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
to add a permanent edge to your knives
i said this was a temp position oh
[Applause]
guys of course i'm not taking over but
callie 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 hexmut 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 as 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 channels
can't i just can't so we ordered some
steel
delivered to your shop did you get that
there's special steel that we want to
use for this video
i believe it was a 1084 1084 knife
making
yeah yeah uh we put on this box right
here so cali you can go ahead and open
it up and get started on this experiment
it says do not open do it okay
you gotta read between lines that seemed
too easy given the way that uh
do i want to know what's about to happen
to me oh you're fine
if this is a jump scare
so where's our steel james uh
over there
i'm going back to america all right
well our steal was not actually in
pandora's box so this
this looks kind of like the steel that
you would get at home depot or load 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
mjolnir we actually use 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 is
to see what we can do to change it
and we need a baseline so callie 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'll 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 actually 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
8 25 yeah we're set to 809 at the moment
different types of steel are going to
have different temperatures that you
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
1500 degrees fahrenheit
all right 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
[Music]
yes
[Music]
is this not how most people heat up
their cooking oil that's how i cook
breakfast how it goes yeah
this is this is normal
all right let's see that's not enough 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
that's
hotter than i want which is kind of what
we're going for about 110 fahrenheit is
sort of the 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 8.15 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
austin tight 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 austin tight
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 cali's gonna open
the kiln
i'm gonna 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 are where it
really changes temperature the most and
that
should be where it changes state from
austin tight to martin's site
it 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 raised the overall
temperature of the oil bit
we're gonna add just a little bit of
cool oil to drop the temperature back
down again
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 kelly i just want you to drop a
piece of steel
right there i've never been happy about
something yep let's do this
[Music]
oh 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
marks 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 to the
kitchen
that's the kitchen huh good kitchen
what a kitchen i love it
oh and you know we store gas gasoline in
your oven
we put it 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 gonna 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 plain annealed
steel
and 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
let's see the difference between them
all this particular version of mjolnir
weighs how much
73 pounds
it bends a nice little bend there this
is the untreated this is just the steel
as it arrives
to us all right i'm gonna 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 bent a little bit and hardening
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
all right kelly you want to smash one
right here i do i really do
i am worthy
[Music]
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
it there should be
technically if we did this right no way
that even with mjolnir i shouldn't be
able to break this
hell uh faith in our uh tempered steel
uh no i don't
okay ready
it's like a spring flexed a lot and then
just
nope right back so are 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 gonna
get is you're gonna be able to file it
down it's gonna look pretty and then
you're gonna 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 going to
dent it not dent sorry
it's going to 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'll 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 are super cool you've got to go
check him out link's down in the
description
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