How To W2 from maker material supply not hardening.

I

Ivanna

Joined
Mar 7, 2018
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Does anyone here use W2 from maker material supply? Could anyone please share your recipe? I have ordered many items from them with no issues, but my first time ordering W2 steel. Anyways, I ordered a bar of W2 5/32" and followed the data sheet to heat treat and it hardened to 40s hrc. I have a evenheat kiln, hrc tester, surface grinder, 5 gallons of parks 50 oil, and I've been mainly working with stainless, high carbon cpm steels, and 52100 for the past three years. I hardened 52100 along side the W2 but the W2 did not harden. I tried normalizing in stainless heat treat wrap to avoid de-carb as per data sheet and same result. I tried normalizing at 1900f followed by data sheet normalizing cycles with no change in results. I've read a bit about Aldos W2 heat treat issues and I'm wondering if maybe I have some of that steel. I forgot to mention oil was about 110 degrees when I quenched W2.
 
Ivanna said:
Does anyone here use W2 from maker material supply? Could anyone please share your recipe? I have ordered many items from them with no issues, but my first time ordering W2 steel. Anyways, I ordered a bar of W2 5/32" and followed the data sheet to heat treat and it hardened to 40s hrc. I have a evenheat kiln, hrc tester, surface grinder, 5 gallons of parks 50 oil, and I've been mainly working with stainless, high carbon cpm steels, and 52100 for the past three years. I hardened 52100 along side the W2 but the W2 did not harden. I tried normalizing in stainless heat treat wrap to avoid de-carb as per data sheet and same result. I tried normalizing at 1900f followed by data sheet normalizing cycles with no change in results. I've read a bit about Aldos W2 heat treat issues and I'm wondering if maybe I have some of that steel. I forgot to mention oil was about 110 degrees when I quenched W2.
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Use Water
 
W = water quenching; O = oil quenching; A = air "quenching".

At least that's been my understanding.

Water is going to take heat out of the steel a lot quicker than oil will. (with proper agitation)
 
W2 can be very frustrating. I have W2 from Aldo and it is inconsistent in that one piece may harden with a certain heat treatment and the next will not.
I use it in Damascus. I mix the W2 with 15N20. After all the forge welding it heat treats just fine. It also makes a very pretty looking Damascus.
 
It is likely spheroidized. Use the normalizing routine to restore it to pearlite and then harden. Some low alloy W2 needs water t6o harden fully.
Here is a good thread on the issue:

You said you use #50 oil. What temperature is it at? It needs to be room temp. Many folks who harden in 120-130° #50 get poor results.
 
Are you quenching the blade at full thickness or with bevels pre ground?
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
It is likely spheroidized. Use the normalizing routine to restore it to pearlite and then harden. Some low alloy W2 needs water t6o harden fully.
Here is a good thread on the issue:

You said you use #50 oil. What temperature is it at? It needs to be room temp. Many folks who harden in 120-130° #50 get poor results.
Click to expand...
Yes, oil temp was around 110f. I'm going to quench in water and hopefully that solves the issue. I'll provide an update to see what works.
 
Ivanna said:
Full thickness, 1/8". I'm going to try quenching in water and hopefully that solves the problem.
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That could be part of your problem, W2 is very shallow hardening and if you are too thick it likely wont harden properly at the edge. That makes it great for a hamons but you need to pregrind the bevels to thin out the cutting edge. I grind the bevels down to .030-.040” thick before hardening on W2. I would try that before trying water, parks 50 is fast enough it should harden the edge. If you are starting over normalize at 1650 for 10-15 minutes, grain refine at 1500 once for 10-15 minutes then 1475 for 8-10 minutes and quench in parks 50 pre heated to 70-80F. The working range for parks 50 is 50-120F but I find pre heating to 70-80 works best to start.
 
This worked consistently for me:

Hardened to 65-66rc at full thickness up to 5/32" thick, quenched with p50 at room termp (60-ish F)

Start from coarse spheroidized W2 (NJSB or unknown condition), wrapped in ss foil, 1900F 20 minutes soak, cool to black, 1475F 10minutes, cool to black, remove foil, 1475F 10-15 minutes, quench in P50.

Re-hardening: 1650F 10minutes, cool to black, 1475F 10min ...

Hardening from refined grain: 1450F 15min, quench in brine

Hardening from ultra refined grain: 1435F 15min, super quench *if hear as-quenched 'ping' = grain wasn't refined enough

When hardening with ~0.030" edge, use P50 except use brine in ultra refined aust grain condition
 
bluntcut said:
This worked consistently for me:

Hardened to 65-66rc at full thickness up to 5/32" thick, quenched with p50 at room termp (60-ish F)

Start from coarse spheroidized W2 (NJSB or unknown condition), wrapped in ss foil, 1900F 20 minutes soak, cool to black, 1475F 10minutes, cool to black, remove foil, 1475F 10-15 minutes, quench in P50.

Re-hardening: 1650F 10minutes, cool to black, 1475F 10min ...

Hardening from refined grain: 1450F 15min, quench in brine

Hardening from ultra refined grain: 1435F 15min, super quench *if hear as-quenched 'ping' = grain wasn't refined enough

When hardening with ~0.030" edge, use P50 except use brine in ultra refined aust grain condition
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info.
 
Ivanna said:
Does anyone here use W2 from maker material supply? Could anyone please share your recipe? I have ordered many items from them with no issues, but my first time ordering W2 steel. Anyways, I ordered a bar of W2 5/32" and followed the data sheet to heat treat and it hardened to 40s hrc. I have a evenheat kiln, hrc tester, surface grinder, 5 gallons of parks 50 oil, and I've been mainly working with stainless, high carbon cpm steels, and 52100 for the past three years. I hardened 52100 along side the W2 but the W2 did not harden. I tried normalizing in stainless heat treat wrap to avoid de-carb as per data sheet and same result. I tried normalizing at 1900f followed by data sheet normalizing cycles with no change in results. I've read a bit about Aldos W2 heat treat issues and I'm wondering if maybe I have some of that steel. I forgot to mention oil was about 110 degrees when I quenched W2.
Click to expand...
Update: I tried 1900f soak in stainless foil and several normalization cycles, 1475f HT, into parks 50 and same result.

Finally, I annealed it, and figured I had nothing to lose. 1475f for 10 mins and straight into water. End result was 66-67 hrc throughout entire blade after removing decarb. No cracks no pings. Thanks everyone for all the advice.

On a side note. Makermaterialsupply.com has excellent customer service. I had notified them via email of the issues I was having and immediately Aaron phoned me and explained to me their process of sorting metals to avoid mixing different type of steels. Anyways, he sent me a new W2 bar, no questions asked. I need to contact him and give him an update. I'll gladly pay for it.
 
Ivanna said:
Update: I tried 1900f soak in stainless foil and several normalization cycles, 1475f HT, into parks 50 and same result.

Finally, I annealed it, and figured I had nothing to lose. 1475f for 10 mins and straight into water. End result was 66-67 hrc throughout entire blade after removing decarb. No cracks no pings. Thanks everyone for all the advice.

On a side note. Makermaterialsupply.com has excellent customer service. I had notified them via email of the issues I was having and immediately Aaron phoned me and explained to me their process of sorting metals to avoid mixing different type of steels. Anyways, he sent me a new W2 bar, no questions asked. I need to contact him and give him an update. I'll gladly pay for it.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear,

All those grain refining steps can reduce hardenability requiring a faster quench than what parks 50 is capable of.

Combine that with a material that already has extremely low hardenability and you have steel that will let you know it needs a faster quenchant.

Luckily, you were able to see it wasn't working thanks to your surface grinder and hardness tester etc allowing you to rule things out rather than guess.

It can be frightening though because you could have situations where you cannot detect big changes in hardness but you'll have little nodules of pearlite colonies hiding inside of your microstructure which will kill your edge retention even though the bulk hardness is sufficient.

Thank you for sharing. Excellent work.

Lastly, what temperature was the water?
 
DeadboxHero said:
Glad to hear,

All those grain refining steps can reduce hardenability requiring a faster quench than what parks 50 is capable of.

Combine that with a material that already has extremely low hardenability and you have steel that will let you know it needs a faster quenchant.

Luckily, you were able to see it wasn't working thanks to your surface grinder and hardness tester etc allowing you to rule things out rather than guess.

It can be frightening though because you could have situations where you cannot detect big changes in hardness but you'll have little nodules of pearlite colonies hiding inside of your microstructure which will kill your edge retention even though the bulk hardness is sufficient.

Thank you for sharing. Excellent work.

Lastly, what temperature was the water?
Click to expand...
It was room temperature. 60-70 degrees.
 
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