Too many knives in oven?

[Matt Rochester]

Is there such a thing? With certain steels like Cpm154 that have a longer soak time would too many hurt? I have about 10 that need heat treating and I’m trying to speed things up and not waste dry ice/da mixture. 6-7 is comfortable but would it hurt to cram in 10? It takes around 1 min to plate quench so the last blade would soak around 45 mins.

 

[JTknives]

Also remember to take into account the temp of your plates. The hotter thy get the less "quenchy" thy become. If your looking for consistency in heat treating then you need to consider every option. if i was doing that many blades at a time in the oven then i would run more then one set of quench plates.

 

[drew1972]

Also remember to take into account the temp of your plates. The hotter thy get the less "quenchy" thy become. If your looking for consistency in heat treating then you need to consider every option. if i was doing that many blades at a time in the oven then i would run more then one set of quench plates.

I've heard of some people using a bag of ice on their plates between quenches. Do you think that would hurt anything?

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

When doing more than 3 or 4 blades, I have a drywall bucket filled with ice and water. I stick the plates in the bucket for a minute or so every three blades. That drops them back to ambient temp or cooler.

As long as you allow 50% extra soak time to get to the middle blades, you can do them in bundles of 10 to 20 blades sideways stacked in the envelope. Otherwise, quenching is the only issue to concern yourself about, not the number of blades.

 

[Armin Drumm]

For carbon steel blades, if I have to harden bigger quantities of blades, I load the oven with 2..3 blades. When the soaking time for the first blade is over I open the oven, place one additional blade in the oven and take one out for quenching. This is repeated untill all are done- open oven, one in, one out, close oven. Just need to pay attention which one is the one to be taken out next , so usually I am working from left to right. By doing so all blades have approx identical soaking time. Not sure if this method also could work for stainless.