To heat treat or not, that is the question

Wloch248

Wloch248

Joined
Jan 2, 2010
Messages
337
Ok guys, I am almost done with my shop. I decided to take the long route to knife making and take about a year to get set up with almost everything..... and I haven't even made a knife yet :confused:

I was ready to sell some stuff in order to buy a nice HT oven. Thanks to some nice discussions on the board I was going to go with 220v at least 22" deep and a nice PID control (evenheat, sugar creek, paragon.. take your pick) Then that idea almost came crashing to a halt after reading a discussion on a forum recently about mistakes new guys make. One of the issues brought up was heat treating. A few opinions were presented for and against doing your own heat treat.

Can I get a few opinions on this from you guys that do your own or send it out. Pros and cons of each. I would like to control the start to finish of the knives I make but I get the feeling that it takes a while to learn how to properly heat treat. Worrying about soak times, quench oil temp, fast or slow oil, where to get the oil, warpage, cracking, etc.

I will be working with 1080 to start with that I got from Kelly Cupples. Some 1/8" some 3/16" mainly full tang hunters and basic blade shapes. I also know that 1080 is a forgiving steel to HT.

Should I spend $1k for my HT oven and do all of my HT and learning from the start or send out my blades so i can concentrate on making more?

Thanks for and advice,
Nathan W
 
Nathan
I do all my own heat treating and have since almost day one. It is not nearly as complicated as it can be made to sound. Most of the basic steels have a fairly simple heat treat that will get you 95% of what the steel can offer. If you absolutely have to get every last bit from your steel then you get complicated. Once you get used to using a specific steel you will very quickly get the routine of that steel. I bought a used hand held rockwell tester on ebay and test every knife that comes out of the oven. My main steel is 440C and I hit the same hardness every time. I think you will find that the ability to heat treat one blade when you are ready to more than pays for the kiln as opposed to waiting while it gets shipped, heat treated elsewhere and shipped back.
Steve
 
I think if you can afford an oven and the right type of commercial oil for whatever steel you are using there is no reason you can't achieve great results on your own. A rockwell tester would also help you verify that your heat treat is good.

Most of the warnings against home heat treat for common steels has to do with people trying to heat to non-magnetic, and quench in "goop".
 
Im in the same boat but im going to get my dust excavation system together, then a mill first. I like the idea of doing it all myself, but in all reality, for a hobbyist like myself getting it done probably isnt anymore expensive by the time you pay for the electric and foil and quench oil etc etc. so I kinda put it off.
 
Nathan,
I know many good makers who farm out their heat treat. These guys put in their time with inhouse HT, learned how to produce a good blade then chose to, for one reason or another, send them out. I respect that. If you have an intimate understanding of HT and trust someone to have the same, then it is just another procedure, right?

That is one side of the fence that I dangle my feat over, occasionally...

The other side is one that sometimes sees me with my foot in my mouth. I firmly believe that if a person can't make a decent blade with a few simple tools and a good understanding of metallurgy, they aren't worth their salt as a knifemaker. Learn the process, become proficient at it, then take shortcuts if you choose. Just remember to stay honest with your customer. For me, the heart of a knife is its heat treat... I take pride in doing that part, myself and can't imagine ever farming it out.

Rick
 
Do the HT, it's a fun part of the whole process, and if you want you can send it out also, it's not that hard and very satisfying.
 
I have been doing my own heat treating for as long as I have been making knives. Unless I'm working in CPM 154 I will continue to do it myself. CPM 154 I will be sending out to Bos Heat Treating service.

-Page
 
Rick Marchand said:
The other side is one that sometimes sees me with my foot in my mouth. I firmly believe that if a person can't make a decent blade with a few simple tools and a good understanding of metallurgy, they aren't worth their salt as a knifemaker.

Rick
Click to expand...

Not that I am worth my salt as a maker (I'm not), but I cannot feasibly HT in my basement, which is where my shop is, so I am forced to send it out. Once we move to a place with a garage/shop that will hopefully change however.

If I had the money and shop space I'd be making metal glow fairly often I believe.
 
CUTS LIKE A KRIS said:
Not that I am worth my salt as a maker (I'm not), but I cannot feasibly HT in my basement, which is where my shop is, so I am forced to send it out. Once we move to a place with a garage/shop that will hopefully change however.

If I had the money and shop space I'd be making metal glow fairly often I believe.
Click to expand...

See?.... Foot in the mouth...:o I completely understand shop/equipment restraints. You definately show the drive to learn from the ground up, brother.:thumbup:
 
I've only been at knifemaking for about 5 years, and got an Evenheat about 2 years ago. No regrets, and only one screw-up. I would start with air hardening steels and plate quenching. Simple, clean, and effective. Once you realize it's not all that hard you can branch out to more complex steel and quenches.
 
Consider your budget carefully. Compare how many blades you intend to make to the money you're able to spend on HT. I plan my batches (8-12 blades at a time) ahead and send them to Peters'; it comes out to around $8/blade including shipping both ways. If I ever put together a bigger batch the cost/blade will come down because they charge a flat rate for up to 20# (that's a lot of blades).

The point is I'd have to do a heckuva lotta blades to get a $1000 kiln plus electricity, foil, quench plates, cryo tank, Rc tester etc. to pay for itself. If you're going pro and making a couple hundred knives a year, it'll pay for itself quick.

On the other hand if you plan to work mostly with 1080, you don't need all that. A homemade propane forge and pail of pro quench oil would likely serve you very well.

On the other other hand, if money is no object, will you adopt me? :D
 
If you're heat treating in an oven then noting will be as forgiving as regular old stainless steels. 440C is a great steel to start on. It's pretty hard to screw up with an oven, just follow the recipe.

If you start heat treating carbon steels, the biggest mistake you can make is taking shortcuts. Get the right speed oil for the job or don't waste your time worrying about the oven.

I disagree that an oven is a greater value for a pro. If you're making several hundred knives a year, it's cheaper in terms of time and materials to send out for heat treating. An oven is for flexibility for low volume makers, one-off pieces or people who insist on sole authorship and won't let anyone put the "soul" into their knives. Nothing will get out off the wagon faster than having to wait to work on all of your projects.

BTW, I also heat treat carbon steel in an oven and would not go back to heat treating in a forge, period.
 
Thanks for the replies! I really was planning on doing my own HT and you guys just reassured me.

I'm frugal but not too concerned about cost per blade up front. Otherwise I wouldn't have spent nearly what I have on setting up the shop so far. I plan on doing this for a great long while so investing in a kiln up front seems like it would be worth it in the long run. I plan on getting into other steels like some stainless once I get the concept and execution of actually building a knife. For now I have enough 1080 to last me the next 2 or 3 years.
 
As long as you have the right equipment and can follow directions, heat treating a blade is relatively simple for the most part.

It would make sense to send knives out for heat treat if you were working on a large batch.
 
James has a point. With the minimum cost at Peters covering up to 20# of blades, that's pretty cost effective. I think that even with shipping, it would be cheaper to go that route for a large batch. It takes time, consumables, and power to HT steel.

Plus, when you send a batch out for HT to a good place, they should come back with little scale/surface imperfection/warpage. I've seen some pretty good knifemakers take warped, heavily scaled, or otherwise squirrelly items out of H.T. They should come back from an HT service tested at a uniform RC hardness range; a hardness tester is usually another big expense for a small time craftsman to have to make.

I do all my HT for carbon steels and one-offs or small runs in-house. Plus, hamons are so dang addictive that I'd have the setup just to do those, if nothing else.
 
One thing with having your own oven is that you can do more than harden and temper. You can also anneal, stresss relieve and do normalizing cycles as part of the process. It allows you to controll additional variables that just heating, quenching and tempering.
 
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