Heat Treating, general discussion

I made these hooks for my Dad. No, they aren't pretty, yes they'll work. They will be hung in his shop, used for extension cords, air hoses, etc. Should I heat treat them? If so, what method should I use?

I've read that you should never hammer hardened steel, even if it's hot. I'm just starting out and plan on using a lot of old scrap. I got my hands on some old auto scrap, and I'll be keeping an eye out for old/broken tools. Should I be annealing everything before beating on it? I never see that in YouTube videos but I didn't know if that's just something that gets glossed over.

So in my quest to find equipment that will lend a better understanding both for and to students I purchased another rockwell tester. The Accu-tester has proven to be very accurate on items that have a certain size and above are are flat mounted. All requirments to get accurate results. With this I purchased the larger stationary tester to offer a laboratory type tester for higher accuracy results for thinner objects as well as seem more official.. And with this the lab model is not very portable and is in fact not really portable for use at all. In comes the Ames tester which is very accurate and based on some neat theories of a full on lab ma…

Hello. As a beginner, I have now made some tools for the first time. Of course, that’s how I encountered tempering, and here is a problem. I used C45 steel which is basically 1045. I heated it to cherry red so the magnet didn’t stick anymore and quench in water. So far, I think everything was fine. Then I wanted to temper my slot punch. In the literature it is written that this is done at a temperature of 400-600 degrees Celsius. Which already seemed strange to me. I turned the oven to 260 degrees and left it for 1 hour. Now is colour of slot punch is bluish with some bronze spots. When I tested it with a file it cut almost like butter What did I do wrong? still too hi…

A while back, this square tank on wheels followed me home from the industrial surplus warehouse (I think it was originally the reservoir from a hydraulic unit). Today, I finally got around to converting it into a quench tank. The two sections of the lid are made from 1/16" plate salvaged from another warehouse find, and the handle is 1/4" round. The interior is in two sections, with holes connecting them near the top. I’ve added a hinged lid to the quenching section, with the other half available for overflow. The lid for the overflow section drops down to rest on two ledges of angle iron. I cut these shorter at the back, so that I can tilt the…

I'm making a fullering jig. For the fullering arms, I've used leaf spring steel. I cut a 7" length in half and put the two pieces in the forge so I could straighten them for the jig. Air cooled them. Then I tried to drill holes so I could mount them in the jig. Steel had hardened. So I tried to anneal them in two 1-hour cycles in an oven at 400 degrees. Still too hard to drill. What have I done wrong?

I am using a gas oven to temper fully hardened steel. The oven is about forty yeas old. I am using a type K thermocouple meter to display the oven temperature. From a cold start I bring the oven slowly up to the temperature I am trying to get. It takes 10 or 15 minutes. The type K thermocouple meter show the oven temperature going through wide swings of about plus and minus 30 degrees. I'm thinking of burying the workpiece and the sensing element of the meter in a bed of sand to even out the wide temperature fluctuations. Would welcome any comments.

Greetings Covid 19 lockdown and long days at home. So I am building my 3rd anvil. The final estimate weight is around 45 kg. This time I am using the method of welding the top plate. I took a plough share 12 mm thick, I annealed it, cut to shape and I am welding it as top plate to a mild steel body. The plough steel seems to attached firmly to 7018 welds and it was pre heated before welding. I am approaching the part I have to heat treat the top plate. I am making a stake anvil. I made a small experiment and hardened a bit of steel on water, it broke easily upon hammer impact. I also made some observations under the stereoscopic microscope of the interfa…

So, I was looking at a used Lucifer heat treat oven, and I contacted the company to see if I could get a owners manual, and to see if the controls could be upgraded. Here's the reply- You will need to provide us with the 4 digit serial number on the furnace. Due to confidentiality and the fact that all Lucifer furnaces and ovens have been manufactured to each customer’s specifications…..all are quite different, we do not post information electronically. If you want to purchase an instruction manual, the cost for this is $150. Manuals are prepared per order and are not a stock item. Availability is 7-10 Days. The information you are requesting would be in this manu…

Can annealed A2 steel be dented by a 3/4"-1" ball bearing? Also, does anyone know the rockwell hardness when it is annealed? The reason for the questions, I bought some pieces online, they are 3/8" technically 7/16" thick by 4" by 8" and they didnt have any markings on them to show they were A2. Just have to take the guys word for it. Dropped a ball bearing probably about 10" high, maybe not even that and they both put a small ping in the metal. Will be using this steel for a face on an anvil.

Hello. I'm Jimmy and I'm very new to blacksmithing. I've recently set up a workshop and started to forge a bit. I'm very intrested of making hammers and I've watched a ton of videos on YouTube about pretty much everything there is somethings I just can't make clear and I hope someone can make them clear for me today. First off, Right now I'm making a hammer eye punch out of an old cross peen hammer I found out in the garage. It's an old hammer so I guess it's been hardened and tempered before, right? So, do I need to normalize it before forging it? And if I got the normalize part right, I heat it up to cherry red and then just let it cool by itself? Or ca…

I'm new to this form and heat-treating in general, so please forgive my ignorance... We work on a wide variety of motorcycle gas tanks and use heat cleaning (burn-off process of approx. 900 degrees f for an hour) on some. We have been testing various dent removal techniques after heat cleaning and have noticed the metal seems to be harder to move and more brittle (dent pulling pins tear holes easily). Would the time and temps listed alter the working properties of the metal? If so, is there a way to minimize or reverse the effects of the heat? Thanks in advance for your input.

I haven't come across an answer for my question, so I'm hoping I'm not overlooking anything obvious. I am wondering if there's an amount of time after the first tempering cycle where it becomes pointless to do cryo treatment? The thing is that I have access to various low temperature freezers at work, but generally do my heat treatment in the evening to better judge the colour of the steel (I know it's not optimal, but we work with what we got). Could I potentially quench, temper once, leave overnight, take it to work for cryo then take it home and temper again? Or is there another method that would be better with the tools and timing I have available?

Have a hyd cyl with 2.25" shaft. When I made power hammer dies, they started to deform quicker than I expected. Anyone know what they're made of and if I can temper them?

Hi all. I'm looking for posts I put up years ago on various aspects of heat treatment. I've been using the search tools on IFI and have been able to locate a few, but I haven't been able to figure out how to search for all my post on a given forum without including a search term. Is there a way I can do that? I recall that years ago I put up some info on Keenjunk and I recall some folks saving that and reposting it here. Does anyone have that material they could share with me? I'd like to use it for a project I'm involved in and though I could sit down and rewrite it, it would be much easier if I could use what I've already generated. thanks. Patrick

Working with what I had and not trying to make anything useful, I had a go at some mystery metal from a 7 1/4" carbide tip circular saw blade I had in the dead pile. Being that it was carbide and Task is a brand that flirts at the end of unusable junk, I wasn't expecting much. Process as follows Heat to non-magnetic, quench, file test. Water quench - hard, file skates Re-heat and air cool Oil quench - hard, file skates, some bite in areas that probably decarbed. Temper in toaster oven @ 450f for 1 hour and allow to cool. Stick in vice and bend, has some flex, makes clean break without taking a bend. Re-temper by colour with a torch, proc…

Americans and British are oftentimes separated by a common language. I've often heard Brits talk about using whale oil for tempering. Problem is true whale oil from whales has been outlawed for at least 100 years. Somebody found an old can someplace and tried to sell it on ebay. He got arrested by the FBI and it made for a heck of an expensive mess. It's also pretty much banned internationally as well which leads me to this question. Research has shown that it is not possible for them to be using real whale oil so what is it that they use and hang that name on? George

Anybody here do heat treatment in Toronto (GTA) Canada or know of a place that does? I'm planning on forging my Jian at a local black Smith where i can shape it, but he's not set up to temper something that long. I frequently see the post, just send it out for heat treatment. When i Google that in Toronto, every result comes up some sort of industrial or process plant. If I can't find a place to do it, i'll probably do a stock removal from a piece of what ever from the depot.

Is the grain structure of a mid to high carbon steel (5160, 8670, 1075,1084) slow cooled in vermiculite fairly close to that when it is air cooled or normalized? In other words, is slow cooling considered a kind of normalizing?

what is mythical about annealing in Vermiculite?

Hi, has anybody used Aztec fast quench oil for steels like 1095? Im in the U.K and parks50 seems to be about double the price

Hello everyone! So I've been blacksmithing for several years and have been following this and other forums equaly long but have never posted anything yet. But now I have a question. I've been heat treating several hammers and axes lately and have not gotten the hardnes I wanted. The hammers are axeptable I think mid 40's HRC (still a bit on the soft side compared to my reference pieces of 1045 but doable) The axe (mordaxe with blade and poll) just realy does'nt want to the blade didn't harden after 2 attempts and the poll only slightly I think low 40's Its about as hard as an old normalised leaf spring I have lying around here. So some parameters. hamme…

Hello everyone. I’m pretty much brand new at all of this. I’m a carpenter and the reason I got started in the first place is because I thought it would be good to make my own hammer. I can’t seem to find good instructions on heat treating tool steel. Like a step by step list with temperatures and times and what oils to use. Sorry if this is has been covered already. Thanks!

Hello, It is to my understanding, from what I've read here and in other forums, that after you forge stainless steel (I'll be using mainly 316 and 304), you need to anneal and passivate it to maximize the stainlessness. But I've seen a few videos and read of people that do not anneal it after forging. Or some people that say, if you want to keep the black hammer marks on (if you want this kind of finish), not to passivate it, as they will be removed. My question is, since I will be using stainless to make mostly BBQ tools, pendants, bottle openers and such, how much of the stainlessness will be lost IF I skip these processes? As soon as I fix my forge I wil…

Hey there, Recently we switched from normalizing to annealing for some parts that we manufacture. Normalizing is much easier(of course) and significantly cheaper in our location. We usually soak parts for a half an hour before setting the temperature of the oven to a few thousand Fahrenheit, The hardness will be about 54RC, which can be changed to achieve 45-60RC when tempered again at a few thousand degree Fahrenheit. In the process of annealing heat treatment it is just that the temperature will be much lower. It is just that normalizing is resulting in scaling(looks more like lumps) which otherwise is not present in annealing. The lump does reduce if we reduce the lo…