First heat treat

[Forrest Taylor]

I bought the oven from a member here a while back, but couldn't use it because the voltage in my shop was 120. After trying unsuccessfully to come up with another solution or place to put the oven, I ran new overhead wire to my shop and installed a new panel.
The first batch Is three blades of AEB-L.
Austenitized at 1950 for 15 minutes, ice cold plate quenched to room temp, directly into sub zero quench with dry ice and alcohol for an hour,, immediately tempered at 350 for 1 hour. Thankfully zero warping. Chart says around 62.5 rockwell. My hardness test files confirm that.

Observations
Great to be able to control the process.
Somewhat time consuming

SHOUT OUT TO
Dr. Larrin Thomas for providing an indispensable resource with his Knife Engineering book!

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Good work Forrest - glad you got your first oven HT done!

Some observations:
Blade 1 and 2 have what could be a stress riser spot at that deep finger groove. Probably not a ig issue, but try and avoid any sudden narrowing of a knife at a place where force will be applied. They also look rather a bit uncomfortable to use. They might be better if you took the odd lift from the handle and made them straight. If a knife needs more finger clearance from the cutting board, change the edge angle to lift the handle, as you did in #3.
The prep knife is nice, but the choil is not needed and will create slicing issues. I would suggest not putting in a choil and just leaving the last 1/4" unsharpened in final sharpening. When you do have a choil, put it in after the bevels have been shaped and the edge is pretty close to almost sharp. Edges will often end up ground back as you clean the knife up and shape the bevels. Many times the choil may be lost if ground in before HT. Additionally, on some steels, the choil may be a stress riser in HTR and cause the blade to crack there.