Greetings and I need some help on evenheat copper Jr.

[Brian yarborough]

Good morning,
I'm pretty new to the forum as asking questions, but have been following, reading, and taking notes on topics for quite some time now. As I'm pretty a pretty new to knife making and like all a lot of trial and error, I need some insight on a kiln that came into my possession recently. I was lucky enough to have gotten an Evenheat copper Jr., older model without controls, thermocouple on/ off switch for free, and it works great!!!
But to take it to the next level I just got a crest k type analog pyrometer and thermocouple to install.
I I'll be working mostly between 1085, W2, and 52100 from Aldo

Now for the questions?
Where should I mount the thermocouple
When heat treating should I place the blades in from the beginning and heat up with the kiln for my 3x normalizing before final HT? Or should I have it a little below critical place the blades in for a bring up to temp / soak time. Before quench
Mind you that I will not have temp controls at this point so I will have to manually be unplugging and plugging back in to control the temperature at this point.
Any and all insight to make this adventure more rewarding would be much appreciated

Brian

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Those kilns are used to do glass frit enameling mostly. IIRC, the chamber isn't very deep - something like 8X8X6". It would work for a small knife, but isn't the perfect kiln. Despite what the specs say about the top temps, they won't do stainless steel.

You really need to add a controller and Type K TC. Get them from Auber and just plug the kiln into a socket controlled by the PID controller. For basic carbon steel HT control, you will need:
http://www.auberins.com/index.php?ma...products_id=40
http://www.auberins.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=427
http://www.auberins.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=106 ( you can get the programmable model if you want, but for basic carbon steel HT, just set the desired target on the basic PID)
40 amp SSR and heat sink plus a standard 20 amp 115VAC socket. ( ebay or Auberins)

All that costs $100-150. It makes the kiln controlled ... which is very important.