Got these blades back today. They look really good. Everything is dead flat and straight, so on that aspect, they did a great job. What initially made Byington stand out to me over the more well known heat treaters was their price and their short lead time. They start at $3 per blade (30+ blades), and they claim a 3-7 day lead time on most orders. The $3 only includes hardening, and a single temper cycle. By the time you add a second temper cycle and cryo, they are at $5 per blade, which is pretty much the same as everyone else. They quoted me a 3-6 day turnaround when I sent the order, but it turned into 14 business days ( from the time they received them to the time they shipped them back, I'm not counting transit time at all). That's about 3 weeks, which again, is about the same as what the other guys quote. Not a huge deal, and long lead times can be dealt with by planning ahead, but if someone says 3-6 days, and that's what you are expecting, a 14 day turnaround can be problematic.
Their standard process for checking hardness is to test 5% of the order, whereas some of the other heat treaters test every blade. On 34 knives, 5% is only 2 blades. 2 Blades isn't enough to give me confidence that the batch is consistent, and I expressed this to them before ever sending the knives. They agreed to test 10 of the 34, but in the end only 2 were tested. Again, not a huge deal, and still within their normal procedures, but it wasn't what I asked for and what they agreed to. Their basic package doesn't include anything that tells you what their heat treating schedule looked like, so I purchased one of the higher level packages that included "certification of the treatment process and certification of the hardness level", which I did not receive. I was expecting paperwork detailing the parameters of the heat treat schedule, as well as the exact hardness of the tested blades, but got nothing. They don't even have the hardness written on the two blades that they tested. I emailed them after the fact asking for it again, and its possible that they may email it to me, but if the hardness isn't written on the knives they tested, I'm not sure how they would be able to provide it at this point. They wont guarantee an exact hardness, only within a 3 point range. They say they guarantee withing 2 points but if you want 61, they can only guarantee between 60-62, that is definitely a 3 point range. When you request the hardness, you actually request the LOWEST hardness that you want. In my case, we wanted 61, so i requested a minimum of 60, and they would guarantee it to be within 60-62. So at this point, if they provide me a hardness level, who is to say that it was the actual hardness of the knives they checked, and not just some random number within the range. Again, maybe a not a huge deal for some, but it makes it impossible to make adjustments if we decide we want to change the desired hardness on future batches, because we don't really know what the hardness was on these..
Not that anyone asked, but my completely uneducated opinion is that they are probably great for someone who is working on hundreds of blades at a time, and is happy with knowing their hardness somewhere in a general ballpark. But we have always done all of our own heat treating, and in order for me to feel comfortable farming that out, I need to be pretty confident that I am getting what I am expecting. If the turnaround time had been within the window that THEY quoted me, or even just a couple days over that, if they had tested the 10 blades that they agreed to, and if I had received the process certification and the hardness report that was supposed to be included, we would be sending most of our blades to them for heat treatment from now on. I realize now that I am typing that, it may seem a lot to ask or expect, but honestly, its not their name that will be on the knives, its mine, so I do expect a lot. The only reason we ever considered sending out for heat treatment was because we found their website and their description of their services worked well for what we need/expect. We'll probably send batches out to the more well known guys like Peters and Bos to see how it goes. But 30-40 blades at a time isn't really enough to move the needle for any heat treater, so I'm half expecting similar results.