New Heat Treat Oven

[CDHumiston]

So, after waiting nearly 3 months for my Evenheat oven with no delivery date in sight I cancelled the order.

Kiln Frog was very apologetic and super helpful. They gave me a killer deal on a Paragon KM-24T Double Wide. It showed up in exactly 6 weeks to the day as promised!

Today I fired it up and heat treated my first knives! It takes my oven 20 minutes to reach 1000° F and 1:15 to reach 1950° F.

What really surprises me is how long it takes the oven to cool down. It took hours to cool to 450° F.

Blades were foil wrapped ATS34 and came out super clean! No scale of any kind.

Super-fast quench was done between aluminum plates. Initial hardness was 62 HRC. Tempering now at 425°...

The picture below was from my initial burn in recommended by Paragon.

 

[Sando]

Conrats!!! Looks great.

Honestly I'm a little jealous of your shop. Looks really clean.

BTW My oven is 1,000 f per hour at high speed. So 20 minutes is ... crankin'. Your slow cool down time mean lots of thermal mass. That's good news, actually.

 

[CDHumiston]

Thanks!

I'm meticulous about cleaning my machines after every use. If you noticed the wheels on everything, I roll them out into the driveway when I'm grinding or sanding.

Sounds like my oven is working as it should.

Conrats!!! Looks great.

Honestly I'm a little jealous of your shop. Looks really clean.

BTW My oven is 1,000 f per hour at high speed. So 20 minutes is ... crankin'. Your slow cool down time mean lots of thermal mass. That's good news, actually

 

[weo]

Your slow cool down time mean lots of thermal mass. That's good news, actually.

And when you use the simpler carbon steels, you can use this feature to sort of 'anneal' the blade.

My routine is that I fire up the oven to 1350F when I'm doing the final forging of my blades. I shut off my forge after the last heat (and because of it's large thermal mass it cools down slowly too), throw the blades back in the forge until they get to internal forge temp, which at this time is now about 1700F, starting my grain refinement/thermal cycling. Then I do 3 cycles at 1350F, and when this is done, I put the blades back in the oven, shut it down and let them slowly cool overnight, effectively annealing the steel to make grinding, drilling, shaping much easier.

 

[scherf68]

Envy, oh wow you have a nice set-up. Question, is disc sander and grinder on same KBAC? Been reading about sharing one variable controller.

 

[CDHumiston]

Envy, oh wow you have a nice set-up. Question, is disc sander and grinder on same KBAC? Been reading about sharing one variable controller.

Thanks! I love my little shop.

The grinder and disc sander are on their own variable controllers. The disc sander is on a cheaper one I got from Amazon.

I roll my machines around and didn't want them tied together.

 

[David Mary]

I'm also jealous of your shop because it's larger than a phonebooth.

 

[CDHumiston]

I'm also jealous of your shop because it's larger than a phonebooth.

It's my garage. I have wheels on everything so I can move it out of the way when I'm done working.

I still have to get the wife's car in and out...

It works for now. Eventually I'll either build a shop or convert the garage permanently.