, made my first blades brittle as glass. Decalescence is a game changer once you actually see it happen.

thomas_scott4d ago

Funny you mention overheating, I did that my first few times and ended up with knives that looked like they got in a fight with a belt sander and lost. Watched a video about decalescence and it clicked for me, but man, the learning curve is steep (and hot). My worst mistake was forgetting to normalize a piece of 1084 and it warped so bad it looked like a potato chip. Still kept it on my bench as a reminder, because hey, mistakes teach better than successes sometimes.