Best Commercial Heat Treaters for small batch 52100

C

Catalpa Woods

Joined
Dec 21, 2016
Messages
4
Hi all.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

New knife maker here, as in steel from Aldo should be here tomorrow. I sell knives, and came up as a manual machinist, so process is is easy. Now comes the experience.
I chose to work initially with 52100. Advice from local blacksmiths and engineers was to order from Aldo, so I did. Order done promptly and on the way.
As I will be concentrating on a few pieces of the puzzle myself at a time, I plan to leave the Heat Treating for now to the pros. I do intend on learning it and doing it myself, but after I am more comfortable with the actual design, grinding, and fit and finish.

Any recommendations on who the best heat treater is for small batches of knives in 52100? I hear that a lot of work has been done by several people in the community into perfecting it, so I would rather it done right, and best it can be, given that I will be using stock removal as opposed to forged?

Heard Peter's was really good? Any others?
Seeing that I only have a 4x36 belt sander, who do you guys get belts from?
Oh, and will be concentrating on small to medium bush craft/survival/hunting blades to start. 1/8" for small blades, 3/16" for heavier use blades. If that matters.
Any advice to a newbie is always appreciated.

Ken
 
True grit, Texas knife supply. Peters is excellent for large batches. Delbert Early here on the forums has done several for me. Excellent and super affordable!

-Jim
 
I also do heat treating and will do 52100 and will do all the required normalizing and grain refining befor heat treat.
 
What hardness do you guys recommend for a target? 58-60? Any difference in hardness between smaller thinner blades and the longer thicker ones? Or stick to Kiss principle for now?
 
I'm sure you will get a few different answers to this but I vary rarely take anything under 60rc any more. Hardness is very dependent on edge geometry. You don't want your edge to chip when you brass rid test it. But 60-64hrc is not unusual.
 
The current info is that 52100 is pretty damn tough even at high hardness using the lower temp austenizing. Even using the old industry standard recipe for bearings, guys used to leave it at like 59 all the time and it was tougher than woodpecker lips.
 
Well thats exactly what I want. Plenty of hardness to hold an edge, but tough enough to take a beating. Bush crafters tend to like abusing their knives, especially the bigger ones.
 
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