GunKote impending - will heating RC Knives to 325F affect the temper?

P

Parker

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Mar 19, 1999
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Jeff or Mike, I have an Izula inbound, picked up very reasonably secondary market.

I am going to strip off the pink paint and give it a GunKote finish, which bakes on at 325F for an hour, after the knife is heated to 325.

I've got a very good oven thermometer (internal to the oven) so I'm not concerned about keeping the temp even, but I do want to know if I will affect the temper of the knife in any way which will reduce the knife's performance.

Would I be best off talking with someone at Rowen about this?
 
From the research I've done I wouldn't do it. Actually I wouldn't want to go above 175F for any period of time but that's just me. Hopefully someone in the know will chime in for you.
 
I've been doing some of my knives in silver gun-kote lately and have not had ANY problems. I'm also only using a toaster over. You won't have any problems.
 
Anything over 300 degrees F can start to affect steel temper. Some steels are tempered as low 350F. I'm not sure about 1095 specifically and I'm sure it's much higher than 350 but I'd certainly be careful and not take advice from random internet people like me :D
 
My guess would be that they're tempered at somewhere closer to 450-475 degrees. No way baking a RAT at 325 is going to wreck anything. Even if it was tempered at 300 (which would give a hardness well above what we want in a hard use knife), baking it at 325 wouldn't do anything other than another temper.
 
My gut tells me that anything developed for use on a gun would translate fairly well over to knives. Nobody wants to ruin the temper of the steel on their very expensive guns either.

Of course, I could be 100% WRONG.
 
You won't affect the temper, because 325F is lower than whatever the knife was originally tempered at. 325F itself is the lower limit for knife tempering in general.
 
from what I understand, you are probably looking at an original temper some where above 350 and possibly as high as 400-450 originally on the knife.
 
zhangmaster12 said:
why not duracoat it? i dont believe there is baking involved.
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GunKote is a more durable finish and is also a very smooth finish. It will bake to a gray-green with the high PTFE version.

I had considered getting my RC3 hardchromed as well, and may have one done like this for fun.

I'll call RAT/ Rowen about this, Rowen has done a remarkable job with the heat treat on these and I'd not like to fubar it.

For fun, I'll ask in the makers section as well, thanks guys.
 
Just to put your mind at ease, even though you got the OK from Rowen, the temper temp for 1095 is between 400-600 depending on the desired hardness. So, yep, at 325 you should be good to go.
 
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