Heat Treating AEB-L

[Rob Thomas]

Properly heat treated this steel is great! It cuts very well. It has good contrast and is easy to etch. I know many knife makers who prefer to work with this steel! This is how we heat treat our stainless steel Damascus when the layers are AEB-L and 301.

 

HEAT TREATING:

• Preheat furnace to Austenizing temperature
• Place blade in furnace​
• Allow furnace to cycle back to Austenizing temperature
• Soak for 15 minutes
• Quench in oil
• Temper 2 times for 1 hour each time
• Quench in liquid nitrogen for 4 hours and re-temper 1 time

HEAT TREATING TEMPERATURE

 

MATERIAL AUSTENIZING TEMPER

Stainless 1925F 350F

 

[Brian C Madigan]

Ah excellent! I've been looking for more AEB-L recipes.

[stuart davenport]

I've heard that AEB-L gets it's best performance when the "snap" tempers are skipped and go straight into the cryo treatment, tempers following cryo. Just what I have heard, not personal experience (oven won't do stainless temps). In other words...don't interupt Mf.

Edited January 21, 2015 by stuart davenport

[Richard Furrer]

I was going to mention that Stuart,

The caveat is that the breakage will go up if you do not flash temper...as it is a drastic temp change even when introducing the cold slowly.

Having untempered martensite hang around for hours is not a fun thing.

 

Ric

[Brian C Madigan]

I'm going with quench plates and dry ice/acetone for starters. I also hear the cryo must happen before tempering for the best edge holding.