O1 Tool steel

Re: O1 Tool steel

steve knight


>www.mscdirect.com

http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INSRHM

http://www.mcmaster.com/

the first one is the cheapest. the first and last you will get your order in a day.

Re: O1 Tool steel *LINK*

Hank Knight from SC


>Try MSC DIrect and search for keyword "flat stock." See link below.


MSC Industrial Supply

Re: O1 Tool steel

George in Lowell, Mich.


>Bob,

I would not use the O-1. I have made blades out of both O-1 & A-2, and there is no comparison between the two!!! The A2 holds an edge much longer. It costs about the same and also is just as easy for you to harden.

George in humid & hot Mich.

O1 vs A2

woodburnbob


>I'd like to hear about your method of heat treatment, precision temperatures e.g. ramp, hold, etc., George, if you have a moment.

Last weekend I spent quite a bit of time working on a bunch of irons. I have 4 proprietary A2 irons and noticed I didn't think they were getting very sharp, compared with old blades I assume are 01 or W1...independent of how long they might or might not hold comparable edges.

I like 01 alot

Jim in Burlington On


>It doesn't require any precision heat treating. It says on the directions that came with the bar's that I have bought even at it's hardest your looking at rockwell 64. I save up a few blades and start by putting them in the gas bbq just push a few briquets to the side and when they are red hot I take them out and heat them up with a Mapp gas torch about the last 1 1/2" till a rare earth magnet won't stick then plunge them into canola oil(there is a little spitting and flashing of the oil). Then put them in a old electric frypan on a rack that's heated to 350 for a hour. Took a few into a machine shop and they test out to 59-60 rockwell. A 36" bar of 01 2 3/4" wide made over 20 blades. Probably the most work was in making a few blades for my Record 0778. I don't really buy the argument that 01 has a short life before needing resharpening.

Re: O1 vs A2

Frank D. in Montreal


>I have about 10 proprietary A2 blades and 15 chisels that I made from A2. I do see a slight difference in edge life, more so with higher bevel angles (my 62 has an O1 blade that I sharpen at 40 degrees and it loses it's edge noticeably faster than another LA jack with an A2 blade). But at lower angles (20-30 deg) I find that A2 has a tendency to chip more than it does at higher angles, so there is less of an advantage, in my mind at least (Steve Elliot has a lot of solid info on this). The biggest disadvantage of working with A2 is that you have to take it in to the heat treaters unless you have fancy equipment, so that raises the price per blade and forces you to work in batches which can really slow down projects (one-offs are impossible if you need them immediately). SO A2 can be a good choice for certain projects and certain blades, but not necessarily; like most things it depends. O1 is certainly not an inferior steel. It's easier to sharpen too.

(this is not necessarily directed at you Bob, I just had to stick it in somewhere...)

Re: O1 Tool steel *LINK*

William Duffield, on the Cohansey


>I use Bohler-Uddeholm's online ordering websiite, FlatGround.Com.

They carry precision ground round and flat stock tool steels in O1, A2, D2, S7, and low Carbon (1020) in both Standard and Oversize tolerances in standard lengths and small quantities.

Re: O1 vs A2

ThomD


>I like O1 a lot too. Heattreating is an art and science there can be a 100% difference in edge retention in careful testing with the same RC, etc... with the same steel, so I don't think one can derive as much as one might imagine from a test here or there it is a lot more complex. So the home user can pretty much satisfy himself with the knowledge that there is a liftime of performance improvements to explore with these steels.

art and science

bill tindall


>Something technical can be an art when relevant variables are not understood or controlled. Home heat treating where little is controlled probably does fit into this catagory. Commercially, heat treating is science and engineering. I visited a bearing factory a couple of weeks ago. The races that the bearings support must be, and can be, reliably hardened by control of the relevant variables. There is no art to precisely controlling times and temperatures.

Their oven heat treat cycle used to be 12 hours. The bearing parts are now heat treated in 25 seconds, total cycle time, with induction heating. The heat treating was part of the manufacturing development that enables them to provide made to order delivery of bearings in 24 hours. Can't get a bearing from China in 24 hours, and that is their edge.

Re: art and science *LINK*

woodburnbob


>After reading your post, Bill, I googled around a little and ran into this link, which makes me wonder if I could do it myself.


induction heating at home

induction heating

bill tindall


>enjoyed reading the link you posted, and thanks for finding it, but don't think I will be building one for the shop. I have more prosaic needs like getting the finish on a cabinet and the humidity is too high to spray (or move around to much).

Re: art and science

ThomD


>right (have baby in one arm so caps are out)

that's not it. engineers and scientists aren't trying to achieve the same objectives. i don't doubt they could but they aren't trying. that's were the home part fits in. so a guy outfitted with a really good plane can make wonderfully smooth boards/shavings, while industrial scientific processes don't compare. we know they probably could if there was a huge market for a super surfacer, but there isn't. there are dozens of similar examples in woodworking.

the better home guys are getting completly consistent, better results because they are asking different questions, and getting different answers. science is a wonderful thing but the last time i checked they weren't claiming to know what they don't know, haven't examined, and aren't interested in, they are modest on that score.

O1 vs A2

jim reed @ tallahassee


>O is quinched in oil and A is quenched in air. Both are high carbon steels, but there are many different recipes. Find a reputable source for your materials, study the composition, and experiment. To achieve consistent results, professional equipment is needed. I make hundreds of cutters a year and use a professional service. That said, you can make your own suitable cutters and blades with O-1. Good luck.

Re: art and science

steve knight


>way cool I could use one myself. it would be easier then getting the oxy propane tourch going.

Re: O1 vs A2

ThomD


>Professional doesn't really mean much, there are pros who make a living at this stuff who use nothing much more than an AO torch or a home made propane forge. It's like plywood or MDF cabinets, you want to sell hundreds of kitchen's worth of cabinets a year you need to start thinking about "professional" methods. This stuff kills me on the hand tool board...

"This stuff kills me...."

Larry Williams


>I find the search for the magic bullet steel amusing. I enjoy the threads about it, it's one of the best sources of creative writing on woodworking forums.

W-1, O-1 or A-2 can make perfectly suitable blades and irons. Each has its own properties that give advantages for certain applications and the real quality of the blade rests in heat treating. I've heat treated a lot of things over the years and have the equipment to handle most of what we need done. I'm confident I can more accurately heat treat small pieces, where uniform heat distribution isn't an issue, with our torch system than I can with our computer controlled furnace.

Clarity about professional

jim reed @ tallahassee


>Perhaps you missed the point. Or perhaps professional means nothing to you. It does mean something to me and my customers. It means that there are quality standards in place which result in consistent quality. This applies to hundreds of products. Backyard torching is OK if consistency is not an issue. Anyone trying to make hundreds of exact products either invests in quality machinery or hires out the job.

Re: Clarity about professional

ThomD


>You are just puffing yourself up. Professional used to mean something, like doctor, lawyer. Training, peer review, self-regulation etc... Now it just means "I have a business card".

I don't doubt that there are certain necesities related to producing large number of a certain product to a high standard. They don't include making spurious coments about the work of others you don't seem to understand.

I'm sure you do a wonderful job Jim, but so do others working in different ways.

Epist�m� and techn� -- a clarification

David Barnett - SW Florida


>There seems to be some confusion as to Science and Art. They are more complimentary than antonymic, you know.

Techn� is lit. Greek for "craftsmanship" and in a broader and somewhat less precise sense "art", "craft", or "skill" (esp. dexterity and deftness of hand), and in modernity "technique", "system", or "method". Knowledge proper is "epist�m�", and the study of how we know things, organize them and test them (know them to be true or false) is, of course, epistomology. "Science" is a state of knowing, a possession of systematized knowledge, and a system of acquiring knowledge in a repeatably verifiable manner that rigorously subjects such knowledge to generalized principles and so-called laws.

Technique (art, craft) can be precise, algorithmic, designed and informed by knowledge and conditionally altered in real-time by process feedback and control, so I would consider the knowledge of what happens to metal and what outcomes are desired, to be "science", and the expedient, controlled process to achieve the desired outcome to be "art". Doing this in a non-repeatable or less-consistent, less-informed and less-controlled, less-efficient manner would be less artful, but would nevertheless be "art" per se, whether or not the technician understands the underlying a posteriori causes or generalized principles explanatory to transforming properties in metals through thermal manipulation.

Indeed, an empirical or serendipitious discovery of the heat treating process may yield consistent and satisfactory outcomes without the underlying science. Of course, it would likely be more difficult to modify or improve technique without that systematic knowledge, but not impossible as proved by centuries of alchemical discoveries and thaumaturgical praxes and even through so-called "magick" which may assign Hermetic and supernal symmetries and happenstances as axiomatic causal factors. Or something like that.

So "art" needn't convey cavalier lack of precision nor free-reigning expression without regard to formal and logical process and principles. That's aberrant modernism (apologies to Jackson Pollack). In fact, one can leave "fine art" (which usually isn't) out of it altogether and have a least a passing shot at semantically disambiguating the muck and muddle, if ya know what I mean.

There. Isn't that better?

Re: Clarity about professional

Teacher


>Jim's point is not that people can't do a good job, but rather that people with the right setup and know-how can do a good AND CONSISTENT job, so their customers always know what they're getting. People like me, who harden steel using charcoal grills, buckets of vegetable oil, and home ovens, make pretty good blades, but (1.) we have more than a professional's share of duds, and (2.) even with care, our blades aren't consistently hardened...some are harder than others. A professional setup, on the other hand, ensures something more predictable.

What brings on this cynicism, if I might ask? I for one have had wonderful experiences with many tiny "professional" operations who have done things I could not.

Insulting

jim reed @ tallahassee


>I only offered opinions. They are worth what you paid for them. I am sure you had a message in your comment, but it was lost in your insult.

Hey David

Dan Donaldson


>Can you translate that into English for us linguistically challenged? ;-)

(Fully tongue in cheek and ducking and running ;-))

Why not?

David Barnett - SW Florida


>There's an art to science but not really a science of art, and when someone tries to make one, it's usually postmodern, Marxist, French, and even more Byzantine than my prose. You know, just because the cat had her kittens in the oven, that don't make 'em biscuits.

;-)

Dan Donaldson