Interesting Treff with Rashelle Hams last Monday

Rashelle Hams has given her presentation about case hardening. She took us through of her own proven technique to case harden steel.

Case hardening or surface hardening is the process of hardening the surface of a metal object while allowing the metal deeper underneath to remain soft, thus forming a thin layer of harder metal at the surface. For iron or steel with low carbon content, which has poor to no hardenability of its own, the case-hardening process involves infusing additional carbon into the surface layer.

Mild steels are not normally hardenable due to the low quantity of carbon, so the surface of the steel is chemically altered to increase the hardenability. Case hardened steel is formed by diffusing carbon (carburization), nitrogen (nitriding) and/or boron (boriding) into the outer layer of the steel at high temperature, and then heat treating the surface layer to the desired hardness.

To ensure that the addition of carbon and/or other substances runs smoothly, Rashelle suggested using a commercially available compound like Cherry Red. With this kind of compound, one achieves a more constant hardening effect. She also shared some of her own recipes for case hardening compound.

 

There were very involved participants resulting in an interesting round of questions and discussion with even more instructive tips.

We thank Rashelle for her inspiring lecture and she can always be reached to help the questioner.

The recording can be watched at https://youtu.be/EtV4NHBoFv4

 

The next Treff will be held on 15.11.2021 by Becky Schimpff from California .

 

Forging Square corners

Montag, 15.11.2021

Presentation: Becky Schimpff

Start 19.00 CET (!)

Room Open / Raum geöffnet 18.40 CET (!)

 

Everyone is welcome and the organizing team is looking forward to a wonderful evening together!