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

rustyrazor said:
there's a rabbit hole i'm not even going to attempt to go down...
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rustyrazor said:
All I will say is that IMHO...
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Lol your posts crack me up man. I still laugh about the thread where you said your name makes you sound like a pornstar knife maker :D

So to add a little to my above thoughts for any new guys out there on the fence. If you want to make a low number of unique custom pieces with hamons and differential heat treats and maybe work towards you JS or MS. Then you probably would be a good candidate to buy a kiln.

On the other hand if you want to make a line of say bushcraft or chef knives in large batches using the same two or three steel types then you are probably better off outsourcing your heat treat.

If money is not an option when building out your shop buy a kiln and have the option to send out.

My two cents!

-Clint
 
I'd love to have an HT oven, Rockwell tester and dewar for Cyro. The money for that just isn't in the cards right now. With the amount of work other than HT that I put into my slipjoints. I don't feel ashamed to call myself a fledgling knifemaker.

When sending the slipjoints out for HT, you only end up with 10 knives as the blade and the spring each count as one of the 20 pieces.
 
rustyrazor said:
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...
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I'm glad you saw the silliness in that offer ;)

To HT or not to HT is a tough decision, for sure. There are a whole lot of factors involved, and only you can decide.

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.
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Utter nonsense. As a full-time professional knifemaker, I am sincerely offended by this completely ignorant statement, and I'm sick and tired of hearing that tired old "argument" against efficiency. If you think that having a bar of steel cut by waterjet or laser or bandsaw or belt-grinder or files makes a difference in the final product, you're just fooling yourself. If you think someone HT'ing a knife in their kitchen, backyard or garage matches the quality that comes from a professional HT firm like Peters' or Bos, I look forward to your results.

If I have to explain further how dumb your statement truly is, I will be very happy to send you or anyone else a blank I designed, drilled and cut. That's a "kit knife", right? You grind it and have it HT'ed by anyone you want. Then, build a handle on it. I'll do the same. Then, we'll put your example and mine in any neutral third party's hands to test and examine.
 
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I am with James and Stacy... but with a hitch.

I think you should have a fairly intimate knowledge of every aspect of your craft. From profiling and grinding to heat treat and final sharpening. Should you choose to farm out certain operations in the interest of improved quality or simple convenience, it becomes an educated decision... not an avoidance of work or responsibility. For someone to get a profiled blank from James, have it HT'd by Bos and finish ground by Stacy... even if they put their own slabs on it... to then turn around, slap on a marker's mark and call themselves a knifemaker... is what I would call delusional.

and of course, I need to follow that up with... "not that there is anything wrong with kit makers!"

Rick:p
 
For me, it comes down to the simple practicality of being able to fill orders. I already have a backlog as it is and I WILL lose a lot of potential customers that just don't want to wait around forever for a no-name maker like myself to put em on a 2 year waiting list. I'm not saying in a perfect world that i wouldn't want to be able to cut every knife out by hacksaw or forge and finish every aspect of it myself... that's the part i like best about knifemaking, the Zen of focusing on nothing but the details and leaving the world behind. Problem is just that... there is a real world i live in and this just isn't practical for me. I have a full time job that can take me away at anytime day or night for as long as they need to and even if it's only 9 - 5 through the week, there just aren't enough hours in the day to be able to keep up with everything else and try to fill knife orders. I have designed and refined each "model" by hand over the years to the point that each one is as close to exactly the same as every other with likely hundreds of hours in the shop on R&D for each "model". All that to say who cares if i save myself 2 hours work by having them waterjet cut and precesion ground to get me to the exact same starting point that i need to? The math just makes sense to me... if it takes me 10 hours to make each one and i can save 2 hours each, then every 40 hours of my own time i end up with one more knife out the door and possibly one less customer that wanders off to buy someone elses knife.

Note: math simplified for demonstration purposes, try not to overthink it.
 
Rick Marchand said:
I think you should have a fairly intimate knowledge of every aspect of your craft.
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I agree completely. One can't properly decide which alloy to use for a given knife and how to have it correctly HT'ed for its intended use without a good understanding of all aspects. :thumbup:

Unless you just blindly follow what others have done and proven to work... that's a legitimate way to make great knives. But I think you're missing a lot of the fun that way. The "why" is just as interesting as the "how" to me... no matter who does what, where.

Anyhoo, my final answer is, if you can afford a good HT set-up, by all means go for it. Just be aware it's going to take a while to pay for itself.
 
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
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I also disagree with this point and believe it is just severely outdated. Before the internet was around and extremely prevalent, heat treatment was much more closely guarded by knife makers and much less understood by your average knife maker. People read the handful of books and monthly publications around and that represented how most knowledge passed. I would bet that to get consistent quality heat treatment most knife makers would have to have visited an established knife makers shop and had that maker directly hand down the knowledge and techniques for heat treatment. I bet that created kind of a fraternity feeling of the "true knife makers" and handle attachers. This us vs them attitude was also much more prevalent in the stock removal vs forged blade camps.

Now it is 2015 and it feels like there is limitless knowledge and info available all over the web and all you have to do is look it up. Seven years ago I had only held two custom knives in my life. I have only met a handful of knife makers at symposiums or gun shows ect. Last month I made an eight bar Turkish twist damascus gyuto alone in my garage. Things are a bit different now...
 
JMJones said:
... Before the internet was around ...
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Way way back in the 60's/70's, some guy called Bob Loveless caught a ton of flak for sending his hand-ground blades out for professional heat-treat. In every single one of his published writings and interviews where the topic of HT came up, he said that he made that decision because he demanded the very best.

That Loveless dude just happened to be a huge part of kick-starting the modern custom/handmade knives movement, went on to serve as president of a Guild he helped form, and his knives/designs/procedures are still, quite literally, a blueprint for success.
 
I doubt you disagree with me as much as you think. You need to re read my post. I didn't say (or it was not my intention to say)that if you sub out any portion of your knife making you are not a knife maker. I simply said if you are assembling parts that were pre made by someone else, It is not the same thing As being a knife maker. And having some one else cut out or heat treat for you was a step in that direction. BUT either way, I'm surprised at how condescending and insulting you got just because you heard an opinion that you misconstrued and disagreed with. Obviously my work is not on par with yours or anyone elses But from start to finish I Like to do it myself. I'll just go back to being an admirer of your work and offer less opinions That way Noone gets their underpants in A wad...
 
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ricky_arthur said:
I doubt you disagree with me as much as you think. You need to re read my post. I didn't say (or it was not my intention to say)that if you sub out any portion of your knife making you are not a knife maker. I simply said if you are assembling parts that were pre made by someone else, It is not the same thing As being a knife maker. And having some one else cut out or heat treat for you was a step in that direction. BUT either way, I'm surprised at how condescending and insulting you got just because you heard an opinion that you misconstrued and disagreed with. Obviously my work is not on par with yours or anyone elses But from start to finish I Like to do it myself. I'll just go back to being an admirer of your work and offer less opinions That way Noone gets their underpants in A wad...
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you knew that was a touchy subject from the get go, as you eluded to in your first post about "taking flak"... people get a little on edge when you poke at them or pick apart their methods. I think it's safe to say that everyone who takes pride in their work is guilty of that i imagine. Even to say "if you are assembling parts made by someone else it's not the same as being a knifemaker" those are your "parts"... and your knives, not some kit knife you ordered out of a catalogue and had no part in creating. You have already made this knife 10, 20 maybe 50 times as close to the same as possible. You have designed them, redesigned them, tested them and perfected them to the point at which they are repeatable in a run of a specific model that people now want... the same as the one they held or as close to it as possible. You put all of that R&D into that part or blank and now you are trying to save a few minutes on the mindless stuff, to possibly make some money on the design for once. Just because you have someone else cut that part out doesn't detract from all of the work you have done, it just allows you to put more of them out to actually be able to make it as a knifemaker. Like i said in my first post on this topic, where does it end? someone else smelted the steel, someone else made your grinder, someone else made the abrasives, files, hammers and handle materials... and thank tesla for the electricity to run the gear and lights. Not one person that i know has made a knife without something done by someone else to make that process easier, so I'm not sure i agree 100% with your point.

P.S. I know you werent trying to insult anyone, and I'm not trying to insult you. Just saying sometimes there's more than one way to look at things.
 
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rustyrazor said:
Not one person that i know has made a knife without something done by someone else to make that process easier, so I'm not sure i agree 100% with your point.

P.S. I know you werent trying to insult anyone, and I'm not trying to insult you. Just saying sometimes there's more than one way to look at things.
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Fair enough. So, are you getting the furnace? Lol
 
ricky_arthur said:
Fair enough. So, are you getting the furnace? Lol
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Ha... long story short, I'm still not sure. I think i have been 60% convinced that getting a surface grinder would be better for me at the moment as I'm looking to get into folders as well. I also have no idea where to start looking for one of those, but I'm torn right now and depending on the cost of the two and whatnot, i am going to have to do the calculating.

P.S. who knows anything about getting a reasonably inexpensive surface grinder?
 
Anyone who surface grinds their blades is not a knife maker. :p Kidding, only kidding, i couldn't resist. lol


I would look for a used one. Looks like new ones start around 1500-2000 and go north very quick.
 
ricky_arthur said:
Anyone who surface grinds their blades is not a knife maker. :p Kidding, only kidding, i couldn't resist. lol


I would look for a used one. Looks like new ones start around 1500-2000 and go north very quick.
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Ha! ..you might be a little slow, but I admire your persistence. I did a quick search on them and it's hit or miss with used though. I have to do more research.
 
Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I am at the same point as Rusty was back in April. I am curious what you ended up doing? Also, what part of Ontario are you in?
 
dont forget that a oven is nice but you need a hardenes tester as well .you need to know what your getting and how its getting there .otherwise your just swinging a cat in a dark small room your going to hit a wall your just not going to know which one
cheers john
 
Some of it may depend on the steels you typically work with too. Don't forget to factor in things like tool wrap, some quench plates, quenchant, a dewar for LN, a cooler or some type of apparatus for dry ice and denatured alcohol, etc., that you may need in addition to the oven. From a purely financial standpoint it will probably take a while for the oven and associated items and operating costs to pay for itself.

For me it came down to wanting to be involved in every part of the process, from a bar of steel to a finished knife, and to educate myself on something as important as heat treating and to be able to conduct my own experiments. There are obviously some top level heat treating pro's like Peters, BOS, etc. Many amazing makers, including ones that have already posted in this thread as well as the late, great R.W. Loveless who send most of their knives to the professional heat treaters. Brad at Peters is a top notch guy that knows what he's doing. For me, there were quite a few other reasons for wanting to do my own heat treating that have nothing to do with any kind of lack of great places to do it for me.

I can busy myself doing other things in the shop while blades are in the oven being normalized, heat treated or tempered. I am fortunate to live in an area where getting LN or dry ice is easy. I am frugal and was able to source aluminum for quench plates pretty cheaply. I also like the flexibility. To get the best pricing you need to send at least 20 blades at a time to Peters. When you do it yourself you can do small batches when you want to. Want to fairly quickly see what the practical difference is between 2 and 3 tempers with some new super steel? Pretty easily accomplished with your own oven.

If you're the type that wants to be involved in all of the processes get an oven and don't try to justify it financially. I'd probably freak out if I ever figured out what the quail meat is costing per pound when my son and I hunt them. Some things are worthwhile for other reasons. Only you can decide.
 
I would also like to add that some top makers feel they lose control of the process.Jay Fishers new web page details some considerations when outsourcing.I do my own because I get a kick out of doing it,however with some steels it can be very time consuming.(10-12 Hrs.)I'm pretty much in Drysideshooters camp on this.
 
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