How much quench oil in your tank? Tank size...

Carl_First_Timer

Carl_First_Timer

Joined
Dec 6, 2010
Messages
1,154
I was thinking (usually leads to trouble) what the perfect size of quench tank would be, to do one off heat treat, where the oil temp would rise to say 350F while the blade is cooling down.

If you could find this perfect level, could you then skip tempering?

I thought this up when wondering how big to make my quench tank. What size do you guys use?

Also: What is the best readily available Quench medium. Would full synthetic 5-40 work for 0-1?
 
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well I don't ht myself but for some reason the rule of 1 gallon of oil per pound of steel sticks out in my mind.


-Xander
 
I keep about 3 gallons in mine. And no you can't skip tempering it is a function of time and temp.Now if you can hold your oil at 400 deg for 2 hours you will be ok,but it ain't good for your oil.
Stan
 
I use a compressed nitrogen tank, maybe 5 gallons capacity as cut (top sliced off and setup to use as a lid when I'm not quenching). I have about 3.5 gallons of canola oil in it but very rarely HT more than one blade at at time anyway, so no issues with heat build up. I prefer to have it stay fairly steady as I quench since I don't want to mess with different amounts of oil for different sizes. I've been getting good results so I'm happy enough with it.

I like my setup, but it is NOT suitable for edge quenching. My tank is deep not wide. The other issue is that it takes a bit to heat it up. I use a propane/firebrick forge to HT and just park the tank behind the back opening of the forge when I get it going and move it a bit away once it's up to temp. If you were using an oven or other heat source that wouldn't be very practical and another method would be needed.
 
John L said:
Are you quenching slipjoint parts or swords? Makes a difference!:eek::D
Click to expand...

Making a 14" OAL kitchen knife (2 actually)

Remyrw said:
I like my setup, but it is NOT suitable for edge quenching. My tank is deep not wide.
Click to expand...

I am curious about the edge quenching. Where can I find more info on this? I saw a video series posted on here with a guy doing what I think is edge quenching. What are the pros/cons to this?

I made this to edge quench but can no longer find information on edge quenching.
SNC00162.jpg
 
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For small knives, I use a crock pot that holds around a gallon of oil. It makes preheating the oil easy. For everything else, I use a goat trough that is about 3 feet long. I imagine that it holds 3 gallons. The trough is plastic, so I lined the bottom with sheet metal.
 
3-5 gallons
Full quench
Tempering is part of the HT cycle, but requires the steel to cool to room temperature first. If you quenched in oil and it heated up to 350F, you would get something ....but it would not be a good blade. I would expect low 50's Rc at best.
 
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