CNC Molds N Stuff

I think its a confidence thing. Some years back a fellow I drew in a pro/am tournament told me he had it wired with a Chatter Bait (tm). Its not my thing, but I played along. He started out just whacking them, and I caught a couple, but I wasn't feeling the love. Then I switched to a Colorado blade spinnerbait and started matching him fish for fish.

Reading the specs on it, it sounds like a lot like common HSS. That being said I ran across a guy in a machining group the other day who claimed to have 25 years experience, and had never heard of 01. 01 has been commercially available since 1905. It happens.

I guess I am absolutely terrible about explaining things. Tempering DOES NOT MAKE STEEL HARDER. Tempering "can" make it "tougher" by making it less hard. Less likely to shatter. There is no world where tempering makes any ordinary carbon steel harder. My points were: 1. DO NOT MAKE IT SOFT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Try tempering the eye from as purchased to make it less hard, but NOT dead soft. 2. If you already turned it to mush try work hardening FIRST before any sort of heat treating. Its not hard... pun intended this time. The yellow straw, brown, blue, purple colors are associated with oxidation temperature for TEMPERING. Typically QUENCHING which does make it harder is associated with a dull cherry red color, but it can vary depending on the alloy and its best quench temperature. P.S. I had to go look up T1. Its interesting that its considered an HSS I tend towards M35 or M42 for most of my HSS applications. High speed steel is some funny stuff. I won't say I know much about HSS other than I use it from time to time when its not worth chasing down an insert for special job. I have a drawer full of specialty hand ground* lathe bits that have only been used for one or two jobs. * I use a variety of machines for grinding tools, which might make calling them hand ground questionable depending on who you ask. I do not however have an NC tool grinder. I still have to turn the handles.

My idea was to go back a step. Instead of annealing your hook eye and making it dead soft. Maybe try to temper it so that is just a little less hard. It is a distinction. It will be harder to unbend and to bend, but slightly more bendable (maybe) and still harder than dead soft. If you put the entire hook in the oven you will change the temper of the entire hook. ie Make the whole hook less hard. I was thinking maybe heat just the eye with a near, but not direct point heat source like a small torch until its a yellow straw color. You obviously need to clean the hook eye so you can see the temper colors. Hold the rest of the hook between two metal plates to act as a heat sink to prevent it from tempering to a lower hardness also. Aluminum would probably work fine to keep it from heating up. If its not enough try to a dark straw brown color. If that's still not enough you could try brown to blue, but hooks are such a small mass of steel you would probably soften more than just the eye and that would be a hard temper to hit. (no pun intended) I may be over thinking it. If annealing isn't causing issues with the hook shank getting to soft, maybe the plates to heat sink the shank are over kill. Yeah, I know I lectured Curt about using colors and it just being a rule of thumb, but to be fair its a decent rule of thumb. Remember, "Tempering is the process of making it "less hard" until it hits your hardness target." Annealing, which is what I think you were doing makes it dead soft. (as dead soft as that alloy is capable of which can still be pretty hard) I've never heat treated a hook before. I'm kinda just guessing. Like I said before I think I would try work hardening your soft eye hooks first. Maybe as simple as clamping them hard in the flat direction between smooth vise jaws on a big vise. I'd use my arbor press or maybe even my hydraulic press because I have them. When I temper in the oven I am working with an order of magnitude more mass, and its okay to temper the whole thing. Custom ground drill or special shape cutter made from drill rod (W1), punch press die made from O1, hammer forged knife made from 5160 or 1080, specialty hammer made from 4140. I quench and then temper in the oven to make it slightly less hard. I always seem to spend 30 minutes looking up the material and checking online to see if anybody else has done the same thing first before I start, because I don't do it every day. I have a dumb question and I don't really need the answer. If you unbend your annealed hook eye, bend it closed, and then for some reason need to open it up again, is there a noticeable difference in how easily it unbends and recloses the second time? If there is that is likely work hardening.

It occurs to me for the OPs purpose there may be a better solution. Instead of annealing the hook eye to make it dead soft try heating it a little less to make it "less hard", but not dead soft.

I said I wasn't an expert, but I'm not an ignoramus either. LOL. Yep. Sort of, except that its based on temperature. Color is a "rule of thumb," not a rule. You can guess about the temperature of the metal (with steels) based on color "glow" for quench temperature, and you can guess the temperature of tempering based on oxidation color if you have first cleaned the metal to bright after quenching. You can absolutely heat treat with a furnace, but in an industrial setting a programmable heat treat oven is the standard. Yes, I know a furnace can be electric, gas, coal, coke, or charcoal. I have an electric pottery kiln on the shop floor right now from which I plan to make a heat treat oven so I can leave the gas forge on the shelf. I'll just add a programmable controller when I get to it. Some alloys like a different target range for quenching than others, but generally start with just slightly hotter than non magnetic. Literally, get it hot and touch it with a magnet. Then a little hotter until it stops being so magnetic. Then just a little more, but not a lot. This is a "rule of thumb," not a rule. The rule is know what you are working with and look it up. And of course as I already mentioned many steels (and aluminum and copper alloys too) will work harden which based on the visible evidence clearly shown on some hooks may be part of the process. It also sounds like or at least reads like you are confusing or combining the processes. Quenching makes it hard. There may be a best temperature and media for quenching a particular alloy to make it hard, but generally you only heat to ONE temperature range (not over and let it cool either) that is ideal for a particular alloy. This process generally for most heat treatable steels I am familiar with does not allow you to target hardness. It just makes it makes it hard. If you did a bad job it may not be ideally hard, but generally it just makes it hard. Tempering is how you control the hardness. Its another process in heat treating. You heat it up again to soften it to the hardness you want. Springs, knives, and machine tools are tempered AFTER they are hardened. And old gunsmith trick for tempering springs made from plain high carbon spring steel is to drop them in a pot of molten lead. I've never done it, but I've seen it done. It can be done in a furnace, forge, oven or in a campfire, and it has been. Most home shop guys use a toaster oven. I use the same toaster I use for powder coating for tempering myself. You can muddy the waters with all kind of stuff, but hooks are cheap. Just try it. If it doesn't get hard hit it with a hammer or squeeze it in a press. If you want to get technical and drive yourself crazy there are whole volumes on heat treating. You can read book after book on the process. To begin with the section in the Machinery's Handbook on heat treating is a good start. I would suggest people start with an older one. The section on heat treating is quite a bit bigger in my 2020 31st edition than it is in my 1942 11th edition. If you KNOW what alloy you are working with you can download Heat Treaters Guide Companion on your cell phone and look up known industrial recipes. For something as small as a fish hook the quench can be done just fine with a hand held torch, and vegetable oil or even motor oil. (preheat the oil) The big issue in my opinion is hardening the eye without soften the rest of the hook. Personally unless I was making the spring from raw known carbon spring steel stock I'd try work hardening it first. Anyway, don't over complicate it. Just try it. It it doesn't work modify what you are trying. You are after all working with mystery steel. Hooks are relatively cheap. Try it and if it works write it down. Remember it may only work with that make and model of hook. Another hook or another manufacturer may (and probably does) use a different steel.

In HR terms. I choose not to discuss it other than to say we as a company do not see a reasonable circumstance where we would rehire.

There was more to my stepping away from Gamakatsu than just one batch of bad hooks. Eagle Claw once paid a customer of mine the cost of a custom mold "according to the customer," so they could use up a batch of hooks that were out of spec. (size/shape). Now I know that's way above and beyond, and nobody expects that class of customer service but my experience with Gamakatsu's rep was negative to a nearly equal magnitude.

Correction. Annealing. Not normalizing.

I think Gamakatsu has had the occasional bad batch. Some years back I quit using them when I had several acquired through proper distribution 4/0 superline hooks straighten out on me in a tournament. I contacted them in Japan and got no response. I've also had contact with their local regional sales rep and I won't get into it, but I left the interaction feeling like I wasn't going to use Gamakatsu for myself again or use them for customer molds unless the customer specified them. One of my favorite hooks is the eagle claw Laser L730. It's cheap, sharp, and relatively strong. Unfortunately they only seem to make it in a limited size range. The jury is still out for me on Victory hooks, but Harry is doing a good job of fronting the company.

It could also be depending on how old it is that the heating element needs to be replaced. I've noticed when running lead I have to set my old analog RCBS pot a little higher than I used to. Of course, mine is probably much older than yours. The other thing is that scale down in the nozzle and around the needle can build up, and it's my opinion that the scale acts as an insulator. After I don't know how many years I finally had to take drain my RCBS pot, pull the needle, scrape the scale off the pot and the needle, and run a drill down through the nozzle this year. Steel IS more reactive at lead melting temperature. Not like forging temperature, but... It's running almost as well as it was when it was new now. I just run about a 3/4 number on the dial higher than I used to.