best steel for home heat treating? home-made forgers?

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knifemaking01

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May 4, 2012
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hey all, another question :D, i done some phoning today and the price for heat treating is quiet higher then i would like, and they have minimum on how many i can heat treat ie they said there needs to be a certain amount they wont do just one, so im going to go down the track and do it all myself, something very humbling about doing the entire process yourself imo. So this being the case, what are the steels to steer towards and steer away from if its all being done in house?

Ive also seen a couple of home made forge's and i have a good idea on how i will make mine, but can a home made job be able to control the heat to keep the steel at a constant temperate for a period of time or can this only be achieved in a professional oven? I ask as i see some steels require heat treating at a temperate over a period of time so i am wondering if this is possible on a home setup or not!
 
1080/1084. I use a two brick forge and my kitchen oven to get respectable results. Quench in warm canola oil. The steel is a very good quality knife steel but has a wide latitude for heat treat. It also forges well. I bring mine up to around 1500*F and hold for a couple minutes, quench tip first like stabbing the oil and DO NOT move it side to side, but back and forth a little is ok. If you aren't going to have a thermo couple and DRO, table salt makes a decent indicator as it melts at 1474*F (801*C). With a two brick forge you do have to move the blade around to make sure it gets an even heat.


-Xander
 
knifemaking01 said:
hey all, another question :D, i done some phoning today and the price for heat treating is quiet higher then i would like, and they have minimum on how many i can heat treat ie they said there needs to be a certain amount they wont do just one, so im going to go down the track and do it all myself, something very humbling about doing the entire process yourself imo. So this being the case, what are the steels to steer towards and steer away from if its all being done in house?

Ive also seen a couple of home made forge's and i have a good idea on how i will make mine, but can a home made job be able to control the heat to keep the steel at a constant temperate for a period of time or can this only be achieved in a professional oven? I ask as i see some steels require heat treating at a temperate over a period of time so i am wondering if this is possible on a home setup or not!
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Give Darrin Sanders a call. He'll do small batches very reasonably. 318--339-8290 Oops, I see you are from OZ.
 
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Oh I forgot, I temper small blades at 400*F for 2 hours, two times. Bigger blades I do 450*F for two, two hour cycles as well. I put some large cast iron skillets in the oven to help stabilize the temperature swings and also shield the blade from direct heat of the element. It is ok to cool the blade in cold water between cycles, and the two hours is time at temperature, so maybe 2 hours 20 minutes or so.
 
Um guys, his location says he's in New South Wales, Australia. Texas is a long ways to send a knife for heat treat.
 
Guys, the OP is in Australia. Shipping to Darrin or TKS and back would be prohibitively expensive and take forever. (fast14riot beat me to it :) )

Definitely 1080/1084 for DIY HT. :thumbup:
 
The standard answer here is to use 1084, a non stainless steel. It is a very tough steel that works well for knives and requires no soak time during heat treating for things like knives.

With 1084 (really 1060 through 1084) you bring it up to temp and make sure the whole area of the knife you want to harden is above the required temp then quench it. Another advantage of 1084 and below is that they respond fairly well to using things like canola oil as a quenchant, but I'm told the commercial quenchants do give a superior result. You don't want to overheat it, so the goal is to evenly heat the steel until it's just above the required temp and then get it into the quench smoothly.

If you browse around you'll see lots of home made forges used for heat treating on here, and threads with links to "how to's". I have one of the simplest in terms of construction, though not the cheapest or most efficient. I just bought a few boxes of high temp firebrick, stacked them to form a chamber big enough for my needs and with an opening along one side for a good weed burner torch. A little playing around with positioning and the opening and it works pretty well, but is not an ideal situation and has no temp control.

I'd suggest looking through the stickies and reading a lot. There's tons of good info. Read the threads on heat treating, then go back and read them again a few times. Pay particular attention to the posts by Mr. Cashen and Mr. Apelt. Unless you're already very familiar with the science behind metal working it will be confusing the first few times and slowly start making more sense every time after that. Then someone will say something that makes you see it even more clearly.... Next thing you know you're only 90% clueless and are in better shape than 99% of the population. :)
 
million thanks fellas, much appreciated, as the two kind gentleman pointed out i am in the land where i ride my kangaroo to college and catch my dinner using my boomarang ;)..... Again appreciate the helping hand

I have been reading like a mad man on here, and the bits im not to sure about is where i place my question and i think i will have many more about ht and what not, i have not looked into building my own forge too much as its only something i have decided on doing so thats my next venture, wish me and my eyes luck and lets hope the brain takes it all in. :D
 
fast14riot said:
Um guys, his location says he's in New South Wales, Australia. Texas is a long ways to send a knife for heat treat.
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Aww, I missed that this time.

"wollongong, nsw" didn't mean much too me.




"knifemaking01" Can you tack the word "Australia" onto the end of your location and hopefully I won't make that mistake again.
 
fast14riot said:
If you aren't going to have a thermo couple and DRO, table salt makes a decent indicator as it melts at 1474*F (801*C).
Click to expand...

Woah, cool tidbit to know!

Do you just take a bit and throw it on the knife like a magnet, or have a small puddle in the forge? Any dangers of it violently erupting and destroying all?
 
Here is a home built forge I made. It's 8" sch 40 steel with 1" Inswool lining, 1" Refractory cement and a 1/4" of IR reflector cement...(similar to ITC-100)....
This picture was when I started the build. I cut it 22" or so, and cut off 2-2" sections from the ends for the doors.
ForgeA.jpg


Here it is running... It uses a water heater blower and a home made burner copied off a few other ones I saw here and elsewhere...

I added a PID and a type K thermocouple and can regulate the temperature from 1,200f to 2,450f with not too much work. I need to work a bit on the adjustments, but had it sitting at around 1489 degrees for almost 15 minutes once...

It cost me around $200 to make as I was able to scrounge the water heater blower, and most of the fittings.

You could do most(all?) carbon steels in a forge like this one.
Picture735.jpg


Hope this helps. This is a more complicated build than you'd need for 1084, but if you want to do higher alloy carbon steels, you'll need the heat control a forge like this allows....
 
I'm just making a simple home coal forge to HT my 1080 and 15n20 blades, just waiting on spare cash for a proper quenchant.
 
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