low temp salt setups

hardheart

hardheart

Joined
Sep 19, 2001
Messages
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What is better, horizontal or vertical? I'll be using gas to heat. Is mechanical agitation a good idea, or is just moving the blade back & forth when first inserted good enough? (have some 52100, so I need fast heat transfer) Is there a ratio of steel to tank volume for quenching? Since the salt is already going to be hot, and more heat introduced by the austenized blade, I'd like to know a minimum amount of molten salt needed to pull heat & get past the nose, without having an unnecessarily large quantity to melt in the first place. I'd like to try both austempering and marquenching.

(got a line on some heavy stainless tubing, so the high temp should be good to go, just trying to see if I should score more for the low temp, or take another route)
 
Not to be obnoxious, but how could you have a horizontal salt bath? The molten salt would just run out.

Tim Zowada has a picture of a salt bath set up on his website that might give you an idea of what size pipe you need.

Kevin Cashen has lots of good info on salt baths on his website.

I would suggest checking out those links for a start. Also, as I understand it, the base for your salt tube needs to be TIG welded by an expert. If the weld leaks, the results can be disastrous.
 
I have horizontal and vertical low temp salt.

It's easier to get a long, sword-length apparatus higher than 500F in a vertical. I have a three-burner thing under a large steel blueing tank for the horizontal unit. It'll go 500F if you keep it covered, but won't go higher. You may want to go higher sometimes if you're going to temper a sword you just marquenched.

If you're doing knives only, go horizontal. I find the 'small' steel bluing tank from Brownell's to be sufficient volume for this. (I think it's something like 8x8x14ish).
 
I just welded up a horz from 316 stainless. It has a SS rack welded to the bottom so the knives are right in the center of the tank. The stainless bread pan was not long enough for all the knives I plan on making.
 
If I did all single edged knife and sword blades, I would have went with a horizontal setup eventually, but with the double edge stuff I do so much of, the vertical was the way to go. The disadvantages of the vertical is the increased risk of boil over if there is any water in the salts, The tube acts like a test tube channeling the boil out the top. When the tube is out of the kilns the vertical setup makes for annoying temperature gradients from bottom to top. For this reason if I had the room I would have made a hosrizontal kiln for annealing long ago.

Of course the advantages to vertical as has already been mentioned, is the efficiency of heating, and it woroks splendidly for long double edged blades.
 
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