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Tried quenching a 1084 blade in canola oil instead of my usual Parks 50 and the edge cracked on me
I have been forging 1084 for about two seasons now and always used Parks 50 for the quench, but last Saturday I was out of it and a guy at the hammer-in in York said canola works fine for simple carbon steel. I heated the blade to 1475, let it soak for five minutes in the forge, and dunked it in a gallon of canola I picked up at the grocery store for four bucks. The tip went in first and I heard a tiny tick about two seconds later, and when I pulled it out there was a hairline crack running up from the edge about three quarters of an inch. What I figured out is that canola just does not pull heat fast enough on a thin edge, so the steel was still too hot when the martensite started forming and the stress popped it. Next time I will either spring for the real fast oil or just do a fully normalized edge and warm the canola to about 130. Anybody here get canola to work with thin edges or do you all just bite the bullet and buy the good stuff?
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keithbennett19d ago
Man, my buddy Dale had almost the same thing happen last fall. He grabbed canola on a whim for a 1095 hunter and the tip cracked on him before he even got it out of the oil. Turns out his canola was cold from sitting in the garage, so it was even slower than normal. He warmed it up to about 130 the next time and slowed his quench down even more, and it worked fine on a thicker blade but he still won't trust it on a thin edge. He keeps a bucket of Parks 50 now and only uses canola for stuff he doesn't care about.
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