how many of you do your own hardening/heat treat?

S

SkaerE

Joined
Sep 9, 2001
Messages
428
and how many of you send it off? who to?

for those of you who do it yourself, what steels do you do?

from what i understand, some of the high carbon steels (1095, 5160, O1) can be done at home with ok sucess?
 
I work mainly 1084, 52100, L6,01 an sometimes D2 & 440c
all in house. But if I was to use anytnig like ats34,
cpm440v or bg-42 I would send it out
 
I can do it all but am only limited to the size of the knife that I can do, 6in diagonally. I mostly make folders so I don't usually have that problem.
 
I do all the carbon steels and my own carbon steel damascus. I have an Even Heat oven but dont do enough stainless blades to use it for that. I use it mostly for annealing and tempering. Paul Bos does what few stainless blades I make.
 
you can do your carbon steels at home for cheap. get wayne goddard's book $50 knife shop. i did my own carbon steel HT when i started about five years ago. then moved to modern stainless since i live three blocks from the ocean and can literly watch what i am working on rust.:D i send all of my stainless blades to mr. paul bos for HT. i belive he has been HT ing knives for over 25 years. he hardness tests every one. i use 440c,ats-34,bg-42, and s30v. depending on the applacation of the knife.
 
I switched to O1 mostly so I could do the HT. If I were doing stainless I'd send it out. But I hope to buy a big long oven this year so I can do both stainless and really big blades. :D

Dave
 
I have not being doing this long but have done all my steel here at home. I started working O1 and built a small forge to heat treat that. It works very well and cost me about 50 bucks to build. After wanting to work the stainless 'super' steels I bought a 18 inch EvenHeat oven, new, from Tim Zowada. It has worked great for me treating ATS-34 and CPM s30v. For air quenched steels, such as those, I use foil wrap to prevent decarborization, which has also worked well.

Roger
 
I have, and so far done a coupla O1 and some old files. Have some 440c, but plan on sending that off to Paul Bos wheenever I get around to grinding it. But the O1 will stay at home(that's why I got the O1).
 
I use steels like 1084, 5160, L6 and O1. I like to forge knives, so of course I heat treat them myself too. That's more than half the fun!
 
I heat treat 440C and ATS-34. I bought a Paragon furnace, a Dewar flask for the liquid nitrogen (cryogenic treatment) and a hardness tester.(about $2,500 in all) I like being able to finish a knife right away if I have to. For you guys that are sending them away for heat treat you are getting a good deal. Heat treating is a time consuming operation.
 
I told myself that I would not make knives if I couldn't HT them myself. I use 0-1 and in the near future 1095 and 1085. I would not hesitate to do A-2. I dont know if I would ever do stainless.

Joe
 
I do all my own heat treat on high carbon stels and my Damascus.If I was ever asked to make a knife out of stainless I would have Alex Daniels heat treat it for me until I could get my own oven and have him teach me to do my own as I want to be the responsible if my blade doesn't hold up.
Bruce
 
ok then, seems that high carbon steels can be treated at home with good sucess...

so, you guys that dont have ovens (at least knife/kiln ovens) do you use the forge to harden the blade and then a household oven to temper?

any of you high carbon heat treat at home guys do cryo treating?

is there a benefit to cryo on the high carbons or is it just the "super steels"?

thanks again, responces have been great!
 
I use my propane forge to heat treat my knives and the kitchen oven to temper (I use at least two oven thermometers while tempering, household ovens can be off as much as 100 degrees).

Cryo is generally only effective on steels containing significant anounts of chromium. This includes the Stainless steels obviously but also includes two steels that can be heat treated with a forge, 5160 and 52100. Of the two 5160 is easier to work with, 52100 is much more picky in how it is forged (the heat treat actually begins with the forging process, if you are forging blades that is). Several makers have exhaustively tested 5160 and 52100, with the cryo step, and they have concluded it enhances the performance.

Cryo on the simpler high carbon steels however, well it's probably a waste of effort in my opinion. However, it's an area that could be explored by testing if someone were convinced the extra step could improve the performance of the simpler high carbon alloys.
 
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