Didn't have enough parks 50, so I decided to try a brine quench. If it were going to crack, I thought it would happen horizontally, not vertically down the hamon! So yeah, didn't see this one coming. Notes taken.
Mizu honyaki
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And I thought I was out of the woods, too. I left it in water for probably 10 seconds; it was water temp in my hand when I pulled it out. I know of the mar-quench method where you do an interrupted quench into oil, but again, didnt have enough parks 50. Would keeping the knife in the water longer have helped, or was it doomed?
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Quench cracking is more to do with the steel being too hot going into the quench than the speed of the quench. Having a heat treat oven helps dial in exact temps. If you're using a forge and eyeballing it then you're going to crack a fair few blades.
Never had any cracking issues quenching in oil before, and I quenched an old, un-clayed blank in water 5 times just to build my confidence. Knowing that and taking a quick glance at the nature of the crack, the edge cooled and contracted too quickly for the clay-coated steel behind it to keep up, creating a lot of tension along the hamon line. I did a fair bit of reading and found that preheating the water is supposed to help; water quenching is known to crack blades because of how aggressive and potentially uneven it is. But if using a heat treating oven makes water quenching gentler by evening out the cooling of the blade, then that's good to know. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely open to using a heat treating oven and I actually really want to get/make one, but I don't have the money for it right now.
