Heat treating with Acetylene

JTknives

JTknives

Joined
Jun 11, 2006
Messages
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im working with 5160 now and wondering if all i want to do is heat treating would a little portable oxy-acetylene work good or should i just save up and get a vertical forge. does ed fowler still use a torch for heat treating. what kind of run time am i looking at getting from the small porta a torch setups. and does any one know the cost to refill. thanks
 
Don't waste your money on one of the little portable units I used a whole bottle of acetylene to do a multiple differential heat treat on a larger blade and it ends up costing about $17 to get them refilled I ended up buying some larger bottles which are only slightly more to fill and will last about 10 times the little bottles.
 
the onley reson i was thinking small was because i live in an apartment and need to hall my stuff out side. but for 420 i can get a 10" vertical forced air forge ellis. a good investment because i an wanting to get back into forging.
 
I would say if you can aford the forge get one. You can do so much more with a forge as far as knifemaking goes than you can with a torch.
 
I use the Oxy-Acet set up for hardening blades. This requires a skill that is worth learning, you can truly customise the nature of your blades.

My Victor gauges and torch are over 60 years old. Still going strong. My suggestion, buy the biggest bottles you can.
 
I used torches for HT early in knifemaking for lack of a heat treating oven. At first the results were a bit hit and miss, but I had great success with both 01 and 440C. I still have some of these knives, and they hold an edge better than many others using the oven.

The only drawback is scale. Using torches produces alot of scale. Ed is right get big tanks, it doesn't take long to drain out the oxygen tanks.
 
Mr Fowler also has a couple books and DVD's you want, excellent secrets shared in them for anyone wishing true performance from there craft.

Ed is also right about getting the biggest bottles you can. My A O set goes with me everywhere I go, there mounted in my service van. I am always tempted to get smaller bottles to save on room and weight.

Last time I exchanged bottles (refilled) the Accelione was $70 frogskins Denver pricing, I'll keep the bigger bottles, smaller is just less economical.

Here is a batch of deferentially hardened blades from this student of the Ed Fowler methods.

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AND ALWAYS TURN THE BOTTLES OFF, (if you don't know why, you will)
 
ya i know why, i learned that the hard way when i was a young kid using pops set. :( there was no gas in the tanks and i was the last one to use it. dad was ok but lesson learned as i had to pack the tanks to the truck and pack the full ones back. :)
 
i found a victor setup no tanks. hose, victor torch and victor regs for 140 is that a good price.
 
I have used a small oxy acet torch and seem to get quite a bit of life out of them. I do set up some fire bricks to help keep the heat in. I just make a small kiln out ogf 5-6 bricks, one has a hole in it. Helps get more uniform on larger blades and you can set a couple of blades in for preheat which getting one to temp. I have been using 1095 and O1.
 
If it's used check ALL of the o-rings before you use it and bubblecheck everything!

-Page
 
One thing to think about before you run out and buy an acetylene set-up, especially since you are in an apartment, so I assume renting, is the liability. The land lord, his insurance or even your own insurance may have big problems with an o/a set being kept in an apartment, you may want to ask some questions first. Not that propane tanks aren’t potentially dangerous, but they are common and more “acceptable” at least partially because of the use for grills, frier/boilers, heaters, etc.

Todd
 
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