Tried another new steel...AEB-L

[D_W]

Tried it before, but couldn't get it hard enough to be useful.

Today, I just blasted it with two mapp torches in a small area (inside an insulated paint can forge, so lots of confinement and not a lot of mass to heat up) and could only get really the first inch hot enough, but that would be enough for about a million feet of planing before cutting the thing up and making two marking knives out of it.

AEB-L is a matrix steel, meaning it has relatively low carbon - not much in surplus for the chromium in it (oh yeah, it's stainless, too) to create large carbides (I don't know anything about chemistry, but carbides consume carbon).

This stuff is a very inexpensive stainless that's also stamped/blanked into the metallic part of coated razor blades. It's never that hard in them.

But with liquid nitrogen and a furnace (I have neither) it could temper to 64 and comfortably to 62.

Edge life is significantly higher than A2 and about 15-20% below V11. It is a much tougher steel than V11.

What did I find? First, you have to plane twice the footage to get some edge wear that you can see....but there's nothing in the matrix to look at. It looked smudged. There are probably a few elongated or wormy carbides according to the micrograph of the stuff.

if you look at the bottom of the picture, it looks blurry. It's actually in focus for at least part of the length.



I don't have much to conclude about it - it feels different, greasy, etc, and it doesn't have quite the same sweetness as it wears as 80crv2 and O1 (1095 and 26c3 also have that sweetness).

I have never seen a steel like this where the wear pattern is weird looking and smudged.

Sharpening is much in proportion to edge life. You can see how much less rounded this is than 80crv2 over the same footage planed as the other picture.

Why the edge wears in a different shape taking the same shaving from the same board, I don't know.



Kind of a let down - the average minimal use plane user wouldn't notice what I'm talking about right away and maybe never would (the sweetness of the cut), but that sweetness is what allows a plane to stay in the cut with the cap set even while the plane is dulling - without much external down pressure.

maybe it's better suited to kitchen knives. Nice, but not nice enough to rush out and buy a furnace and dewar. Like 52100, I expected a little more given the fanfare over the stuff for knives.

to heat treat this stuff in the open atmosphere is against all rules of decency on the knife forums, and I already got banned there for being a troll talking about being able to figure out how to harden things in the open atmosphere by trying to overshoot the temperature target and then not soak.

But yet again, I do have a relatively hard iron here, definitely usable and probably 59/60 and no evidence of lack of toughness or uneven carbide disperson.

I'd send some samples off for testing, but the guy who was testing them for me is the son of another guy who made a stink to get me kicked off of the knife forums. The testing is just two pieces of equipment that take up about as much space together as a large contractor saw, so maybe I will eventually just hunt for the stuff used (a versitron type hardness tester and something called a charpy notch tester).

I don't venture into stainless other than XHP (V11) from time to time and now this - it's just weird seeing something that doesn't have much for carbides in it. I'm beginning to think the way 1084 is and the way this is, the carbides in small size and good dispersion actually make an edge cut better as it wears.

 

[D_W]

So, what's the draw here in the first place? Most stainless steels lose toughness if they can get to high hardness - the popular expensive CPMs often have a quarter or third of the toughness that this stuff has. if they are really loaded with chromium and vanadium and various other things, they can wear longer than this steel does.

but they are coarse and have a lot of carbides near the edge that are large. Cracks in steel start in carbides, so an edge that is tons of carbide volume with some big ones is an edge that will not ever stay fine. some of them will be cracked just in sharpening. So we don't see them in woodworking.

I thought that maybe this stainless with the fine grain would be like -stainless but feels and sharpens like a carbon steel. It really just feels different, but it does sharpen finely and doesn't generate a ragged edge like coarse stainless steels (or original ingot D2) do.

Here is a micrograph of AEB-L - the bright bits are carbides.

https://i0.wp.com/knifesteelnerds.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1000X-AEB-L.jpg?w=750&ssl=1
here is XHP - the same as or almost identical to V11

https://i0.wp.com/knifesteelnerds.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1000X-XHP.jpg?w=750&ssl=1(notice how you can actually see the carbides in the micrograph and then see what they look like in an edge from one of my edge pictures - Tried a new steel - 80CrV2)

Just for a little sizzle - this is D2 before powder metal D2 - this is where you'll find older machinists talking about how "D2 takes a bad edge and holds it forever". Notice the size of the carbides.

https://i1.wp.com/knifesteelnerds.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1000X-D2.jpg?w=750&ssl=1
And A2 - same thing, but not as bad.

https://i2.wp.com/knifesteelnerds.c...05/A2-cropped-scaled.jpg?resize=768,582&ssl=1
A whole glom of micrographs at this page:
https://knifesteelnerds.com/2019/05/26/new-micrographs-of-42-knife-steels/
most of the consumer steels that are in stainless pocket knives (420HC) are lower in hardness and almost devoid of free carbides, I think because that's what it takes to keep people from being able to break knife blades and send knives back demanding a new one.

 

[Droogs]

Once I have digested this lot @D_W Will send you a pm. Like to have a chat about all this for a project I have on the back burner. Can i just ask how you think the 80crv2 would wear in widths 1mm/40thou up to around 13mm/1/2"

 

[D_W]

feel free - I think something 1mm wide had better be really tall, but would need to know the application.

The limitation of water hardening steels like 80crv2 is really cross section. They are not "deep hardening" steels, as in they will not fully harden through a thick cross section and a hot center will have some effect on being able to get the surface hardened well.

That was the big improvement of O1 - that it would through harden relatively easily and could be quenched at a slower cooling rate an get full hardness, which usually results in less distortion when hardening.

Plane irons are thin and good technique with a little short square of plane blade below the slot is not demanding in terms of functionally handling warping (until pinching pennies on the machining side gets really important).

 

[D_W]

If the volume of stuff is confusing above, a big theme for me here was chasing a stainless (stainless steels always wear longer than plain steels of similar characteristics) that has super fine grain thinking the super fine grain would effectively improve how the steel wears. It doesn't look so far like it does. Super fine grain does allow for finer bevels, so AEB-L in a thin paring knife would be quite nice.

I will probably make a paring knife with it in the next couple of weeks, but there's a problem here with new knives - the wife doesn't care for really sharp and really thin knives in the block, and it's a fair issue as they can become a little bit unpredictable until you change habits (e.g., even doing things like cutting zucchini can be iffy as the knife goes from starting a cut to nearly through quickly.

I'm enamored with 80crv2 and still with O1 for plane blades, but they don't solve the problem of a knife that is not to patina.

XHP (V11) solves that and can be done "OK" in a forge. i'm starting to think AEB-L can, too - easily harder than knives made to be steeled.

Just before I got the boot on the knife forum for saying amateur's could make knives for themselves and concede a little hardness with stainless by buying good stock and just making it really hot and then really cold really fast, I posted a picture of a knife. I got ridiculed about it being blindingly sharp but "with no real test of whether or not it would hold up"







I think I may have posted this. I used this extremely thin knife and cut a branch and then dry poplar. It'll probably be fine in the kitchen on vegetables and meat.

I got banned between the first picture and then taking these pictures. What a weird place. I still haven't figured out what is so damaging about the idea that some hobbyists may not ever really need to buy a knife kiln/furnace.

With a bevel this thin, though, I have to admit it might be a bit dangerous to handle and the back corner should be muted a little bit because it can fillet anything it comes in contact with.

 

[D_W]

I'm going to do a pointless exercise with this iron, and that is I'm going to get as visually fine of an edge as I can get, hoping to show absolutely no visible scratches at all and no. I'm sort of stuck in limbo in the shop as I've got to redo floors next week and my shop is getting piled up with the crapola to redo floors and clearing space to store carpet and furniture until the job is done and the garbage company does weekly pickup.

1 micron diamond on the slow cutting stone from the "japan stuff" thread yields this:

first a picture of what you can see is a cleanly severed lattice - with the camera focused on it (makes it look more opaque than it is). If you look closely, you can see some of the cross bars of grain from it being quartered on the edge.

the second is when the camera focuses on the background instead of the foreground.



Still someone self-amused that I was able to get hardness at least matching schedule in a forge (well, matching schedule without the ability to have liquid nitrogen at the end of the quench).

This is what a 1 micron diamond edge looks like - no buffing on this edge - see the tiny burr at the bottom?:



compare that to a shapton cream (#12000, which is really more like an 8000 stone - the average particle size may be small, but there's enough big ones in it to make it more coarse than the claim - I think they did this on purpose because if it was actually a 1 micron stone, it would be slow).


I have a baggie of 1/2 micron diamond that I haven't even opened yet that I believe was from china - it's 100 karats worth of the stuff (which is a lifetime) for either $10 or $13. Before I go to the bonkers small vials (1/4th micron and 1/10th), I'll try the new china stuff and see if it can remove visible scratches and if it does, see what that does for shaving thickness.

i can't measure these shavings as they are - I suspect they're about 3 ten thousandths of an inch.

 

[D_W]

Just for entertainment - sharpened with 0.5 micron diamonds. I just don't have the stamina to try to remove all of the markings on the entire back without running into some single particle somewhere or a tiny carbide that lets loose and scratches the edge.

1 micron diamonds is far more practical, and even a 2.5 micron diamond vial on an oilstone is great (extremely practical and very fast - just buff the tip of the iron when done and all is well).

This would take several minutes to refresh every time and my blood would boil with one single contaminant in wood ruining the edge. But you can look at the very edge. Check the straightness of the actual apex vs. the shapton cream. This is stratospheric sharpening and requires not even putting too much pressure on a bevel. And I don't keep a clean shop, so serious pain in the dingus.




And then I took shavings and I though - jeez, they keep splitting about the same thickness, but I doubted this edge was distorting or letting go. It didn't make sense.

And I looked very closely at the very tip of the iron and I could see the tiniest light distortion. The close set cap had the smallest burr in a couple of places, and that was distorting the edge enough with pressure to literally bend the apex. Wow. Talk about impractical. So I reset it and buffed the front of the cap iron (not a bad thing to do once every several years just to clean up bumps, etc).



This is in cherry. It might be against the grain - at this thickness, you can't tell.

I probably have wood that would be a little better than this for show nonsense, but I don't have any yellow cedar or really perfect wood to chase this further.

Remember when people used to say you can't get stainless sharp?

 

[TRITON]

On the subject of steel, this popped into my YT feed. Thought you'd find it interesting.

 

[D_W]

On the subject of steel, this popped into my YT feed. Thought you'd find it interesting.

I can't help but think that something is lost between then and now.

Keeping trains of that era going in the US has become a thing. We've always had some late steam still going, but in the last decade, have brought back a big boy, and NW 611 - a late high speed steam streamliner, has been brought back. I don't think they run top speed any longer or anywhere close (110mph for the 611), but they do run them under load.

The machine tools in that video - trimming the sides of steel plate and the rods - are really spectacular.

the big boy in the middle swinging the hammer with a 200 pound butt looks like an american!

 

[Jameshow]

I can't help but think that something is lost between then and now.

Keeping trains of that era going in the US has become a thing. We've always had some late steam still going, but in the last decade, have brought back a big boy, and NW 611 - a late high speed steam streamliner, has been brought back. I don't think they run top speed any longer or anywhere close (110mph for the 611), but they do run them under load.

The machine tools in that video - trimming the sides of steel plate and the rods - are really spectacular.

the big boy in the middle swinging the hammer with a 200 pound butt looks like an american!

I'm sure we give you a run for your money!!
We even built a new old loco!

I passed a heritage line station the other day and they have some deltic diesels in the yard....

 

[TRITON]

I can't help but think that something is lost between then and now.

Yeah, thats the impression i took from it too.

Shocking to think after the big close down of those thousands of station by Dr Beeching, a huge number of locomotives were just scrapped, they were literally selling them for a few hundred scrap value.
Cost of a locomotive today - Couple of million pounds. I expect older ones would be less, but its one of those things that are now so rare they command very high prices.

 

[D_W]

Yeah, thats the impression i took from it too.

Shocking to think after the big close down of those thousands of station by Dr Beeching, a huge number of locomotives were just scrapped, they were literally selling them for a few hundred scrap value.
Cost of a locomotive today - Couple of million pounds. I expect older ones would be less, but its one of those things that are now so rare they command very high prices.

The same thing happened here. Diesel could essentially run with no maintenance and the steam are out of circulation quite a large amount of time to clean them out and inspect them. So many ended up mothballed at the same time that they were more or less thrown away for nothing.

The early diesels are now being prettied up, too - by enthusiast groups.

As are some engines that have no fire but are charged with steam to work in yards or areas where fire isn't tolerabe - like a giant steam battery.

 

[baldkev]

I can't help but think that something is lost between then and now.

I haved watched the youtube vid, but, i guess as technology evolves and we 'progress' a lot of old timers skills and knowledge are left behind ( and subsequently lost ). Interestingly there was a conversation years back about how humans were more advanced than ever, but would be completely lost if we went back to no electricity and fuel etc..... just imagine the internet going down for a month. There'd be riots and tiktokers jumping off bridges, amazon would be dead in the water, no more spam emails ( or any emails ) and the post office would be run off its feet

 

[D_W]

I think most of us who are adults could do without the internet pretty quickly. Like a two week shock, but if we could still call relatives and find a paper map somewhere, we'd be OK.

Kids, they'd learn, too. I think when things are lost like this, it's because we have a choice, but if we didn't have a choice, we're all pretty adaptable. In fact, I think (in the middle of this floor job, which is a physical challenge for me because I'm not used to being on the floor 10 hours - I can tell my joints are getting stretched) one of the things we lack now that makes everyone so whacky is a genuine all consuming challenge to occupy our minds.

But....I like the internet if I can manage to get myself off of it for a while.

Imagine being able to work and have a pressing issue that was handled by paper mail. when I started my day job in 1999, most formal communication was still by mail. I liked that better. The mail couldn't follow you around on your phone late in the evening or on the weekend.

The loss of the art, though.....the design in the English engine - the Virginian (#611) is probably slightly more crude, but it is a beautiful brute...I don't think most people would recognize a crisp line paired with a nice finish these days.

 

[baldkev]

I think most of us who are adults could do without the internet pretty quickly. Like a two week shock, but if we could still call relatives and find a paper map somewhere, we'd be OK.

Very much, but the world would collapse into anarchy within minutes. Within hours there'd be nuclear weapons flying around people looting poundland