Steeling good for H-1?

[JD Spydo]

Many of you new guys and gals probably have never used one of the professional grade butcher/chef knife sharpening steels. I steel all of my plain edged blades and I have great luck doing it. I use a smooth German made F. Dick Poliron to not only align the edge but I've noticed that a high quality smooth steel has a burnishing effect on the edge as well.

Here's my question: With all the talk and comparisons concerning H-1 steel being work hardened>> thus getting harder the more you work it or abrade it. It would make me believe that steeling H-1 would be very beneficial to it's edge holding ability.

Do any of you "steel junkie" guys know that for sure one way or the other? Has there ever been a controlled test to prove it? Like I said I steel all of my plain edge blades anyway. So I guess my ultimate question would be: Does Steeling or Burnishing have a harding effect on H-1?

[THG]

Well steeling wouldn't help work-harden H1. Steeling is a plastic deformation, but not in the same sense as using a bench stone.

My opinion on steeling is that it gives you a sharp edge after you've already used the edge up some, but that regained sharpness only lasts a few cuts after the steeling.

I just take my knives to the EF stone, give it a few passes, and I'm good as gold.

[jzmtl]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but work harden is achieved via plastic deformation.

I've always wondered if just chop something hard with H1 blade or even cut a metal pipe (to intentionally deform the edge) is a better way to quickly work harden it.

[THG]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but work harden is achieved via plastic deformation.

Right. If you steel an edge, you're basically realigning "pieces" of the edge that have broken off but are still hanging on, right? If you get it all straightened out, you are plastically deforming the steel, but that isn't going to strain harden it, is it?

On the other hand, if you sharpen it, you're tearing grains of metal out, and the "holes" will tend to get filled up/compacted closer together making the steel harder. That is the nature of work hardening, right?

I'm no metallurgist, but that's what I gathered from reading some materials engineering books.

I've always wondered if just chop something hard with H1 blade or even cut a metal pipe (to intentionally deform the edge) is a better way to quickly work harden it.

My guess is that it'll work harden quicker only because you'll have to do some serious sharpening that you would otherwise end up doing over time anyway.

[JD Spydo]

Well steeling wouldn't help work-harden H1. Steeling is a plastic deformation, but not in the same sense as using a bench stone.

My opinion on steeling is that it gives you a sharp edge after you've already used the edge up some, but that regained sharpness only lasts a few cuts after the steeling.

I just take my knives to the EF stone, give it a few passes, and I'm good as gold.

Hey thanks for the most interesting answer THG :) However I'm tending to maybe not disagree with you completely but I am wondering again about the "burnishing" effect you can get from repeated "steeling"? For instance I've recently taken my PE Tasman salt and I've put the steel in a vise and then I've repeatedly went side to side doing it so briskly that it has honestly created an amount of heat in the blade. Not hot enough to distemper it by any means but you can tell that my repeated steeling has had some friction as a result.

After I've done that it does seem to be helping. But to be painfully honest on the other hand I've sharpened this blade a lot over the years too. I've sharpened this blade in study with nothing but a 204 Sharpmaker and 701 Profile stones.

Now with normal steeling where you just do about a dozen strokes on each side you do indeed align the edge with a smooth steel. But with normal steeling in that limited amount of work you really don't create the heat that you can by doing it dozens of times like I'm doing to this blade in question.

This is just an experiment I'm doing. I admit I don't know what the final result will be. I have some metallurgy books that are telling me what your book is telling you.

Also I have another type of sharpening steel I may try. It is called a F. Dick MULTiCUT. It is an extremely hard surface with several sharp corners intermittedly. That particular steel actually creates considerably more friction than does the smooth steel.

Like I said I'm just experimenting. I may be wasting time but if it works it will be a good way to harden the edge without removing stock from constant stone abrasion. Metal burnishing is used on all types of machine tool and manufacturing applications and I just can't help but wonder if it will work to help harden H-1 steel.

[Blue72]

when h1 gets work harden is it still easy to sharpen?

[Bushminer]

Like I said I'm just experimenting. I may be wasting time but if it works it will be a good way to harden the edge without removing stock from constant stone abrasion. Metal burnishing is used on all types of machine tool and manufacturing applications and I just can't help but wonder if it will work to help harden H-1 steel.

Crudely -

Work hardening requires plastic deformation. With abrasion a bit is ripped out by a deformation method which deforms (and thus hardening) not only the bit ripped out but also where it was ripped from.

Burnishing also involves plastic deformation in flattening irregularities in the surface and will work harden the steel but the required pressure is quite high and requires the tool to be as hard or harder. You could try a polished triangular ruby rod with backup (think Sendzimir mill).

If it was easy they would come with it already done.

[Hookpunch]

Not sure about the Dick, but most steels in my experience are just round sharpeners, ceramic steels and steel "steels" all have some abrasiveness so you probably are work hardening the H1.

About the only "steel" I know that won't sharpen a blade somewhat are the new ones made out of glass.

[JD Spydo]

Not sure about the Dick, but most steels in my experience are just round sharpeners, ceramic steels and steel "steels" all have some abrasiveness so you probably are work hardening the H1.

About the only "steel" I know that won't sharpen a blade somewhat are the new ones made out of glass.

The professional grade steels made by the F. Dick company out of Germany are the best of the best. That's not just me saying that. Before I went out and bought a few of them I got some professional consultation on that one. A very good friend of mine who has worked in the restuarant business for many years ( and I'm talking 5 star, top notch, VIP restuarants too) told me that they only steels his company uses are F. Dick. And he told me that they could have any hardware that him and his fellow chefs wanted.

I did some investigation on my own and talked to a professional chef in California who also has an internet knife business i.e. knifemerchant.com >> who told me that F. Dick equipment was all he used.

He told me that he had been in that line of work all his adult life and had never found a better quality sharpening or smooth steel than the F. Dick models. I got the 4 of them that I currently own from a restuarant supply wholesale house that my friend sent me to. And I still paid some pretty big money for these tools ( even at wholesale :o ).

So with that being said I'm 100% confident that my steels are the best obtainable. I know for a fact that my smooth Dick Poliron steel is much harder than any blade I own because you can feel them gliding off the steel like skating on wet ice. In the machine tool training I've had I was taught that burnishing metal truly does change the properties of it. Now to what degree I'm not sure.

But that's why I put this up for discussion because if I'm going down the wrong road I certainly don't want to waste my time experimenting in vain :o

So maybe it's just a solid fact that abrasion is what you have to do to attain optimal hardness from H-1. I was hoping I could find a way to do it without abrading or removing stock unnecessarily. But I may be barking up the wrong tree apparently :o

[Naga]

What I've wondered about, more than the amount/frequency/type of sharpening done to a plain-edge H1 blade is: What if the blade was convexed, either as a modification or from the factory. I seem to recall asking this once, and Sal weighed in that the production costs would be high because you pretty much have to hollow grind the blade for production to be cost effective. Still, I think some have convexed their blades (and I may give it a try some day myself, but I'm a bit scared to do so, frankly).

[Joshua J.]

This forum needs a facepalm smiley.

First off. Everybody read these two.

http://www.cashenblades.com/articles/lowdown.html

http://swordforum.com/metallurgy/ites.html
(I guess this one is more about heat treating, but good information none the less.)

Then you can read this.
(Work hardening)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_hardening

[hickster]

I think the short answer is... yes.

[Naga]

Joshua J. Something to point out: H1 is not, technically, a 'steel'; it is an iron based ceramic. I don't know how much the first two links above apply. Well, or the third, but I'm thinking the wikipedia article definitely applies.
I promise, by the way, H1 is a ceramic. Sal or Kristy or someone said so in a post I read somewhere.

"The short answer is yes"(!) I gotta agree. But how much does it take is the question? The act of serrating an H1 blade makes the edge pretty darn hard, the sharpening of the PE, less so (but still hardens it). How much sharpening does it take to make the PE Aqua Salt as hard at the edge as the SE Aqua Salt is when it's first manufactured?

[THG]

Joshua J. Something to point out: H1 is not, technically, a 'steel'; it is an iron based ceramic. I don't know how much the first two links above apply. Well, or the third, but I'm thinking the wikipedia article definitely applies.
I promise, by the way, H1 is a ceramic. Sal or Kristy or someone said so in a post I read somewhere.

I believe that's right. That's why it can be work hardened; low-carbon steels can be work hardened.

[JD Spydo]

I believe that's right. That's why it can be work hardened; low-carbon steels can be work hardened.

Wow!! did I open a can of worms or what!! :D H-1 an iron based ceramic?? I guess I was gone for a long time during my last sabatical :rolleyes:

Now I guess we need to differentiate between ceramic and steel?

I thought that according to my charts that H-1 is indeed a steel per se but it is a Nitrogen based metal rather than a carbon based metal>> I hope I'm going down the right road here?

Well I'm going to my metallurgy textbooks to see what the fundamental differences are between ceramic and steel. I always thought that ceramic was in the porcelin family? I never knew that there were porcelins that were metallic based? I always knew that there are ceramics with metallic content just like Spyderco's sharpening stones. But this is the first time I've heard of "iron based ceramics". :confused: Hey I'm not disagreeing with you because I just don't know for sure.

This is certainly uncharted territory for this kid :D But there's no argument that H-1 is truly a different animal in the cutlery world. A nice species indeed but a different animal for a fact. This may necessitate the need for a new thread :o

[JLS]

H1 is not technically a steel because it lacks the minimum amount of carbon to be steel. It's at the other end of the spectrum from S90V, S60V and ZDP-189 which are also not steel in the classical sense due to too much carbon.

They are all technically ceramics with properties and chemistries very close to steel. The classical definition of steel was created when smelting was the only way to make it. Too little carbon and it was deemed that you're couldn't harden it and thus, didn't have steel. Try to add too much and it wouldn't make it into the ingot, hence the 2% limit in the traditional definition.

Since metallurgy has become a real science and processing can happen in methods other than smelting, the definition of steel could really use an update. But so far, no one has bothered. Most of that is because the exceptions to the rule represent such a tiny amount of total steel production in the world that no one really cares...except for a few people in very limited markets. Sport cutlery just happens to be one of those tiny segments.

JD, think outside of porcelain when you're thinking about ceramics. It covers a whole lot more than that.

On the face, I would think that steeling is going to work harden your edge to some degree, but probably not like sharpening would. It's not a waste of time, but perhaps not the most efficient way of accomplishing it either. I'll have to do a little more digging to give a real opinion.

[Joshua J.]

While H-1 may technically be a ceramic (as Sal has said), in practical terms though (according to the content tables) it is a 300 series Austenitic stainless steel (similar to your average table knife:eek :) .

H-1 Element info off the Spyderco steel chart.

http://www.spyderco.com/edge-u-cation/index.php?item=3

Carbon (C) 0.15
Chromium (Cr) 14.00-16.00
Cobalt (Co) --
Copper (Cu) --
Manganese (Mn) 2.00
Molybdenum (Mo) .50-1.50
Nickel (Ni) 6.00-8.00
Nitrogen (N) 0.10
Phosphorus (P) 0.04
Silicon (Si) 3.00-4.50
Sulphur (S) 0.03
Tungsten (W) --
Vanadium (V) --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel

Austenitic, or 300 series, stainless steels make up over 70% of total stainless steel production. They contain a maximum of 0.15% carbon, a minimum of 16% chromium and sufficient nickel and/or manganese to retain an austenitic structure at all temperatures from the cryogenic region to the melting point of the alloy. A typical composition of 18% chromium and 10% nickel, commonly known as 18/10 stainless, is often used in flatware.

We know that work hardening is caused by the dislocation of atoms in the structure of the iron. From what I've read it seems as though anything with iron in it can be work hardened to some extent.
How much movement is needed to attain the extra hardness? At this point I have no idea. Practical experience might be more useful than tech specs here.

[Naga]

I love forums that talk about H1 :)

[Joshua J.]

I love forums that talk about H1 :)

Me too.
Figuring this stuff out is like playing hide and seek with people you've never seen, in a shopping mall.

[spoonrobot]

I promise, by the way, H1 is a ceramic. Sal or Kristy or someone said so in a post I read somewhere.

Does anyone have a source for this? It seems to come up in every discussion of H1 but there hasn't been any definite citation given. The only thing I could find with a username search is this quote from this thread, post #12.

We began testing ceramic blades back in the mid 80's. It wan't until I tested H1 that I felt I was happy with the material.