How do you pre heat your oil?

blgoode

blgoode

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Oct 3, 2003
Messages
7,110
I think I used up my small amount of Acetaline pre heating my oil ....how do you pre heat your oil?

Would preheating about a galon of oil in my grill be too hot to pur into my quench tank?

Just looking for other methods used here.

Thanks.
 
Check out the garage sales for a electric fry pan or small roaster. I got a small roaster measuring about 8" x 16" for $3.00.
I filled it with water and put in my thermoniter to set the temp just where I wanted it then marked the dial. I find that it will repeat the temp setting within about 5 deg.
Works very well.
Good luck
 
I heat up a piece of scrap steel to an orange color and dunk it in the oil...then agitate it a bit. The temp almost always lands at 130-140F as per my themometer.
 
thats what I was doing .....guess I just need a damn forge ;)
 
I was talking about heating it in the forge. Sorry, I forget sometimes that everyone doesn't have one.
The torch I showed you in the other post makes a good temporary jet for a forge. Just don't give it any back pressure.
 
Now that I'm going to be heat treating my own carbon blades I need to deal with this stuff too. I have a stove in my shop that I use for tempering my blades and I was thinking of finding or making an oil container that would fit in the stove so I could heat the oil in there. The only problem I have with that is the container would have to be shallow instead of deep so I can immerse the entire blade.
Here's my question.
Does the size or shape of the quenching tank matter as long as the blade is sufficiently surrounded by quenchant?
Thanks for any tips and help you can send my way!!!
Michael
 
I have one of the stainless steel pans used in the food industry that I just put on top of my deep fryer burner to heat my oil up for edge quench. Heat my oil for a full quench in a stainless coroners slop bucket.

Mark
 
I made my quench tank by splitting a piece of well casing and welding ends on. I just apply heat directly to the out side of the tank via the tourch. I just finished helping a guy make one out of 1/4 inch thick steel welded together. we put a heating element out of a small water heater in it and attached the thermastat for the heater to the under side of the quench tank set it at its' lowest setting and walah. turn it on and it heats the oil to 145. leave it on and it will hold that temp. seems to work great.
 
I've got an old double burner electric hot plate that I used to use when staying at motels working construction. Got a large baking tray for oil and a candy thermomiter. Works good for the one or two blades at a time that I do, if you do more you have to wait for the oil to cool down due to the small capacity.

If I ever find some land and build a shop like I want I'll set up a permanent tank with a water heater set-up like Bill was talking about.
 
What other type of burner could you put in a 4" x 16" tank? Can I find a heating coil at Home depot?

What about using a charcoal lighting coil to dip in the oil? Its a u shaped thing that gets way hot!

Thats a great idea.....
 
Here's a photo of my makeshift forge and quench pan. The red bricks form a chimney that direct some of the heat up to the quench pan. I can move it off the side (as in the pic) if it starts to get too hot.
157252.jpg

Regards,
Greg
 
Will52100 said:
I've got an old double burner electric hot plate that I used to use when staying at motels working construction. Got a large baking tray for oil and a candy thermomiter. Works good for the one or two blades at a time that I do, if you do more you have to wait for the oil to cool down due to the small capacity.

If I ever find some land and build a shop like I want I'll set up a permanent tank with a water heater set-up like Bill was talking about.
Click to expand...

I use a hot plate as well with a larger stock pot full of oil. I heat it up to 140 deg and it holds and stays there. Very easy to control. This works well for small hunters.

For longer blades, I have a piece of pipe welded vertically on a RR plate and can heat up the outside with a torch and watch the temp. I have also heated up a larger piece of steel and placed it on the oil to heat it as well. Either method works well.

Craig
 
I use the hot scrap method myself. As I'm heating the blade for the normalization cycles I heat the scrap at the same time. When I pull the blade out to air cool I dunk the scrap in the quench, then back into the fire while the blade is still cooling (so it gets hotter then the blade). By the time I do 3 cycles my quench is good to go.
 
Before I began making knives I soldered a gang of large diameter coffee cans together for soaking rifle stocks. I never did get it complete but by the time I started my love for making knives it was tall enough for holding quenching oil. I found that it fit just right in a crock pot. I filled the void in the crock pot with off the shelf cooking oil. It heats quicker than water and does not corrode the cascaded can assembly. I used to use water as the heat conduit but recently changed to oil because of the two above mentioned benefits.

Now I am of an opinion that I should make a larger tank, one too large for a crock pot. The oil I use is about 2 gallons and I believe it a little shy in volume. I think it best to err toward precauction than satisfaction.

RL
 
Ripper Old Man, that is a real nifty set up you have, and I bet it works fine; but I just gotta say that if I were you, I would take it a bit further away from the house and the AC. :eek:
 
I have used 3 different systems to heat my oil so far...


1- I used a O/A torch like Ed Fowler does in his video....It used up too much of my gas so I stopped doing this.

2- I used some bricks to support my quench oil tank above an electric single-burner type hot plate, works like a charm even in the -20 below zero of my shop, its slow but its cheap.

3- When in a hurry, I just decide to fire up my forge and spend a bit of time hammering on the next blade as a few sections of left-over steel heat up inside the forge untill red hot. I then just lower them into the cold oil, fight for my life a bit with the fire that is the result of this foolish system, and then lower the next section of steel until I get the oil to the right temp....this is a fast way to heat my quench tank...gets my heart a pumping too.
 
I've got my oil in a roasting pan that's lifted up on two fire bricks. Between the bricks I have a single burner electric coil. use a candy themometer from Wal-mart to check the temps.
 
"a roasting pan , single burner electric coil. a candy themometer"

Sounds to me like someone has make a raid into the kitchen .
 
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