Quenching oil use by date

O

Outbackbowhunter

Joined
Nov 4, 2010
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4
What type of life expectancy can be had from a quenching oil and how can you tell when it is getting tired.

I am using a 44 gallon drum of Castrol iloquench, with the top cut off, as a quenching tank. It started out as a clear oil the color of honey but now after over twelve months of use it is a lot darker.

I was wondering if it was cycled through an oil filter, could it be cleaned up for a new lease of life.

Has anyone done this and is it worth doing, I could just buy more, but at over
$ 1200 a drum its a fair investment.

How important is oil temperature at the time of quenching. Should I invest in a drum heater.

Any good advice would be most welcome. Thanks.
 
you should be fine, it does darken with use. I don't use the castrol, as I have Parks but 44 gallons should do hundreds of blades as long as you are fully immersing them when you quench

-Page
 
I make broadhead blades for bowhunters, and literally do make thousands....lol

I have jigs made of stainless 304, the basic idea is 12 mm X 6 mm bars stacked on top of each other and held together with two 8 mm all thread rods through them and each layer has the very edge of a blade sandwiched between it and the next layer.

Each section is angled in a V shape ( broadhead edges ) and the broadheads and bar sections are stacked up as the jig is assembled.

This gives me a 6 mm gap between the blades and most of the blade surface except for the very edges exposed to the quench oil.

Broadheads are alternated in each layer, 3 on one side and two in the other. VVV

This lets me do five per layer and I stack them twenty layers high, so each jig does one hundred blades at a time.

I found it necessary to use a holding jig so that blades could be quenched without problems with buckling / distortion in quenching.

long story short, I am using my oil pretty hard, and each quench has a lot of hot steel going into the oil.
 
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