I’m just an amateur guy who messed with metal on occasion
And straight up not following the logic
I know heating and quenching makes it harder, which is good for knives and such, but also makes it more brittle I guess? And likely to crack?
The descriptions on this subject are literally “over explaining the scientific molecular composition of metal” or “so anyway make hot then make un hot, dat good”
But I was trying to bend some metal today, heated it up a few times and got it near its shape, then cooled it by quenching so no one would grab it and burn their hands on it while I stepped away, came back and heated again and it just broke lol
In: Other
Making it harder also makes it easier to break
Tldr; hard is tough until it breaks, ductile deforms before it breaks, strong is a balance between the two that meets the needs of the product.
There’s a lot of tried and tested science behind it but when you’re heat treating something you’re more or less looking for a balance that meets the needs of the product. Hard enough not to deform but not too hard where it snaps.
Also under certain conditions heat cycling can cause stress and repeating that just adds stress, if you create a crack even a micro fracture upon striking something it will relieve that stress by growing the crack until the material snaps.
Also while working with hot metal like forging blades the metal crystalizes in particular ways and if you don’t address it properly before quenching you could end up with a crystalized structure resembling sand with a much weaker bond between them than the velvet you want, this leads to a very fragile blade.
Lastly to remove stress of quenching from material you can temper it which is to ‘warm’ the material up to a desired temperature for a certain amount of time. This relieves some of the stress and makes the material a little more ductile leaving you with something that should be hard but not too hard ie strong.
Latest Answers