- Joined
- Dec 20, 2009
- Messages
- 4,421
We're moving along. Soon, we will be assembling knives.
Here's the heat treating set-up. My buddy Bob Hook loaned me his Paragon programmable atmospheric oven. With it you can program a heat treating sequence, turn on the argon and get repeatable quality control. I found it reasonably easy to use.
I am able to get five blades in at a time. For the 154CM blades I set the oven to 1900 degrees, for the 1095 material, 1475 was used. Many heat treating recipes can be found on-line, I found the ones from Paragon most useful. The blades on top are being pre-heated so they don't drag the furnace down too much when blades are changed out.
Blade stands are used to hold the blades in an up-right position for even heat distribution. They are an option you can get with the Paragon.
After soaking at 1900 degrees for 30 minutes the 154CM blades are removed from the furnace one at a time and quenched. I preheated the Parks 50 quench oil to 120 degrees by putting the quench tank on the furnace while it heated up.
I closed the door of the furnace between blades to preserve heat while quenching.
The quench tank is a stainless steel buffet warming tray from our local restaurant supply house. The blades are quenched and held in the oil till no longer smoking.
I laid them out on paper towels to drain and cool to room temperature while I treated the rest.
I put the blades in my freezer for 24 hours. There has been a lot of heated debate about this in the past and this post is liable to spark some more. Mike Norris recommends it in his heat treat recipe for his very popular stainless steel damascus. He seems to have done some studying on it. I can't say for sure if it makes a better blade but it can't hurt as long as I don't get any quench oil on the moose meat and the blueberries my wife picked.
Next, they go into my oven for the first tempering cycle, 300 degrees for 2 hours. After that, 275 degrees for two more hours. My wife, Angel, doesn't mind blades in the freezer but using our kitchen oven for tempering is where she draws the line, so I bought my own at a garage sale. It also comes in handy for cooking horn for handles and other things. I could have programmed the tempering cycles into the Paragon but this way is a lot more efficient as twenty four blades fit into this oven at once.
In the next post, we will be doing some assembly.
Thanks for looking, hope you like it.
Here's the heat treating set-up. My buddy Bob Hook loaned me his Paragon programmable atmospheric oven. With it you can program a heat treating sequence, turn on the argon and get repeatable quality control. I found it reasonably easy to use.
I am able to get five blades in at a time. For the 154CM blades I set the oven to 1900 degrees, for the 1095 material, 1475 was used. Many heat treating recipes can be found on-line, I found the ones from Paragon most useful. The blades on top are being pre-heated so they don't drag the furnace down too much when blades are changed out.
Blade stands are used to hold the blades in an up-right position for even heat distribution. They are an option you can get with the Paragon.
After soaking at 1900 degrees for 30 minutes the 154CM blades are removed from the furnace one at a time and quenched. I preheated the Parks 50 quench oil to 120 degrees by putting the quench tank on the furnace while it heated up.
I closed the door of the furnace between blades to preserve heat while quenching.
The quench tank is a stainless steel buffet warming tray from our local restaurant supply house. The blades are quenched and held in the oil till no longer smoking.
I laid them out on paper towels to drain and cool to room temperature while I treated the rest.
I put the blades in my freezer for 24 hours. There has been a lot of heated debate about this in the past and this post is liable to spark some more. Mike Norris recommends it in his heat treat recipe for his very popular stainless steel damascus. He seems to have done some studying on it. I can't say for sure if it makes a better blade but it can't hurt as long as I don't get any quench oil on the moose meat and the blueberries my wife picked.
Next, they go into my oven for the first tempering cycle, 300 degrees for 2 hours. After that, 275 degrees for two more hours. My wife, Angel, doesn't mind blades in the freezer but using our kitchen oven for tempering is where she draws the line, so I bought my own at a garage sale. It also comes in handy for cooking horn for handles and other things. I could have programmed the tempering cycles into the Paragon but this way is a lot more efficient as twenty four blades fit into this oven at once.
In the next post, we will be doing some assembly.
Thanks for looking, hope you like it.
Last edited:
:thumbup:
so you might have to preheat the quench oil anyway. Just food for thought.
***
:thumbup: Trying to imagine carrying around two 45# plates all the time--- You've got to feel soooo much better now (except the being hungry part