New Knife maker needing help with heat treat

F

Forest Howland

Joined
Dec 25, 2014
Messages
10
Hey guys I'm working on my first knife and need some help. Everything has gone well so far (I think) until I got to the heat treat. So i did the quenching and then put my knife in the oven at 500° F (I'm doing 2 heat treats at 500° for 2 hours each). The temperature stayed at 500° for the first half hour then started to drop down to around 450° (I'm using a toaster oven and it was at max so no just turning it up a bit). As soon as I saw it drop below 500° I pre heat the oven to 500°, it took about half an hour for it to reach that temperature but as soon as it did I switched over to the oven. My question is will that dip in temperature for a while effect my heat treat? Or will it all be OK because I'm doing a second time in the oven?

The steel I'm using is 1084

For quenching I brought it just above non magnetic then quenched in canola oil.

Thanks in advance

Forest Howland
 
Toaster ovens should have something to keep the temperature steady .A piece of ceramic tile or brick works fine. It will reduce the problems of temperature swings.
That should work.
BTW you can do the tempering in more than one step.For example . 500F for 2 hours , then later 500 F for the second part.
 
Yea I am doing it in two two hour segments. I like the idea of blocking the door off to keep the temperature steady. My question is do you think that the temperature dropping 50° for half an hour will make the heat treat be wrong.
 
The difference in the resulting hardness and temper will be insignificant. Don't worry about it.
 
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