Steel and heat treat question.

[jdh6fan]

I would like to purchase a kiln and start doing my own heat treat. What steels are recomended for a guy that has a kiln but no way of sub-zero or cryo quench? I would like to do this in the future but just not in the budget right now.
Thanks for your time
Jeff

 

[SBuzek]

CPM 154 will make a good knife without cryo.
Stan

 

[Darrin Sanders]

There is no need to sub-zero/cryo any of the simple carbon steels. A2 also comes to mind. A sub-zero quench can be done pretty cheap. All you need is an ice chest big enough to hold the blade/blades, some denatured alcohol, and a few pounds of dry ice. If you pour the alcohol back into its container you can use it many times. The dry ice is really the only expense and its only about a buck a pound in my neck o the woods.

 

[jdh6fan]

Stan, Darrin I really appreciate your replies. I've been doing a little reading and honestly all this heat treat stuff is pretty confusing. I understand alot of it but I also think I'm overwhelmed by all the differant "recipes" others have for the same steels. I found a recipe for d2 from what I believe is a trusted source that says it will harden to approx 59 and then a sub-zero (dry ice) quench would raise that a point or 2. Does this sound correct to you? When I started this knifemaking venture a year ago I've set very realistic goals to somewhat justify the purchase of new equipment and an oven is next although it will probebly be a few months.I guess when I'm ready to get an oven the best thing to do would be find a "recipe" from what I believe is a good source and go with it. If yall have anymore expert advice I'd love to hear it.
Thanks for your time
Jeff

 

[John Katt]

I found this page to be very useful when I first started looking into doing my own HT http://usaknifemaker.com/metals-c-9...-c-93-41/heat-treat-information-data-faq.html

 

[David Sharp]

I started with O1 and have graduated to A2, D2, and CPM154. I do notice that the sub zero treatment makes a difference in the last three.

I know when I started I looked at all the recommendations from those I felt were reputable. I copied the different recipes to a Word document for ease of comparison. I quickly noticed that they were largely the same; the major variation seemed to be in soak times and tempering. I kinda averaged things out and then did some testing to see if the results were what I was after; so far pretty happy!:thumbup: