Poll - Sword Tempering

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

In another thread a member posted that the most populus (popular?) method of tempering swords in our shops was in a tall liquid filled tube. This sends a chill down my spine, but maybe I'm just a dinosaur and don't know much modern stuff ... heck, I still talk about Troosite (only the metallurgists will laugh).

I don't know a single person who does that and wondered if it is just that I have a limited sub-set of makers who's shops I visit or see online or is there a whole other safe method of sword tempering I am not aware of.
Le's try and keep it to a simple poll. A photo or two and a brief description would be helpful to many others. Make a separate thread for instructions on building your favorite type.
If you use multiple methods post on all of them.

Be honest and only post if you actually do sword tempering by the method you post.

Feel free to answer the question in your post with more details and photos.
1) I temper swords in a tall tube filled with _________________ and heat it with a _____________________.
2) I temper swords in a special electric/gas oven/kiln (HT oven) ________________________________________-(brand/model)
3) I temper swords in the kitchen oven
4) I temper swords in salt pots _____________________________________________---(Brand/model)
5) I temper swords in a fluidized sand pot - (brand/model)
6) I temper swords with a torch.
7) I send out my swords for full HT and tempering (feel free to post the provider's info)
8) I temper swords by another method __________________________________________________

 

[Joshua Fisher]

I have a 30” vertical kiln that works for most shorter swords, if it fits in the kiln for hardening it will fit in the kitchen over for tempering. For longer blades where I have to use my forge for hardening I’ve tempered in a few methods, either a torch temper with a small torch, atleast 2 torch cycles to equal one normal temper cycle so with a torch I’d do atleast 4 cycles being careful about watching the color on a clean blade and cleaning the oxides off with each cycle. Another way I’ve tempered long blades is to turn the forge off and pass the blade through carefully using the radiant heat from the forge chamber to temper, similar to torch tempering I do an extra cycle like this and you have to be careful about overheating, a charcoal or coke forge setup with a side bellow like what Japanese smiths use would work great for this. I’ve seen professional shops using oil setups successfully and I’ve seen countless amateur shops burned down with oil tubes due to improper use so I am with you in regards to not recommending that route unless someone really knows what they are doing and can afford the risk.

 

[dwaterfield]

A note about my answer: I've made exactly one blade that could be considered a sword, and that was at a class where the instructor had us using the torch method. He mentioned that he wants to build an electric HT oven that would be long enough for swords and that makes a lot of sense to me. Some day when I build my own oven I'll be giving serious thought to making it extra long for that purpose.

I'm an old Army combat engineer. Long pipes full of flammable liquid sound like something we would have called a field expedient incendiary device....which would be a lot of fun on the demolition range but not so much in my shop!

 

[Rick Marchand]

I'm not normally absolute in my advice but I can say that tempering in a liquid filled trough or tube(outside of a properly built salt pot) is reckless. The few I know who have tried it, found out the hard way and anyone who is currently experiencing success with this method(especially using oil) are on borrowed time, IMHO. Which is another reason why I offered no advice in the other thread.

I temper swords in my electric oven. It is only 24" long so I made a 3/8 x 3" tall slot in the door and temper one half at a time. Yes, you can do that. You can cut a pass-though hole in a toaster oven and temper in 10-12" increments, too. The steel doesn't care. I use my forge with a muffle tube to austenitize swords before quenching. I try to be as consistent as possible. If I made swords more often I would make High and Low temp salt pots. I make 2-3 swords a year, and use steel suited for simple HT.

 

[mooniesdl3]

I'm planning on using a very large powder coat oven a friend has built. He is a welder by trade and has a plasma table that he uses to make things to sell. He powder coats some good size items and I can easily fit a very large sword in it. He regularly runs it at 400F but it can go a bit higher. He has multiple PID's controlling the heating coils in it.

 

[Mecha]

I'm planning on using a very large powder coat oven a friend has built. He is a welder by trade and has a plasma table that he uses to make things to sell. He powder coats some good size items and I can easily fit a very large sword in it. He regularly runs it at 400F but it can go a bit higher. He has multiple PID's controlling the heating coils in it.

Dang that's a nice thing to have the chance to use!

 

[dwaterfield]

I'm not normally absolute in my advice but I can say that tempering in a liquid filled trough or tube(outside of a properly built salt pot) is reckless. The few I know who have tried it, found out the hard way and anyone who is currently experiencing success with this method(especially using oil) are on borrowed time, IMHO. Which is another reason why I offered no advice in the other thread.

I temper swords in my electric oven. It is only 24" long so I made a 3/8 x 3" tall slot in the door and temper one half at a time. Yes, you can do that. You can cut a pass-though hole in a toaster oven and temper in 10-12" increments, too. The steel doesn't care. I use my forge with a muffle tube to austenitize swords before quenching. I try to be as consistent as possible. If I made swords more often I would make High and Low temp salt pots. I make 2-3 swords a year, and use steel suited for simple HT.

At first I thought "that's crazy, just tempering part of the blade!" But I suppose the torch method basically does that, since you can't realistically keep the whole blade at a constant temp that way.

Interesting solution, I may start cutting holes in an old toaster oven until I can build something better.

 

[Atlas Knife Company]

If you replace "temper" with "heat treat" or "austenize", then the OP is correct. Many use salt pots to HT their swords.


-Never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by incompetence. (beginner with wrong terms)

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Salt pots were one of the choices to pick from.
The person we are referring to was going to use oil in a tall tube and heat it with a blow torch. He said that as how most people did sword tempering. I can fill you in privately if you want.
Salt pots are very different.