Your thoughts on torch straightening

Joshua Fisher said:
The issue can be that if gone over the temper then it can leave splotches in a etched or polished finish even if it doesn’t *affect the integrity of the blade.

It’s very hard to tell what temp the torch is getting the piece to and if you overshot the temper.

For a pro service I have and would avoid it, it’s the biggest reason when I first started that I didn’t send any blades to a certain company in the heat treating industry.
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Which one ?
 
all of my blade failures have been from this type of thing. whether cracks from overheated or cosmetic issues while light etching damascus. Id rather just trash a blade that bends too much , or is too much of a pain to straighten TBH. Its not worth the time on a 3$ pc of steel that i spent 30 minutes profile and drilling AND $16 to heat treat, if its one of mine blades JT, just throw that wack steel away :)
 
timos- said:
all of my blade failures have been from this type of thing. whether cracks from overheated or cosmetic issues while light etching damascus. Id rather just trash a blade that bends too much , or is too much of a pain to straighten TBH. Its not worth the time on a 3$ pc of steel that i spent 30 minutes profile and drilling AND $16 to heat treat, if its one of mine blades JT, just throw that wack steel away :)
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Never, we make them good. For the most part everything comes out straight as thy get clamped in the plates. Then onto the freezer or tempering oven depending on alloy. Our issues seem to be with .09 thick and under aebl. You pull an envelope from the oven and the blade has reverted to its coiled state and most of the times has a banana bow. These are clamped in the plates so no biggie. But I have discovered a trick that seams to help AEBL come out straighter. I know the general rule is edge up in the oven but with aebl if you lay it flat on the floor it behaves much nicer. This becomes an issue with capacity as you can’t load up and oven. But it does help a good bit. I’m not sure how other places that use vacuum ovens are able to keep the blades straight. Maybe it’s the fact thy are hanging the blades.
 
Just as a heads up Peters rarely uses a torch to straighten in my experience. The once or twice I've had to send a blade back for straightening and got it back you could tell because it had been sandblasted afterwards, and I requested they not do that in the future but rather re-ht and they have been happy to accomodate. But most of the time they are really straight with no issues at all.
 
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