larger salt or sand pot.

[jdm61]

I know that industrial salt bath setups can be quite large. I have seen a video of the high temp setup that Estwing uses and it is pretty big. Most of the "home versions" that I see use a 4 or so inch tube which pretty much means you can only HT long skinny objects. You run into the same issue with some of the knife HT ovens like my 24 inch Paragon unless you go up to the doublewide versions. Is were a way to do a larger salt or even sand pot, say wide enough to HT a one piece tactical hawk? Could you do an oval shaped tube?

 

[coldsteelburns]

Not sure if this is big enough, but Evenheat is now offering a couple sizes in salt bath heat treating ovens and the largest salt pot they sell is 6.625" OD, so it's probably close to six inches inside: https://usaknifemaker.com/evenhear-salt-bath-pots.html

FWIW here is a link to the salt bath kiln as well, as least the one that the 6" pot will fit in: https://usaknifemaker.com/evenheat-sb-818.html


I wonder if there would be a way to "squeeze" or press the stainless pot on its sides a little bit (or a lot?) so that it becomes narrower but longer as well in the other dimension. This way it would still have radiused edges as opposed to corners like square or rectangular tube-stock have. Maybe you just need to cut the fire brick lid to fit the shape. Not exactly sure how or if that would affect the evenness of the heat though.


~Paul
My Youtube Channel
... (It's been a few years since my last upload)

 

[JTknives]

The sandpot aka fluid bed is for the most part the industry standard for heating large objects. I don’t think it’s somthing you could buy off the shelf at least not with the kind of coin us knife makers deal in. But it’s buildable and should not cost all that much. In all my HEAVY research I did on that first prototype the linch pin is the defuser plate. It seams to be a guarded secret and no one is giving the recipes for there magic sauce so to speak. The issue you have is defusing the air/gas evenly but not alowing the sand back down into the manifold. To complicate things more it’s super hot so it has to handle heat, filter out sand and be tough enough to not erode away from the moving grit. The most prevalent is the bubble jet. It’s a sort of tube with a domed cap. There are holes in the tube up under the cap. This prevents most of the sand from going up and into the holes.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Evenheat is building a large salt pot. Call and talk to Mike about it. IIRC, it has an 8X48" pot. It is around $10,000, but if you run a full time shop and do swords and larger things, it is what you need. I think they said there may be a 12X48 pot in the works. Tim Zadowa is the one working with them on these type special pots.

 

[jdm61]

In the past, you could stack up their standard salt pot setup to do swords.\ to like 36" minimum, but you were still working with like a 4" diameter round pipe. Sounds like the bigger ones might be using the same setup. How do the obviously crazy expensive rigs use rectangular tanks?
As that aside, if that is going to be the price point, then it probably makes moe sense just to go commercial. The last time that I checked which was like 2 years ago, salt HT was prices about the same as Peters batch price for the big oven.

Evenheat is building a large salt pot. Call and talk to Mike about it. IIRC, it has an 8X48" pot. It is around $10,000, but if you run a full time shop and do swords and larger things, it is what you need. I think they said there may be a 12X48 pot in the works. Tim Zadowa is the one working with them on these type special pots.

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

The currently available pot sizes are 4, 5 and 6"ID and 22" depth (18" working depth). They make an 8" by 36"pot by special order. IIRC, they can build the current pots (718 and 818) in deeper depth, too. They will build a special size pot like a 8X36 or 8X48 if you talk to them or Tim.

The SB718 uses 4" pots and the SB818 uses 5 or six " pots, The special order SB1236 takes an 8" X 36"pot.