where to find pre heat treated steel for knife making?

[LX_Emergency]

How much generally would it cost if I wanted to send just one knife for heat treating?

Anywhere in between $10-$50 depending on how many knives, and which heat treater you're using. I usually pay per blade and it's normally in between €5-€15 depending on the size of the blade.

I want to work with 1095 steel, and have been doing some research. Would need to make a little furnace out of firebrick, drill out a hole for the tip of a propane torch and another hole for a high temp thermometer, put the knife in there, bring it up to 1475 degrees, or until a magnet no longer sticks to it, hold it there for about 10 minutes, then quench the blade in canola oil brought up to around 150 degrees. Then temper it at 500 degrees for 2 hours, and then I have a finished knife.

Holding something to temp for 10 minutes in a flame is a LOOOOOOONG time. You're not going to have much fun with that. You'll run risks like Overheating, underheating, bending the steel, warping the blade and a few others.
Honestly. If you're getting 1095 and you want to get optimal heat treat send it out.
If you don't mind getting just decent but maybe 90% heat treat out of it you can do it yourself.

 

[Kevin Powers]

1095 is a terrible choice to start with honestly. I had the same thoughts and tons of "reminders" sitting on the bench until I couldn't look at them anymore. Start with a more forgiving steel to heat treat. 1075 or 1080. My 2 year old could probably heat treat these steels. I still ruin the occasional 1095 blade and I'm using a digital oven and parks 50 oil. Don't waste your time and money honestly. Look at garage sales or swap meets for a belt sander. I used a harbor freight 1x30 for the first 6 months of making. You do not have to worry about heating the metal up before heat treat. You can profile the blade by multiple means, cutoff wheels, torch, plasma cutter, etc. the heat won't matter until after heat treat. After you temper your blade you have to keep it under your temper temperature.

 

[Pancake House]

You don't sound too far off from where I was a year ago. I started with a Kalamazoo 1x42, and a mastercraft(ryobi clone) 4x36, and basic hand tools. An angle grinder was a tool I thought I liked as well. They're just horrible tools in the long run. You'll spend so much time fixing the bevels you scratch out with a grinder, it's only a matter of time until you reach the same conclusion

The cost of even trying to build a ghetto forge was roughly the cost of professionally heat treating a pretty big pile of blanks -That's before any learning curve, time spend fudging it together, failures, or costs involved in addition. Hammers, anvils, benches, quench fluid, tanks, and heat treat ovens aren't exactly cheap.

You will make a better knife by farming your HT out for the first few batches. You're going to just get better performing knives that way. You can focus on developing grinding skills, and funnel money into slowly building a good shop

 

[RX-79G]

It is pretty common to cut up large Old Hickory butcher knife and make knives from them. They are medium hardness 1095 steel, 1/8" thick and inexpensive.