Thread: Hitachi White 1A Steel

I just looked up the richters to see if they say how they're made - drop forged chrome manganese steel. the term chrome manganese steel doesn't mean a whole lot (I mean that in a good way - it's not like you can just draw a line to the cheapest chinese chisels and go "see!!!! same steel!!!").

I don't know what the richters are made of, but they have this in their ad copy about cryo:
"This alters the mechanical properties of the steel at the molecular level greatly increasing its strength, toughness and wear resistance."

Nobody seems to be able to get this factually correct. When extra hardness makes a difference on drill bits, wear resistance will be better. On knives and tools, cryo treatment doesn't increase wear resistance.

It also lowers toughness in combination with increasing strength.

LV also makes a statement with the V11 tools that they are much tougher or some such thing. it's factually false, but it's ad copy. I guess for woodworking tools, we kind of feel like the people selling know better, but they don't. I think they don't know at all and don't burden themselves with knowing.

the richter chisels are using cryo to make the heat treatment process a little easier in terms of consistent final hardness, and to gain a point of hardness. That's what I'd use it for if I were using it. Finding out that a brine quench will work fine with 52100 and other water hardening steels would give me less of a step up, but I doubt there will be much brine quenching done at a commodity level.

Of course, the chisels are drop forged, and probably from rod. I don't have any issue with that. it can occasionally cause a fault from odd grain direction, but you can just exchange them.

if you want to make a chisel profitably, though, doing it their way is the way to go. Chrome manganese rod is probably bought by the ton about $1000 a ton. it's $600 in china, but who knows where they're getting it. They're induction heating it, drop forging it and then machine grinding it, running it through a basic heat treat and dipping it in nitrogen. Nitrogen is cheap if you are anywhere close to steel, and probably is cheap in general at the industrial level since it's a steel byproduct.

the top style of the grinding lets you know that it's placed in a machine like a buck brothers hardware store chisel and ground, but it's probably ground slower and definitely to a finer grit - who knows - and so the lands aren't large.

Industrially, that's all pretty much the way to do it. I can make a better chisel than they are making with the richter, though - but I wouldn't be able to do it for $25 wholesale - that's for sure.

I've obviously (already) thought about what it would take for me to make chisels and sell them. I know what the money proposition is and when grinding them and affixing the bolster, could make a set of 5 in a long day. Forging them from rod open forging and not contracting someone to have them die forged or more likely pressed in dies (something I'd never do either of) - I could only probably draw out two a day by hand and would need to make a tire hammer or something or possibly a davinci style hammer.

if I got to the point that I was heat treating half a dozen things a day, the results would be scary consistent. Steve and I were talking and I made a couple of W1 chisels and then a test blank - all were 68 or 68.5 hardness out of the quench, which brought up the little inside joke of "oh, i'm surprised they're the same".

How can I get more people heat treating and hobby making tools? I don't know the answer to that, I guess. The blacksmithing pages have some absymal ideas about heat treating in the open air, and bladeforums want to convince people that it can't be done without an electric furnace, even for 1084. i wonder what some guy working in the 1850s would've thought about that. The things that really drive up the quality of plain steels (including 52100) are far easier to do by hand. the knife makers who start with all open air process (not sure if fowler did that, but calton, etc) all seem to defer later to using a furnace, even though it doesn't improve quality. I think fatigue probably causes that.

For so many years, I bought tools and liked to sort out the differences in them. I bought into the thing about hitachi white steel being almost impossible to heat treat, but I'm going to prove that's bogus sometime in the next couple of months, and I guess at some point, will perhaps get nital because the only thing I haven't proven so far is that the grain size in my steels as finer than almost anything that comes off of a schedule and there's no giving up hardness with that, either.

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Large industrial bearings, like the sort used in rolling mills, hammer mills, and granulators, typically have very hard wear faces and soft/normalized core/everywhere else. The use of shallow hardening steel is intentional to prevent catastrophic failure via the bearing splitting without warning from shock/flexing. They still fail, but they tend to chip out and then grind themselves to bits. That sort of behavior gives some warning that bad things are happening before a red hot, half-mile long ribbon of steel pukes out the side of a high speed rolling mill.

Linear bearing rod and ballscrew stock is similar. They want a super hard surface for wear resistance, but a much softer core to take some flex and misalignment without snapping in half.

This is different than drill rod, which usually shoots for a cutting end which is both very hard and capable of being resharpened, with a somewhat softer shank.

The interesting thing is that the wide variety of applications suggest multiple different preparations/metal structures which could nominally come from the "Same alloy."

BUT.... While the chase is good, it's better to develop a process that separates your product from the discount house and hardware store fare. This isn't happening in the world as it stands, until you get to the top. The reality is that the work it takes to get stuff to that level basically prices the cheap stuff out of the market. Realistically, would anybody buy an Asia import chisel that tests "Almost as good as Lie Nielsen" if it sold at 85% of Lie Nielsen's price? Now... If Two Cherries or Ashley Iles bellied up to the bar like Narex did with their Richter series, they could get that premium price level, but not Aldi or Lidl.

Ed Fowler was a master of this. His knives were pretty soft. The blades were only hard on the cutting edges. AND he used steel that was fairly common (52100.). BUT... He successfully differentiated his product with how he made it, the grain structure he achieved, and then tied that to their performance in real life. So, for example, just because his knives were made of 52100 and came out around Rc56 didn't mean anybody believed a Pakistan made 52100 knife at Rc 56 to be "just as good."

I've had some thoughts about maybe even though I'm not going to regularly make chisels, making a set and putting them on etsy for $500 for 5 or $600 for 6. I'm sure there will be a few people who think that's piggish, but those are generally not who you would sell them to. I think at this point, I am nearing the limit of what anyone anywhere can do heat treating by hand and eye, and on higher hardness steel, i'm beating commercially heat treated stuff.

Conveying what the chisels are will be key and providing specs.

Sort of a "chisels from anonymous". They'll be forged integrally (one piece) and if I don't find anything better, out of the jantz 52100 that I just used.

Another thing you mentioned here or in another thread is files. I often hear the mention that files are not through and through high carbon steel, but I've never seen one that isn't - at least not made in the last 100 years. I would not at all be surprised to find they got some kind of supplemental surface treatment to make the "even better", but I haven't looked much into files other than using them as feedstock.

Yesterday, I ground a chisel that is hammered out of a gigantic 7/8x7/8 square generic chisel. The steel forges easily, but it would not harden in parks. I suppose if it was cut thin enough it would. I'm emboldened by how well brine works if you understand how to prepare what goes into it and understand the importance of even heating along with that (as in, no bevels, no curves, no nothing to create a differential in the speed of heat treat on various parts of a tool). So, last night, I was not totally done with the chisel, but it's drawn out an inch longer than I want it to be. I should add, I already know this steel will harden in water - that was the missing link. Even parks 50 (one of the fastest oils used for water hardening steels) just isn't fast enough for it.

I gave it the routine I give most things but this time, I pre-quenched it in brine to make sure that the grain shrink is working over martensite structure - i've found 52100 better if it's quenched a second time, which nobody really likes, but it is what it is. And then yesterday, finally found where Larrin conveyed in an article about grain refinement that it's better when done starting with a martensitic structure.

https://ofhandmaking.files.wordpress..._13_17_pro.jpg

I didn't push it too hard -it's clear from grinding it that it is very low alloy and thus doesn't need to be pushed like 52100 does to get high hardness. I did push it far harder than "going to nonmagnetic", though. I wanted to see knowing that it's not that hardenable if it would through harden, and also see if it would maybe be the first higher carbon steel that with a little bit of pushing would bloat. 1084 will bloat in 10 or 15 seconds of moderately higher heat than it should have.

What that cross section shows is that it's generally through hardened. The shiny bits at the top are just some tearing or shearing as the sample breaks. It wasn't ungodly hard to snap it with a hammer in the vise, which is another sign the center isn't hardened.

But I was confused when I hardness tested it after not much resting time - it tested only mid 50s on one side and 66 on the other. I kind of expect 67-69, which doesn't sound much different than 66, but grinding this stuff and the flame ball of combustion that came from the grinding suggests very plain and very high carbon. I left it alone and checked it an hour later and it was on the way up and then this morning, it's 68 1/2 hardness.

I never temper immediately - it cuts off some of the martensite transformation if a steel takes some time to fully transform. I think the 66 reading was accurate and the 50s readings probably just indicate the opposite side isn't flat and it's flexing on the anvil of the portable tester.

I don't know that the carbon distribution in this file is perfectly even, though - but it had no brand on it at all - it's definitely a very old file, but 1900s and generic. the camera shows some banding of carbides in the snapped sample, and as I've found with 52100, if there is banding or uneven distribution, drop forging or drawing out like I'm doing just isn't really going to eliminate it all. The original steels with surplus carbon including wootz would show banding, and some of the sort of legendary status of "how did they get that much carbon in the steel" (2% or so) is probably related just to the uneven carbide distribution. had it been more even, the steel would've been brittle. That's my guess, at least.

While forging, why not upset a wider section into a bolster so you can use your favorite 26C3 stock. I make no claims on being a smith of any sort, but I've heated and hammered some flat sections into thicker, wider ones. Surprising how easy it is when the steel is properly hot.

On the question of 52100, Stanley made their better "Sheffield Steel" edge tools out of the English equivalent for the better part of 20 years. It can certainly be made into good edge tools, though it definitely has a lot more alloying in it than W1 or O1.

I think as a maker, the 26c3 sets you apart in ways the other stuff doesn't.

You are right, the 26c3 is differentiating.

I can get 52100 to places where you won't find it out on the open market (64/65 after a strong double temper), but it is far less cooperative about getting there.

The battle to get 26c3 hard is basically zero - there isn't chromium sequestering carbon in any concentration, and it doesn't need too much to make it different than a commercially made chisel other than a quick normalization and thermal cycles. The decrease in grain size does make a noticeable difference in edge durability vs. just normalizing steel, and then austenitizing and quenching.

But 52100 prefers to hold its carbon and you really have to push it to get the carbon into solution without growing grain. And it's not nearly as easy to say "well, everything will be within about half a point". You can do the same thing visually to two pieces of steel and one chisel will be 65 and the next 63. That's variation I can't tolerate.

Sometime in the near future, I'll brine quench hitachi white and 26c3 to see how different it is vs. parks. it should be in the 64/65 range after a brine quench and 400F temper - it being both of them.

john, I saw something else you might find interesting. on bladesmith forum, there's someone getting spectrum analysis done to junk steel just to see what it is. Some of it's not interesting to us (railroad track - aside from the fact that the oft said "it's always 1084" is false. the two samples the guy tested were something more like 1060 and 1030, respectively .

But he tested three files. One older nicholson, one older heller and one chinese file.

All three were 1.2-1.3% carbon. The heller and nicholson were very plain, but the chinese file (highest carbon of the three at just over 1.3%) had 0.7% chromium in it. I thought that was odd, but it may make industrial heat treatment easier.

All three had very low impurities, including the very cheap chinese file.

I had some hit or miss attempts with various files hitting highest hardness or where I'd expect it - in parks.

I think in brine, all of them would make stellar chisels. So far, I think water is a very rough kind of inexact quench, but brine seems to be fine for chisels where they're not wide and thin like plane irons or slicing knives. A chisel will warp in a pre-quench (that's important) but it can be reheated for thermal cycles and straightened and the next brine quench is very straight and the depth of hardening up the chisel is well beyond what the fastest quench oil can do. The distortion from agitation in a fast oil quench is worse than a more calm quench in brine. of course, the shop doesn't smell like someone ran an LGB with the smoker on for three hours, either (parks 50 has a strong paraffinic smoke smell).