Heat Treating, general discussion

I just purchased a ATHA handled punch that I am am going to reshape as a slotting punch. I am new to the wizardry of heat treating so I am wondering if this should be heat treated and if so, how should a slow minded aspiring smith approach it? Thanks in advance.

Is there any reason I should not use the peanut oil from deep frying my turkey to quench in???

I am looking for a way to measure the temperature of my steel in the forge and wanted to see if anyone in the forums has experience with an IR temperature sensor. In particular, this is the current listing on Amazon.com that I am considering: http://www.amazon.com/Handheld-Non-Contact-Infrared-Thermometer-Targeting/dp/B007EYX0TS/ref=sr_1_17?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1395934068&sr=1-17&keywords=high+temperature+type+k The temperature measurement range is -58-3002F and also has a thermocouple input channel. If anyone has experience with this unit, please let provide some feedback.

I am going to post this I think I know what the issue was but would like some other input. I had some little giant dies made and they were supposed to be 4140. I did a water pour quench on the face of the dies and before they were even completely cool they cracked badly. The rough cross section of the dies was 2 by 3 by 2.5 inches. I did normalize them after they were machined. They cracked in multiple directions both across the short and the long direction. I have made many hammer heads over the years out of 4140 and have never lost a hammer to cracking using a water pour face and peen dipped quench with cross sections as big as these dies were. I even made a larger han…

I was just wondering, it is possible to temper pure iron? I am not going to do it in the near future, but I was just thinking. Do you need the carbon to temper to be flexible? Does tempered iron shrink because of the absense of carbon? Thanks.

Forged a nail header, from a crow bar. I make it orange/non magnetic and quenched in engine oil. It was so hard,I cant get a file to bite. Is that too hard? Will it crack in use? If so.....Should I heat it to blue or simply heat to orange again and air cool? I have a commercial nail header bought from On Center tool and it works soooooo sweet. I can get my file to bite into it. So it made me wonder; how hard it too hard for a tool of this caliber?

Made a spring fuller from used car coil spring. It has been annealed. I can now cut it with a hack-saw. I'd very much like to mig weld a hardie shank to the bottom of this spring fuller. Is there a process to use in order to perform this? I don't have a stick welder w/fancy welding rods. The other thing; I'm thinking I **may** need to harden this fuller and temper it. If so should I harden the entire spring fuller and temper or only a portion of it? If tempering isn't required, possibly harden it just a slight amount like slowly cooling it in hot oil or air cooling? I can quench this spring steel in water and afterward it is glass hard and shaters when struc…

Anybody got a chart or where I can find a chart for specific rockwell hardness for tempering temps of 1045? I've searched here and google with no luck. It's for a 1045 forging hammer I just finished but haven't heat treated yet. Yes, I know I could get close and good enough with tempering colors, but I've got a heat treat oven and will be using it. Wish I had a hardness tester though, would make figuring on a recipe a lot easier. Can't believe I couldn't find charts on the internet, I can find info on just about any other steel out there. Thanks

I recently made a monkey tool from 1045. After forging and hot filing, I annealed in vermiculite. It came out rusty. I suspect that the vermiculite is holding moisture (that's why it's in potting soil mixtures). So, I bought a lid to seal my vermiculite bucket and keep it dry. How would you dry it? I'm thinking of putting it into cookie sheets and baking it in the oven at maybe 350°F. Thin layers, so the heat penetrates quicker. Ideas on how long it'll need to bake? What about the temperature? Or, should I use an entirely different approach? Here's the monkey tool, since we're all addicted to pictures around here.

So I picked this 2"/53mm drill bit up at the scrap yard. (I really do not know why it was scrapped. It is nicked at the cutting edge and they tried, not very well, to sharpen it but otherwise it is in excellent condition.) Anyway, I want to use it to make some hardy tools. I thought I would I have not worked tool steel before. My plan is to work the shank into a hardy cutoff tool. Do I need to anneal it before I cut the shank with a zip cutting wheel (angle grinder)? Do I need to anneal it before forging? What is the process for annealing? Do I simply heat it to red or yellow and let it cool in the gas forge? I don't have a bucket of ash or vermi…

Hi All, I have been working on my heat treat oven over the last number of weeks here and there. It is loosely modeled after a paragon. The control box contains a fan, soak/ramp PID, a 40 amp solid state relay on a heat sink and a fan to keep things cool. The oven shell is plain sheet metal and the bricks were K23. The scavenged heating elements I used were laid into grooves cut in the brick and held in place where needed with little stables I made from excess heating element wire. The inside chamber is about 4.5 x 4.5 x 9 inches dimension. I am using it to heat treat little tools I am making and can run it up to 1775, though it takes 30 minutes or so to get up there…

I read somewhere about a blue rose that I think ATF was used to quench with after placing it in an oven at 450 degrees for an hour. Am I correct in this? I am making a table center piece for my wife with roses,cattails,and maybe a lilly with candle holders but I want the flowers to be blueish. any input would be great.

Hi, Ok, new to blacksmithing and definately new to heat treating. I have a couple of projects where I need to heat treat. Fist off I want to make some simple tools such as a hand held butcher from old files and like. I want to anneal first. I beleive I sould heat up to critical temp using a magnet to test. Then cool slowly. I do have an electric kiln with computer controlled ramp / soak controller (used for glass work mainly) that I could use. Because I will not know the grade of steel can I just heat up to the higher end of temps for annealing and cool slowly in a kiln instead? It looks like the higher the carbon content the lower the temp. Can I anneal say somewhere…

Hello all, I've been reading about blacksmithing, knife making, metal working, etc, for several years. Tonight I actually tried something and found that all I know conflicted with reality. I bought a pound of steel nails at Home Depot. The reason was to use them as rivets in certain projects. I have a pop-riveter but I think those rivets would be terrible in comparison to peened steel rivets. I build vacuum tube amps and I like the chassis to be rock-solid. I subscribe to the term "battleship construction" for my transmitting equipment because they're built with lots of metal and lots of fasteners. Anywho, I annealed a few nails tonight so the peening process …

I've read through the stickies and guides but can't seem to find an answer to a question I have about tempering a blade. I get the whole concept of quenching to get max hardness then tempering to remove brittleness while keeping edge holding ability. What I'm not sure of, is after soaking the blade at tempering temperature for however long, do you then quench (rapid cool) to lock in the temper? If so, does this second lower temp quench need to be in the same media (preheated oil if used for initial quench) or can it be a water quench. I realize there are way too many variables for a one size fits all answer, but I'm trying to understand the general principle. Thanks in …

To make a spring similar to the ones in these locks, assuming forging from scrap spring material... Would you harden and temper? To what color? Any recommendations on steel material? Thanks in advance.

I have a machinist friend making a small part for my truck. he didn't want to heát treat because it would change its cross section dimension. I've never had to worry about this, and have not read anything about this happening. is this an issue where close tolerance might be a problem? thanks in advance typo corrected

Wouldn't it be cool to forge a hammer and temper it blue? When i make my hammer, i want to do this. How do i temper 1045 steel to blue? thanks!

I forged a small striker steel for a friend and I had a great deal of trouble getting it to make any sort of sparks. It was forged from an old file I bought at a flea market, then quenched in water and tempered to dark blue. The flint certainly made marks on the striking face, but I only got a spark twice out of about a hundred tries. I tried striking a spark both before and after tempering it. I had made one for my self a long time ago and it works fine but this was pretty much a bust. Thanks for any help, Rob

I am sorry if this has been posted, I did my best to search the threads for carbon phase diagrams with definitions. If printed in color this is a handy little quick reference, i have one on my wall at work and in my shop. in case the attachment does not load go to: http://www.tempil.com/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=Basic_Guide_to_Ferrous_2010.pdf tempil metallurgy.pdf

I was making a couple of what should have been simple punches from an old SDS chipping bit I got at the flea market. One tool worked out just fine. The other split... I think while I was doing a partial quench in water while tempering. Can you see the longitudinal split in the pics? About 2 1/2" up from the point there is a band of oxidation colors and from there to the butt is a split. I'm somewhat well read in heat treating. That about wraps up a description of my experience. So I had hardened the whole tool knowing that I should probably try an oil quench, but I didn't have oil, so I opted for water. Then thinking I'd soften the striking end and temper the b…

i have an old set hammer that i never use that was a large punch. i needed a hot cut set hammer, so i turned it into one. i flattened it out and grinded it down. i did aneal it but do i need to heat treat it or can i just nutralize it and will it harden with work?

Assuming you have two of the same pieces of a known type/alloy of steel, let's say S2 for example, would the sparks appear the same to the eye if one of the pieces were in an annealed state, and the other in a hardened state?

I have a piece of RR track and a 7x 12x 1 chunk of steel. I don't have a proper anvil at this time so I was going to weld the 1 inch chunk of steel on top of the piece of track. Using the track as a base and horn. when I hit both with a cutting wheel they throw about the same amount of spark ( don't know what kind of steel the big chunk is) the RR track throws a little darker yellow spark. Can I bring the chunk of plate steel up to non magnetic and quench to make it a hardened top plate for the face? Or am I simply wasting my time trying to polish a xxxx?

I have read through a heap of these posts and it has really made me feel like the rank amateur that I am. I wonder if someone would be kind enough to enlighten me, in simple terms, how I should go about putting a hard edge on the business end of a small cross pein hammer. I wanted a lightweight hammer ideal for making leaves. All the light crosspeins I have are too sharp to push metal the way I want. I have a larger hammer which works well so I copied the radius of the pein curve and made a smaller one. It's good tool steel, but in so doing I have probably removed all the temper it once had. So I have the hammer ready to heat treat. My previous attempts at tempering hav…