DO IT YOURSELF CRYO???

[tejas7]

Would it be of any use to try cryo treating my stock removal O-1 and 5160 with out the benifit of liquid nitrogen?

I have read about and am considering trying to emmerse by blades in a bath of dry ice and acetone or alcohol. Would this get cold enough to do any good? I am not sure what the freezing point of acetone (or how about anti-freeze) is?

Should the cryo be done after a triple temper? Before? Or in between?

All comments appreciated?

 

[cwknifeman]

I use dry ice for all of my heat treating, (with or without alcohol the temperature will get to a minus 109 degrees F.). It will not necessarly add anthing to the rockwell, at least from what I've read; but it will add a lot of strength to the blade. I even do my Damascus blades the same way. According to some makers it will not make any difference in high carbon steels but from my experience it has improved in the blades tensil strenght, and in the cutting ability of the blade.From talking to Paul Brothers in the past it was mentioned that some of the blade material would convert from arstinite into marstinite(pardon the spelling) at approximately a minus 60 degrees F. Being that I can readdly get dry ice, it works for me until I can afford to get a liquid Nitrogen container(they aren't cheap).