advice: To Kiln or not to kiln... that is the question?

rustyrazor

rustyrazor

Joined
Oct 13, 2011
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Hello everyone... I need a bit of advice on this one. It's come to that time where i have everything paid off and have to rack up a bit more debt on my credit card for some new equipment. That being the case, I was wondering if it was time to buy a kiln and start doing my own heat treating or waste my money on another piece of equipment and stick with the pros in the meantime. My question is, when is it financially sensible to start doing your own HT, and what are the Pros and Cons as you see them when you take everything into consideration with foils and liquid nitrogens and whatnot?

thanks in advance

Royce
 
I bought my first kiln before I even had a good grinder because heat treat is so important. That being said you can also send off to industry specialists and have them follow your heat treat schedule or their proven schedule.

So you can harden the knives or someone else can...

- when you heat treat the knives you have full control and knowledge of the process

- when someone else does the heat treat you get to spend that day grinding

- it costs a fair bit to get set up and even more to heat treat the knives... time is money

- for research and development it is great to have a fast turn around time and to be able to do small changes in house

Economically speaking it is probably best to send them off, especially if you plan on using air hardening steels. Heat treat day here starts early and ends very late. It is a long day with lots of tedious work done late especially when I do larger groups that need a sub-zero cycle. With simple steels that just need a heat and oil quench you can do them pretty quickly. Once you get into triple normalizing cycles and the like it goes back up to all day again.

I have two kilns and have done 100% of my knives in house. I just started using steels that need a hotter temp than my kiln can go to and will be sending them off but want a small hotter kiln for R&D. I think sending groups of folder blades off or large fixed blade batches will be the way to go soon for me. I will still heat treat most in house as it is fun to do one off's and the like.
 
I'm speaking strictly for myself, but a kiln and all of the associated tooling required to do in-house heat treating will be my LAST purchase. There are just so many other tools I would like to acquire first, that will either aid in increased quality or production or both. The ONLY reason I would like to have one now would be for prototypes or one-offs. Until then though, I am more than satisfied sending off batches to Peters. The quality of heat treat is spot on and it just makes more economic sense for me at this time.
 
No one can tell you if you SHOULD do your own heat treat.
I do it because my fascination with metallurgy is one of the main reasons I do this. Would it be more practical to send it out? Probably. But then I'd miss a big chunk of the fun and satisfaction.
Building an oven isn't that hard if you have some basic metalworking equipment...
 
Frank Niro said:
A question I have in return is do you have a surface grinder?
Frank
Click to expand...

Hi Frank

No, I don't have one yet... haven't even looked into pricing one so far, but it would make life so much easier and i think that's a great idea. the only downside is now trying to price one of those out as well to see if i can justify it. I'm in the same boat as most i assume, where i do (at least eventually) want to be in control of my own blades, start to finish but if it can wait and there is a better piece of equipment for me to get that will make my life easier. I should have written this thread as "what should i buy next" instead of making it so specific to one thing.

thanks for the replies gents.
 
Hey Royce,

I put the cart well ahead of the horse and bought a kiln before I got my 2x72. Like the others have said I think its dependent on what you want to do. I personally wanted to heat treat my work so that is why I went ahead and bought one. I find the science behind it fascinating and enjoyable.

Some other pluses are:
You can heat treat other tools like broaches, chisels and gravers
You can re-heat treat if the blade didn't take a heat treat
You can experiment to find the best options for the steal you have

Negatives I've found:
Having no hardness tester for a baseline sucks
You can get a lot of knives heat treated for the price of a kiln (though you will eventually hit a turnover)
You need expensive oil and quench plates though foil for ss is cheap on amazon


Only other item I would note is you will notice the jump in size is pretty good for the little bit of extra cash. But with all the cool alloy steels out there I choose the higher heat Evenheat KO model over the larger KF model. That said I'd like to have the KO and a 48" KF for swords. One can wish right :D

-Clint
 
I could see when you're doing a lot of blades that outsourcing the heat treatment makes sense. Maybe it's even cost effective since you don't spend your time on it. And steel selection is a lot simpler since the quenching and tempering isn't your problem.

But I find it really freeing to have a heat treat oven that I can use at any time. I don't have to wait a week to get a blade back and I don't have to batch up a bunch of blades to make it cost effective. If you're electrically savvy building an oven or converting a ceramic kiln isn't terribly hard.
 
There's really no substitute for having in-house HT capabilities if you do a lot of one-offs and custom orders. And at least understanding the concepts is crucial to being a good knifemaker, even if you don't do it yourself.

But a kiln is only the beginning... you're going to need a table for the kiln, a way to be sure it's really running as hot as it says it is, tool wrap, racks, tongs, gloves, UV glasses, plates and/or a quench tank with good oil, a dewar for LN or at least a cooler and dry ice for air-hardening steels, a Rockwell tester/calibration blocks... not to mention space for all that stuff, a dedicated 20-amp circuit if you go 120V (or preferably a 220V circuit, it's a lot more efficient), and perhaps most of all, the time to deal with it all. To be on the safe side, I'd budget at least $2K and a month's learning curve to jump right in and get going... possibly as much as twice that.

Of course you could always stick with simple steels, a basic propane or coal forge, a can of canola oil and your kitchen oven. There's nothing wrong with that, either.

If you do batches of 10-100 blades at a time and can plan lead time to ship them out, there's no way in heck you can match the quality, price and efficiency of having Peters' or Bos do them. I've done the math several times and it just doesn't make sense for me to HT my own batches. The electricity alone would kill me, let alone the time it would take to muck around with 5 blades at a time. As Daniel mentioned, that's time I spend grinding the next batch and/or building handles and sheaths on the previous batch.

The good news is for you is, I have a barely-used 14" Paragon digital programmable kiln I'll let you have for significantly less than retail, and you'll save a couple-few hundred bucks right off the bat... without waiting weeks or months to get it delivered. Of course, you gotta come pick it up... I am not going to crate that thing up and ship it :D
 
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Do you like to work in batches? If yes then sending out is pretty hard to beat. If not, I personally dont like to, then having a kiln to do a blade or two at a time really allows you to work on whatever whenever you want at your own pace.
 
When you have all the basic equipment, an oven is really nice. That said, sending the blades out in batches of 10-20 is far more economic.
More important are a good 2X72" grinder with accessories and wheels, a good disc grinder, a metal cutting band saw, a good wood band saw, a good forge, good hand tools, clamps, vises, etc. I would almost say a forging press would be a better buy ( for about two or three tomes the cost) than an oven.

I have three ovens, and use one only occasionally. Peter's does all my blades except an occasional one that I need right away.
 
Nice to have a Kiln.. I have always done it myself. But it can be time consuming , Something I just don't have a lot of these days. But you should have one. Look on Craiglist for a Hardness tester you will be surprised at how available they are and at good prices. Buy five gallon buckets of quench oil from Maxim
and you can find your aluminum plates on ebay . Most everything you need is easily sourced with just a little leg work. Heat treating is not as hard to do as people will lead you to believe just start by following the manufacturers instructions and then tweak if you feel the need to mess with a perfectly good heat treat recipe that the manufacturer suggests . Good Luck
 
Ha... I appreciate the offer James, but I fear the gas money to drive to Knoxville from Ontario (Canada, not California) may end up negating the savings on this one... This is actually turning into a fairly hard decision on where to sink my next bit of debt. I am doing a lot more batches these days, and even considering getting a run done with waterjet blanks... So I might not be coming ahead by much. I shoulda just bought it and made my mistake like everything else I have tried :) That being the case, anybody care to add to what Frank was mentioning above. Would I be better off actually getting a surface grinder and put off the Kiln till next year?

yours truly

Mr. indecisive.
 
I bought a kiln so I could start doing hamons on my knives.

I'm now doing all of my own heat treating. For me its all part of the learning process, and experimenting. That's why I got into the hobby in the first place.
 
I just sent off my first batch to Peters for heat treat. As much as I would like to have a kiln I just can't justify the start up costs for heating treating in house. At a $110.00 for a batch of 20 blades you can't beat the price. As to the surface grinder I already have one and use it regularly. If you are doing folders I would recommend getting one. I plan to spend my money on other equipment for my shop and leave the heat treating to the professionals.
 
$110 for 20 blades is just unbeatable. I am glad we have companies and knife makers who will heat treat knives for those who don't have the means to do so. That being said, I bought a kiln because I wanted to learn how to heat treat myself, and get the most performance out of the alloy steels like 52100. And since I am usually doing one knife at a time, and as slow as I am (ha ha), getting 20 blades ready to go at one time is really not an option, although last year I did have 10 stainless steel blades for Brad to do his thing with. Even $10 a blade is a bargain, in my opinion.

At the risk of being on the wrong side of the tracks, I wanted the kiln before I wanted (and still don't have) a 2x72 grinder. I LOVE heat treating a knife. It is my favorite part of the whole process!
 
I might take some flak for this, but my opinion is that having someone else do a critical part of the process of making a knife, ie water jet cut outs and sent out heat treat brings you one step closer to buying kit knives and assembling them. Nothing wrong with that, But your not a knife maker. For someone just making a few knives or just starting out, sent out heat treat makes some sense (but, even better would be to limit yourself to steels you can heat treat in-house) In my mind sending out for heat treat is hardly different than sending the blades out to be ground by someone else.

I consider the money spent on my evenheat furnace as the best tool investment I have made.
 
The purchase of the HT furnace is nice if you plan to keep it all in house....however you need a verifiable way to test the hardness results. Hardness files are sketchy so the investment in a true Rockwell hardness tester will be on the list of items to purchase. This is another expense most new makers need to budget for so when they list the RC hardness on their product they have documentation to back up the results. Again the professional heat treating comes with paperwork to prove their results.
 
ricky_arthur said:
I might take some flak for this, but my opinion is that having someone else do a critical part of the process of making a knife, ie water jet cut outs and sent out heat treat brings you one step closer to buying kit knives and assembling them. Nothing wrong with that, But your not a knife maker. For someone just making a few knives or just starting out, sent out heat treat makes some sense (but, even better would be to limit yourself to steels you can heat treat in-house) In my mind sending out for heat treat is hardly different than sending the blades out to be ground by someone else.

I consider the money spent on my evenheat furnace as the best tool investment I have made.
Click to expand...

Bold statement Ricky... you may indeed take some flak for this. there's a rabbit hole i'm not even going to attempt to go down on what constitiutes a "handmade" knife and what doesn't... I've seen this one before and it doesn't end well. All I will say is that IMHO if we are going to get right down to it, if you aren't smelting your own steel from ore you dug yourself and harvesting your own handle materials from nature then someone else has at least a hand in the process that is outside your control so somewhere between that and sending your ideas to japan to be made and assembled to your specs for you lies each persons idea of what a hand made knife is, and I don't judge as long as they make a great knife.
 
rustyrazor said:
Bold statement Ricky... you may indeed take some flak for this. there's a rabbit hole i'm not even going to attempt to go down on what constitiutes a "handmade" knife and what doesn't... I've seen this one before and it doesn't end well. All I will say is that IMHO if we are going to get right down to it, if you aren't smelting your own steel from ore you dug yourself and harvesting your own handle materials from nature then someone else has at least a hand in the process that is outside your control so somewhere between that and sending your ideas to japan to be made and assembled to your specs for you lies each persons idea of what a hand made knife is, and I don't judge as long as they make a great knife.
Click to expand...


Touche' Not only did you go down the rabbit hole you doubled down. lol
 
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