First post, newbie on here. I'm an old dude sneaking up on 78, and I've done a few "finish it yourself" and stock removal knives in the past (some depicted below), but I want to get much better at it and eventually get into simple forging. I needed a better small tank for edge-quenching, so I looked hard online for a low cost off-the-shelf "tank", but everything I saw was either too wide, too deep, too short, or too wimpy. The closest I found was heavy duty commercial steel baking pans intended for making big restaurant-size bread loaves, but they were rather thin metal, and were non-stick coated, which I didn't particularly want.
To get exactly what you want, sometimes you just have to build it yourself. With that in mind, I picked up five 18" pieces of 4" wide 11 gauge A36 flat bar from the friendly guys at Metal Supermarket for about $30 including nice clean and square band saw cuts. Material cost was less than cost plus shipping for most of the pans I saw online. From these panels, I assembled the 4 x 4 x 18 tank shown in the accompanying photos. It is built like a tank (sorry) and is the cat's butt for what I need in my little knife-making operation. At 11 pounds empty, it's probably overbuilt, but should be very stable in use, has a nice flip lid for fire safety and to help keep the oil clean, and includes stout handles on each end. The lid intentionally only opens down to a 45 degree angle (because of the tab stop), which allows quickly flipping it closed in the event of a flareup. Since my MIG welding skills are probably a three or four on a 10 scale I didn't want to run my ugly beads the entire length of each panel joint, which in addition to possible porosity and leak problems might also have created major warping, so I cheated: I first carefully fitted and clamped the five panels (three long and two end pieces) for minimal gap, and just lightly tacked them together at the corners and a few places along the long edges with a MIG welder. I then ground all the tack welds smooth on the outside of the tank, and applied JB Quik-Weld along the inside seams. After a few hours, I followed up with Quik-Weld on the outside seams. After letting everything set up hard overnight, I used a small orbital sander to smooth off all the outside seam Quik-Weld, did a leak test with water (there were no leaks), added the hinged lid and end handles, and painted the whole thing with heat resistant engine enamel. I used white for the inside, thinking it might make things easier to see during quenching, but it might not make that much difference. Anyway, for less than buying a less-than-satisfactory commercial equivalent, I now have a very heavy duty little knife and small parts quench tank that fits my needs perfectly. Now I'm off to Wally World for a gallon of Canola oil!
I might have somehow double-posted two of the photos, if so can't see how to fix that, sorry!
