Can you use a Heat Treat Kiln as a Forge?

J

JPhipps

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Sep 23, 2006
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(I only do stock removal, let someone else do my heat treating.)



I recently came across these cool heat treating kilns http://www.paragonweb.com/Knife_Making_Furnaces.cfm and http://www.debmark.com/Kilns/Good/Knife_Making_Kilns.shtml


I've been wondering if you could use them to forge. I could really use them to heat treat my own stuff finally (obviously), and the idea just hit me. I figured this would be the place to ask. Is this a crazy idea? It seems like it should make sense to me, so that probably means it's not a great idea.

Or would it be better overall to just buy a small propane forge? What would you do if you were just starting out forging in retrospect? If you had your druthers? Any and all info would be much appreciated. Thanks much!
 
No you can't really use a kiln to forge because it takes the door being closed to come to temperature. If you left the door open to try to get the kiln to temperature so you could forge, the kiln would never reach the temperature. Everytime you opened the door the temperature would drop significantly. Not to mention the constant opening of the door is really NOT good for the fire bricks of the kiln.

People use kilns like Evenheat and Paragon to heat treat their blades and then take them out to either air cool or oil harden and even water harden, but it's not being thrown up and down constantly in a day.

Just buy a propane forge as that will stay at a constant temperature that you can heat the steel back up real quick after it loses color. A hell of alot cheaper than buying a kiln.

go to http://www.elliscustomknifeworks.com/ and give Darren a call on the phone number listed. He is very helpful and very knowledgeable about forging.

I'll let the rest of the professionals jump in now. :D
 
I suggest a forge too. Mine runs on natural gas which is much more convenient (no bottles).

You can use a kiln, though. Jim Fergusen (Twisted Nickel) used to use a big ceramics kiln to heat the billets before forging in a press.

I think a forge is much more convenient, probably cheaper to buy and run too.
 
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