is it possible that i could pay someone here to heat treat a knife or two for me?

[chrisyancy]

i don't have any way to get my knife blanks hot enough to heat treat so i was hoping i could pay someone like 10-15 dollars or so to heat treat one or two of them for me

[Daswulf]

What are they made of? How long, how thick? How hard or soft do you want them depending on their ability? 

Do you want a professional or is any old blacksmiths eyeball guesstimate heat treat good? Are you willing to accept catastrophic failure of the blades if things don't go right in the heat treat? 

Getting them to heat can be easy with the right knowledge of how to build a simple forge.  

For help in some knowledge please read this first. 

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Are you forging them to shape or doing strictly stock removal? Like Das said what grade/type of steel? Do you want them quenched and hardened then temper drawn out? Where in the world are you located? The questions go on & on.

[Frazer]

It would help to know whereabouts you're located. Adding your town/state/country to your profile might help you find locals and avoid shipping costs.

If you're looking for factory grade heat treatment there are many companies out there that offer these sorts of services and can more or less guarantee a specific hardness within some tolerance.

If you just want a blacksmith's methods then you could send it to someone here or build yourself a JABOD with items you may already have on hand, plus a bag of lump charcoal from your local department store. Solid fuel forges are pretty straightforward to make. You need a vessel (preferably one that won't burn itself up) a source of air and fuel. Certain designs are safer, easier, etc. than others, but the variations of "good enough" are almost limitless. My first forge was a Weber grill lid flipped upside-down, firebricks, dirt, black iron pipe and a hair dryer. Excluding fuel think I spent ~7$ total on a ball valve to vent out the excess air that is inherent to using a hair dryer.

I see others have responded while I was typing, but regardless, welcome aboard! Please READ THIS FIRST.

[chrisyancy]

i made one out of a rasp and one from a file, both stock removal and both are small edc type knifes. I don't really need them any specific hardness i just need whatever seems good to the person heat treating it     and the reason i cant do it myself is bc my parents wont allow me to own a forge 

im near nashville TN

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

If they are made from old files/rasps, they more than likely already hardened what you need to do is put them in the kitchen oven or toaster oven and heat them to about 400° F for an hour or so to a straw color. that will take the brittleness out of them. That is provided your mother will let you use the oven. You might want to read this first.

https://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/68-heat-treating-general-discussion/

We won't remember your general location once leaving this post, hence the suggestion to edit your profile and add it there. That way we won't have to ask you when an answer requires knowing it. Might check with your parents first before doing that. There are some members fairly close to you who may give you some help. As you can see from my location, I'm a little too far away but if we were closer, I would be happy to help and it wouldn't cost anything.

[chrisyancy]

i annealled the rasps and files so i could use a file/ hacksaw on them

 this is the knife that i need heat treated for reference (sorry for bad picture)

 

[Frazer]

How did you anneal them?

[Frosty]

I just did a web search using, "Heat treaters Nashville tn." as search terms and got hits on several heat treating services in the Yellowpages. Give it a try.

$10-15 is dreaming though. Give them a call on the PHONE, trying to contact them online isn't likely to get a response, ever.

Frosty The Lucky. 

[chrisyancy]

5 hours ago, Frazer said:

How did you anneal them?

i them into a camp fire and got them out in the morning

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

I just did a web search using, "Heat treaters Nashville tn." as search terms and got hits on several heat treating services in the Yellowpages. Give it a try.

$10-15 is dreaming though. Give them a call on the PHONE, trying to contact them online isn't likely to get a response, ever.

Frosty The Lucky. 

i  was hoping to get a blacksmith to heat treat them bc most industrial heat treaters are not made for small batches or single items

 

[Frazer]

That would do it. I'm just throwing ideas out now, but if there are no takers here could you build another camp fire and use the coals to normalize the blade 2-3 times, heat it back up to nonmagnetic, quench in warm oil and temper immediately in the oven at 400F?

You may want to use a muffle to get a more even heat across the blade.

If your campfire isn't hot enough, pump some air into it.   Remember fuel doesn't make the fire hot. Air makes it hot. You won't need a ton of air for what you're trying to do (think bellows/bike pump, not shopvac).

If you have some leftover pieces of your file left do a test piece before you try your blade. Normalize, harden, temper, notch and snap the test piece to inspect the grain structure. Big grains bad, small grains good. If you want to, snap a file that you haven't tossed in the fire to inspect a factory HT grain structure. You may not be able to achieve that, but it should be your goal.

[chrisyancy]

ive tried heat treating with lump charcoal in a campfire using a hairdryer for heat  but was never able to get it hot enough or even enough to heat treat

[Frosty]

You're right, professional heat treaters work in quantity which is why I said $10-15 is dreaming. If you can make friends with an employee s/he might slip your project in with a batch or do it after work. 

You might find a bladesmith on Iforge willing to do it for you but you'll have a much better chance if you ask on a bladesmithing forum. Also there are companies that specialize in heat treating home made blades. You'll have to ship it to them and wait to get it back of course and they aren't going to be cheap. 

How much can you tell them about the rasp you used? Different companies and manufacture dates mean different alloys and alloy is everything when heat treating. If you expect THEM to analyze the alloy you can tack maybe another $100 to the charges.

You're starting to get a LOT of blacksmith suggestions as to how to heat treat your blade and some guys just THINK they know what they're doing. I'm not referring to Frazer, he's at least a competent bladesmith. Unfortunately you clearly don't have the knowledge and experience to pull off heat treating a "mystery file," knife blade. You can follow Frazer's directions closely and screw it up easily, even if you've done it before. For example you want to let it soak at non-magnetic so the entire depth of the blade is evenly at non-magnetic. 

I'm not trying to tell you it's hopeless, give up. I'm trying to impress on you you need to look in the right places. expect a good job to be expensive and realize the probabilities of failure are relatively high. ESPECIALLY with the remaining teeth. Every rasp tooth IS a stress riser to initiate failure, during hardening or tempering "the heat treatment" or in use.

Best of luck Chris, we're pulling for you.

Frosty The Lucky.

[chrisyancy]

i have a scrap peice of rasp ive been saving to test when i heat treat

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

You might try contacting these folks. They may have members near you.

https://aacblacksmiths.org/about-aacb/

[ThomasPowers]

I can forge weld in a campfire with lump charcoal and an air source; 2300 degF. Sounds like you need to get some basic smithing help. BTW a campfire and a blow dryer IS a forge!

[chrisyancy]

well im not very knowledgeable about heat treating in a campfire with a 2 dollar hair dryer     also lump charcoal takes me like a month to get a bag full of it so i dont get alot of chances to heat treat in it

 

[Glenn]

You can talk yourself out of anything, or find a way to make things work.  JABOD costs little or nothing to build and will open up many new opportunities to learn new things.  Kroger's sells lump charcoal as do many of the restaurant supple stores. 

[ThomasPowers]

Or it can be made in the campfire as you are using it!  At Real Viking II I set up next to the large fire and raked hot coals over to where my twin bellows were as I needed them.  (The proof of concept bellows cost less than US$1 to  make using scrounged materials, the "good" one cost more as I bought the leather for it.)

When I do my Y1K forge set up I generally build a fire down wind of my forge and transfer coals using a shovel. I even made a shovel out of expanded metal so I could shake out any ash or small bits before dumping it in the forge.

Whether you believe you can or believe you can't; you are always right!

[chrisyancy]

i think that i will try to use lump coal in a cut off paint can to heat treat with a hair dryer in the bottom 

 

 

[Frosty]

Chris: As you said you don't know a lot about this stuff and that's okay, we all started where you did. You're asking questions and bouncing ideas off us that's a good thing. It's getting discouraging because us old farts are telling you all the things wrong with the ideas you're telling us. This is a good thing believe it or not. Wouldn't you rather find out in advance something won't work or how hard it is? Isn't that better than going to all the work you did on your blade and have it fail because what you tried was a bad idea?

What we're doing is offering you is our decades of experience, the skills and tricks we learned from making mistakes. A smart man learns from his mistakes a wise one learns from the mistakes of others.

This is a bit of wisdom I pass along regularly. "The only thing hurrying is sure to do is make your mistakes permanent more quickly." 

I know you want to finish and use your knife but what is the rush? Your current idea of using a paint can, charcoal and blow drier is NOT a good way to heat your blade. You aren't going to be able to see the thin parts and those are what WILL burn off before the rest of the blade gets close to critical temperature. 

A roasting pan with the inside shaped with damp dirt so you can build a longer fire would be WAY better but no matter what there's a good chance of burning the point and edge before it reaches critical. This is why bladesmiths don't grind so close to finish before heat treating.

Make sense?

Your $2 blow drier puts out way more air than your fire is going to need, you're good there, don't worry. Okay?

If you can't build a JABOD you can find an old wooden or metal box and fill it with dirt. Yes? All you need to do then is scrape a trench and plant a tuyere pipe. Just a piece of unplated 3/4" or 1" steel pipe that reaches out of the box.

THAT is a JABOD. You can fancy it up with fire bricks and all sorts of cool handy stuff but a trench scraped in hard packed dirt with a pipe poking in the side an inch or so off the bottom is all you really need. You can do THAT can't you? For your blade a yard sale roasting pan is perfect. 

Just slow down and talk to us. We LOVE helping folks but we need some help from you. There is no hurry. Honest we've ALL gotten excited and rushed projects and had to clean up the mess when they failed. 

Once you get a simple forge built you'll be testing the file stock you have left over so YOU have an idea how to work with it. Cut some harrow strips of the remaining file say 1/2" wide by the width of the piece left over. Take one, heat it to critical and quench it in warm oil. Immediately put it in the oven at 400f? (Look up a temper chart to determine what temperature to set the oven. If you have an oven thermometer use it, the dial and gage on ovens are only close)

Once the test strip (Test Coupon) is tempered cover it with a shop rag, clamp it in your vise with most sticking out and give it a tap with a hammer. You're breaking it to examine the grain structure and determine how easily it breaks. 

You want to do this a number of times BEFORE heat treating the blade you put all that work into. Making sense here?

Okay, that's enough for now, I'll give you a rest. There is a LOT more to heat treating than just getting it hot and sticking it in a bucket or quenchant. 

Stick with us here, we're pulling for you.

Frosty The Lucky.

[chrisyancy]

sorry for not replying i have not used my computer much this week    the reason i cant really heat treat is bc imnot supposed to have a forge but i did try the can/charcoal idea with a small 1095 carving knife i made   and it would get non-magnetic and i would heat it past that but it would not get hot enough to skate a file after i quenched it

 

[Frosty]

Take a picture of the tin can forge you used so we can see what you did. Yes, burning charcoal with a blow drier for blast is a forge. 

What did you quench it in?

Frosty The Lucky.

[chrisyancy]

this is the forge and knife    and the container is full of motor oil which i tried heating with a nut i had heated up but i dont think it got hot enough

 

[Buzzkill]

16 hours ago, chrisyancy said:

but i did try the can/charcoal idea with a small 1095 carving knife i made   and it would get non-magnetic and i would heat it past that but it would not get hot enough to skate a file after i quenched it

1095 benefits from a soak (time held at a specific temperature).  It also needs a fast quenching oil to get the most out of it.  Although it's a very common steel, especially in pattern welded blades, it's really not the best beginner steel.  It's entirely possible that you did get the piece hot enough, but with the wrong quench medium it did not get hard enough to skate a file.