Hey guys.
I'm Nate, I'm the new Hacksmith,
and today on Make It Real,
we're going to be showing you
how to heat treat steel
at a permanent edge
to your knives.
I said this was a temp position.
Oh.
[Music]
Guys, of course,
I'm not taking over.
But Calli and I
are here in Canada,
and we decided to stop
by the Hacksmith here
at HackSmith Industries.
We've got a fun project to do.
Yeah, today, we're going to be
heat treating steel to show you
how to give a solid
edge to your knives,
or any kind of weapons
you want to make,
like we make
on the Hacksmith channel.
So to do some tests
on the steel,
we thought James would probably
have some really good equipment,
and maybe some stylized weapons
that we could really
use a stress test.
This is the best day of my life.
Here's the basic idea.
We're going to show
how to heat treat and temper
some high carbon steel,
and then show some side-by-side
comparisons of what happens
if you hit each one
with Thor's hammer.
I may not be worthy.
This is why I
don't actually get to take
over the channel as you...
Can't.
I just can't.
So we ordered some steel
delivered to your shop.
Did you get that?
Those special steel that we
want to use for this video?
Yeah, I believe it was
a 1084 carbon steel.
1084.
Yeah.
We put it on
this box right here.
So Calli, you can go
ahead and open it up,
and get started
on this experiment.
Says do not open.
Do it.
Okay.
Oh, look at that.
Do open.
Yeah, read between the lines.
That seemed too easy
given the way that--
Do I want to know
what's about to happen to me?
No, you're fine.
If this is a jump scare.
So where's our steel, James?
Over there.
I'm going back to America.
All right.
Well, our steel was
not actually in Pandora's Box.
So this, this looks
kind of like the steel
that you would get
at Home Depot or Lowe's,
any hardware type store,
but it's not the
highest quality steel,
which for a lot
of things doesn't matter.
It works so well
for so many things.
This specifically is a type
of high carbon steel,
and as you were saying,
it's 1084 steel.
This is usually used as
a knife making steel.
So the 84 stands
for 0.84% carbon,
which is how much carbon is
actually in the steel.
And what that means
is we can actually heat treat
this to make it even harder
than it is right now.
And we'll show you
how hard it is by actually doing
a few destructive tests before
and after we heat treat it.
Okay.
So James, destructive test.
This is my favorite thing
I've ever heard of.
So I think we should at
least try a file on one.
Let's try and see
if we can bend one.
What weapons do you have
that we could use against these?
I think the
bending one, Mjölnir.
We actually used Mjolnir
as a variable swing press
for forming sheet metal.
The way that this steel arrives
when you order it.
This is in what's called
an annealed state.
It has had a heat treatment,
but that heat
treatment is basically
what weakens it the most.
It just brings it
to a relatively soft stage.
Obviously, it's still hard.
It's still a bar of steel.
It's not like putty clay
or glass or anything like that,
but it's not as hard
as we want it to be
if we're actually going
to use it as a tool.
So that's, that's
the whole point,
to see what we can do to change
it and we need a baseline.
So Calli was saying
we'll use a file.
You're saying we can use
Mjolnir to try and bend
or maybe even shatter it,
and let's test it out
before we heat treat it,
and heat treat it,
and test it again after.
All right.
So we've got our control steel,
which is as we bought it
from the steel company.
So it's basically just
annealed right now.
Then we're going
to heat up these pieces
so it will be heat treated,
and we'll be quenching those,
and then the tempered ones, we,
exact same as the heat treat,
but after we've quenched them,
we're she going to reheat them
in the oven to temper them
to make it
as strong as possible.
All right.
So let's start by actually heat
treating these pieces of steel.
So we've got our,
our control steel,
which we're going
to leave over here.
And then we're actually
going to be doing
the same heat treating process
to all four of these,
and we've got a kiln here.
Now, the Kiln is actually,
it's pretty power-hungry.
So we've got
an arc reactor here.
Boom.
And you want it 25.
Yeah.
It was set to 809 moment.
Different types of steel
are going to have
different temperatures
that need to get them up to.
What we're using,
this 1084 steel.
One of the reasons we're using
it is it's actually probably
the most forgiving type
of high-carbon steel there is.
It's one of the easiest to get
a good heat treatment on.
There are some types
where you need very precise
temperatures for a really
precise amount of time,
and then to cool it down
in exactly the right material
for the exact right
amount of time.
The heat we're going to be using
for our steel is at 815 Celsius,
which is about
1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Yeah, let's see how many
we can fit in at one time.
Yeah.
Once this is all heated up,
and our steel is nice
and orange hot,
the next step is going
to be quenching it in oil.
Would cooking oil work?
Actually, yes.
For some types of steel,
you have to be pretty particular
about what you quench it in.
But again, this 1084
usually quite forgiving.
So we are going
to use vegetable oil.
However, to make it work
a little bit better,
it needs to be
a little bit thinner,
and to do that,
we're going to heat it up
to about 55 degrees Celsius,
or around 130 Fahrenheit.
It's not there.
What's your plan?
You guys want to put
your safety glasses on?
Yes.
Nice.
[Music]
Is this not how most people heat
up their cooking oil?
This is how I cook break--
This is how I cook.
This is--
This is normal.
>> Let's say that's--
>> I think we're good.
So we're now
at a temperature like,
I can stick my finger in,
and after a few seconds,
it starts to get a little
bit painful, like, oh,
that's hotter than I want,
which is kind of
what we're going for.
About 110 Fahrenheit is
sort of upper limit of
what you can leave your hand in
without it starting to burn,
and so the fact
that it is getting
too hot is a good sign.
Our Kiln has reached 815.
Well, it's actually
gotten up to 822,
right in the range
we're looking for.
So at this point,
the steel and the carbon
have begun to change
how they're interacting.
And at this temperature,
the steel has begun to form
a crystalline structure
called austenite.
That's a phase of the steel
where it's just the carbon
is not actually interacting much
with the iron inside,
and as a result of being heated
up and forming that austenite,
it should have actually
lost its magnetism,
which is a good way
for us to test
if the steel is actually
as hot as we want it.
James, what have you got there?
I've got a magnet,
and as you can tell,
the steel is very magnetic.
But hypothetically,
the red hot steel
in there should not be
very magnetic anymore.
Yep.
Well.
Not really magnetic.
Let's go over the first one.
So Calli's can open the Kiln.
I'm going to grab one of these,
pull it out, and put
it right into the oil,
and gently swirl it around.
I probably don't actually need
to be gentle with this stuff
because it's quite thick.
I don't think we have
to worry about these just
straight steel bars.
The first few seconds,
so where really changes
temperature the most,
and that should be
where it changes state
from austenite to martensite.
I mean, I might pull it
right out of my pliers.
Yeah.
It's back to magnetic.
Yeah.
And now it's there forever.
It's back to very magnetic.
All right, so putting
the hot steel into the oil
probably raise the overall
temperature the oil a bit.
We're going to add just
a little bit of cool oil
to drop the temperature
back down again.
[Music]
All right, last one.
All right, so we've quenched
the first three using oil,
but I'd like to use a technique
that we use with some
of our projects,
and that's quenching
with styrofoam.
And Calli, I just want
you to drop the piece
of steel right there.
I've never been
happier about something.
Yep.
Let's do this.
[Music]
There's your fire.
And that head is gone.
All right, so because a lot
of the steel actually flaked off
from the heating,
we actually lost
our scribe mark.
So I'm just going to write down
which ones are which again,
and we're going to go ahead,
and continue the
tempering process.
All right.
Let's take these the kitchen.
This kitchen, huh?
Good kitchen.
What a kitchen.
I love it.
Kitchen.
Oh and you--
>> A can of gasoline.
>> We store gas is there.
We put in,
heat it up in the oven.
Yep.
So we'll just set it at 425.
Let it heat up in the oven.
We're going to let
that run for two hours,
turn the oven off,
and let it cool down
in the oven as well.
All right, so we've gone
ahead and let our metal heat
for two hours,
and then we let it
just cool down.
It's time to take it out,
and see what's happened.
So we've got
our plane annealed steel.
Then we have
our heat treated steel,
and then we have
our heat treated
and tempered steel.
So now, all we have
to do is test it out.
See the difference
between them all.
This particular version
of Mjolnir weighs how much?
73 pounds.
It bent.
Yeah, a nice little bend there.
This is the untreated.
This is just the steel
as it arrives to us.
I'm going to put some safety
glasses on this time.
This has been heat treated,
but not tempered.
That's how you use
a variable swing press.
That was beautiful.
It didn't even try to survive that.
Just snapped right off.
Look at that difference
between plain steel,
which is bent a little bit,
and hardened steel.
This is sort of a universal law
of solid materials.
The harder something gets,
the less flexible it is.
And we've made this quite
a bit harder, and so,
it's a lot less flexible.
Calli, you want
to smash one right here?
I do.
I really do.
I am worthy.
Shoot!
There you go.
Nice.
[Music]
Now, if everything has gone
just right with our tempering,
this piece should
not crack the same way.
Ideally, it will sort of spring.
It will actually like take
some impact and bounce back,
so it won't bend
and it won't break.
With the other one,
I was able to shatter.
There should be, technically,
if we did this right,
no way that even with Mjolnir,
I shouldn't be able
to break this.
Got a lot of faith
in our tempered steel.
No, I don't.
Okay.
Ready?
It's like a spring.
That flexed a lot,
and then just
nope, right back.
So, our three types of steel,
what would we get if we made
knives out of each of these?
Well, for the first one,
what you're going to get
is you're gonna be able
to file it down.
It's going to look pretty,
and then you're going
to try and use it,
and it's going to dent
and be useless.
So you don't keep
an edge on this at all.
Second one, the heat treatment.
What would we get
with a knife out of this?
Now, with that,
you would be able to get
a really sharp edge,
but if you encountered
any other stronger materials,
you're going to chip it,
you're gonna dent it.
Not Dent.
Sorry.
It's gonna chip.
Yeah.
And it's going to make
a useless knife,
because then you got a burr
and then won't cut nice anymore.
Then we've got
our tempered bar of steel,
and this is what we want.
So we would shape it
without doing any heat treating,
and then you heat treat it
and temper it,
and if you make
a knife out of that,
you get something useful.
You get something
that's much harder,
but also isn't so brittle.
We saw how well
that sprung back
after we hit it with the hammer
compared to the annealed steel,
which just bent.
Stayed that way.
If you do hit something
hard with the blade,
you'd be able to straighten
it back out, you'd be able
to hone it, sharpen it.
It's going to do
what you want it to do,
and if you even want to get
a little rougher with it,
maybe do a little bit of prying,
which isn't what knives
are usually for.
But these things come up.
It's got some flex to it.
It's not just going to snap off
the first time you try
something like that,
or even if you just
drop it on the ground
if you're unlucky.
That's the difference.
We can see
what happens to the steel
with the heat treating,
and why we want to do that.
You've probably seen some of the
cool stuff in the background,
or us interacting with it.
He's almost certainly got
a video or two or more
on his Channel showing
how he made those things.
They're super cool.
You've got to go check them out.
Links down in the description,
not something you want to miss.
As you guys know,
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