papapoufis

Pnut, thanks for your help. This is a good idea, however how would you quench or work the part? Opening up the container would take some time. I suppose it would be practical for annealing or tempering operations.

Hello! I am using a homemade electric kiln(with refractory bricks) to do some light forging and heat treatment of some parts. The main steel I am using is similar to O1. However the parts out of the oven come with some grey/graphite looking scales, which I think might be decarburization. This (I think there might be some other issues with my process) reduce the surface hardness, making it harder to check with a file, and also introduce significant pitting, especially when forging, where i have to keep the part heated up for extended periods of time. Do you have any advice for reducing the oxidation? What is the simplest/cheapest method(I do not have an argon cylinder). Will borax help? Thanks for your input.