A2 steel for Vise jaws - heat treating options?

[nateman_doo]

Can't find replacement vise jaws, so I am going to make some new ones with the closest spec I could find to my originals. By specs I mean physical size. The cheapest precision ground steel that I found I could use for this was annealed A2 precision ground at McMaster.

I would like to make them a bit harder, but I dont want to commit to them going in the kiln to fully air harden and then temper like a blade. It is arriving at a Rockwell of B90, so I plan to machine the holes (slots, since I would like to be able to adjust the height slightly) while its currently annealed and then harden it up a bit.

Would you either toaster oven it to a specific temp for specific time, or propane torch to a specific color? That is kind of where I am at with it. I dont want to introduce scale, as I need the main surfaces of the chunks to be precision ground and parallel. I do have an evenheat kiln, but I dont want to use it. Wonder if anyone has done anything similar.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

A2 needs an oven to get fully soaked at 1750F for about 20 minutes. Then, after the quench, it can be tempered at 900-1000F to get a high toughness.

 

[Keith Nix]

If you're not going to properly austenitize the A2, why not use a simple steel like 1060, or something similar?

 

[DevinT]

You will not get any increase in hardness unless you heat it to at least 1550’f and air cool. Best to fully harden from 1750’f and temper to desired hardness.

Look into 17-4ph stainless. You can harden by heating to ~925’f -950’f which will give you ~42 hrc. It will require using the Even heat furnace.

Hoss