melted three blades ?

I turned blades into melty sparkler goodness, yes!

Did you have all 3 in at the same time? Until you are very good with your fire try doing only one at a time. You can monitor temperature on one blade much more easily.

Plus most of what everyone elde said
 
Stainless steels should be done in a controlled oven. They need tight temperature regulation over long periods. Unless you have a very accurate and stable gas forge, you should heat treat stainless (protected in foil) in a controlled oven.

--nathan
 
Note that a properly set up PID controlled gas forge is a controlled oven. Stacy and others have written a number of threads about building one of these.

Tool Steel Simplified divides commercial heat treating furnaces into several categories:

  • Gas unmuffled (your basic PID controlled forge). The book considers it obsolete.
  • Gas muffled. Add a tube muffle to the PID forge. A basic commercial heat treating forge.
  • Electric muffled. Evenheat, Paragon, etc. are in this category.
  • Various more elaborate and expensive options starting with controlled atmosphere forges. Most of us can just wish for one of these. Salt pots would also go here.
 
Thanks again guys!

I just got careless. I did one knife at a time but didn't realize the new forge would get so much hotter so much faster. I wasn't watching the color of the blade like I should have.

I heat treated a fairly large blade yesterday. I slowly got the entire blade up to non magnetic, moved it around alot checking the temp and to avoid hot spots.

It turned a nice golden straw color and showed a heck of a nice hamon as I coated the spine with fireplace cement while hting and tempered three times. Sanded it a bit and now I'm going to sharpen it and test it out before I go any further.

I'm still of the mind to have blades heat treated by Peters. At leaste the one's I intend on selling. I believe it's fairly cheap, and it gives me a bit of peace. I will still work on my heat treating though. Hopefully someday I can afford a nice temp controlled heat treating forge.

Thanks,
Jason
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top