oven tempering an axe

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HighlandRay

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Jul 29, 2020
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Hello all, hope you are doing well? I have a question about tempering an axe in the oven. I have a throwing axe that I am going to fix up for a friend. The blade of the axe has some substantial bends and twists on the blade edge from drops, hitting nails and I suspect a bad original heat treat and very thin profile. My plan is to heat it up with a torch to straighten it out then do an edge quench followed by tempering in my oven as I have read people doing on here a few times. My question is, is there anyway to keep the handle on during this process? Can I protect it from the heat of the oven or is that not possible and the heat would destroy it regardless. I would prefer if possible to not have to source and rehang and new handle on it if at all possible. Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
Highland, I have done that on a Estwing hatchet. I tempered it at 300* for 30 mins..
I had the handle outside the door (closed on it)and heat treating foil wrapped around it. The handle being half metal and stacked leather. I applied cool water to the handle during the process. Try to keep the handle cool and the heat inside the oven. DM
 
HighlandRay,greetings,

I hear David,but your wooden handle kinda puts a different angle on things.
I think it'd be not only difficult,but will also ruin the hang,if not char the handle itself.
The necessary soaking the bejeezus out of the haft would be almost equally destructive as heat,and the two combined would equal a re-hang,methinks.

Ideally,you can carefully extract the wedges,and work with the bare head.

After straightening,i'd strongly recommend Normalizing the head before quench.
Then avoid soaking at quench T for too long,under 2 min ideally(to not loose the resulting grain refinement).

Best of luck,however you choose to go about it.
 
Jake, if a wood handle is on it then yes.
If he removes the handle and does a re-hang. Then he (hoping he has a heat treat oven) should anneal it and start all over with a full heat treatment. And I would incorporate a cryogenic quench. So, the user doesn't get those steel wrinkles, from abuse. Now, were talking about a lot more work & time to correct it. Does he want to do that?
With my Estwing I didn't want to remove its stacked leather handle. Thus, I did a long cryogenic quench and one temper. This took it up 1-2 points. Giving me the results I hoped for. It turned out to be a decent effort. DM
 
jake pogg said:
HighlandRay,greetings,

I hear David,but your wooden handle kinda puts a different angle on things.
I think it'd be not only difficult,but will also ruin the hang,if not char the handle itself.
The necessary soaking the bejeezus out of the haft would be almost equally destructive as heat,and the two combined would equal a re-hang,methinks.

Ideally,you can carefully extract the wedges,and work with the bare head.

After straightening,i'd strongly recommend Normalizing the head before quench.
Then avoid soaking at quench T for too long,under 2 min ideally(to not loose the resulting grain refinement).

Best of luck,however you choose to go about it.
Click to expand...
Thank you and I think you might be right, would be crappy to go through all that effort to try and protect the wooden handle only to have it needing to be rehung in the end anyways. I have never attempted to try and pull the wedges and save the existing handle, is that something you have done successfully and if so do you have any tips on doing it? This axe has two metal rings and a wooden wedge.
 
David Martin said:
Jake, if a wood handle is on it then yes.
If he removes the handle and does a re-hang. Then he (hoping he has a heat treat oven) should anneal it and start all over with a full heat treatment. And I would incorporate a cryogenic quench. So, the user doesn't get those steel wrinkles, from abuse. Now, were talking about a lot more work & time to correct it. Does he want to do that?
With my Estwing I didn't want to remove its stacked leather handle. Thus, I did a long cryogenic quench and one temper. This took it up 1-2 points. Giving me the results I hoped for. It turned out to be a decent effort. DM
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I do not have access to a heat treat oven, which is why I was thinking of doing an edge quench and then quick temper in my oven at home.
 
Heat treat ovens are expensive. If you have a plumbers torch. Or even the basic bottle and nipple sold at a decent hardware store. And if you knew the steel type...?? You could look it up on heat treating sites. Carbon steels are basic. And being a little off -- you can try again. Heat up to reccomended color then quench in warm oil. (have you ever done something like this?) Then I would do 2 tempers at their reccomended temperatures. DM
 
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