Long day today
Went to a morning seminar on metallurgy at the School of Mining and Technology this morning -- it was called Smithbusters and explained some common anecdotal 'facts'.
One of these was that the best quench was the urine of a red-headed boy. This actually has some basis in fact as a 10% salt solution will quench about 1.8 times faster than a pure water quench and with some metals, you want the fastest quench possible. Color of the hair is not necessary...
The seminar also covered a lot of basic metallurgy and science. It was supposed to be a one hour session and it ran to two and a half hours. A very good time.
We had lunch and I dropped Lulu back at the motel -- temps were in the hundreds again today so she hung out there with the dogs.
I went back to the conference grounds and sat in on one of the demonstrations.
Ed Fowler is one of the top five knife makers in the world.
He spent about three hours doing a brain-dump and then, a member of the School spent another hour talking about metallurgy specific to the metal that Ed uses (
52100) including
martempering with heat treating in a
molten salt bath and using
specific oils for quenching.
Went back to the motel, napped for a while (the heat is getting to me) and we had Chinese food. There was a glorious thunderstorm for an hour -- dropped the temperature down to a comfortable level.
Surf for a bit and then up early for a 9AM session with Ed Fowler.
Truck goes in the shop Monday.
Day nine!
Posted by DaveH at July 20, 2012 7:02 PM