Why does everyone insist on quenching in water these days?

I had an older smith at a hammer-in back in 2019 tell me he only uses canola oil for his blades and never had a failure. He showed me a chef knife he made 12 years ago that still held a perfect edge... makes me wonder if we are all just repeating what YouTube tells us instead of learning from the guys who have been doing it for decades.

3 comments

3 Comments

the_thea23d ago

That old smith at the 2019 hammer-in sounds like he knows his stuff. It's kinda like how everyone today just follows the latest TikTok recipe instead of asking their grandma how she made it for 40 years.

murphy.aaron23d ago

Yeah, I remember reading a thread on another forum where a guy tested canola vs water on the same type of steel. He said the water quench got him a slightly harder blade, but the oil quench gave him way more consistent results with less risk of cracking. Makes you wonder if all that extra hardness is worth it when you're just gonna trash a blade that warps.

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the_lee23d ago

Wait, hold on. @murphy.aaron, are you telling me that guy actually put a blade in water and it didn't crack or warp right away? That's wild. I've always been too scared to try it myself. I mean, I've heard the old timers talk about water quenching for certain steels, but I figured it was just a myth or something you only do with really specific alloys. The fact that he got a harder blade but had to deal with so much risk makes me think the old saying about "slow and steady wins the race" applies here. Like, maybe it's just me, but I'd rather end up with a blade that's 95% as hard but actually survives the quench. Throwing away a warped piece of steel after all that work sounds like a nightmare.