Heat treating 01 and 440c

Well, I'm currently working on a knife made of 01 tool steel. I also plan on starting a couple made from 440c. I've only ever treated some carbon damascus steel with good results, oh and also some old file steel that I made a knife from.

I have very limited tools for heat treating. I have a "one brick forge", a magnet, toaster oven and some oil for quenching. It was enough to do the carbon steel in the past and get good enough results for me. Can I do the same for the 01 tool steel? Can I treat it basically like carbon steel and heat to the curie point quench in oil and temper in the oven?

What about the 440c? I figured that 440c would be the most simple to treat of all the stainless but I'm probably wrong.

I promise to post pictures soon. I wish I had pics of my earlier projects, I may have to dig them up and post.
 
O1 has a bit of chromium and tungsten in it and will require a bit of a soak at temperature to get everything into solution for best results. I imagine it will get more or less hard with the process you describe but might not be the best it can be.

440C has a whole bunch of chromium and would be best served by a kiln or furnace that can be controlled pretty closely. It's really not a good candidate for a basic forge HT.
 
I really appreciate the info. I will give the 01 a try on some scrap pieces first and see if thats going to be good enough. As for the 440c I'll end up sending it out to have someone else do it. Once again, thanks!
 
Testing scrap can't hurt! If you're looking to send out for HT, I highly recommend Peters', they will do any steel you can think of, and do it extremely well.
 
Thanks for the recommendation.

So... this 01 tool steel gets really hard with an oil quench as I had expected. I've been messing around with the tempering on a few scrap pieces and have not been able to temper this stuff to the point I would like yet. I am using a toaster oven and figure it must be maxing out around 475-500 F. Color has not been a very good indicator of the temper. This stuff has turned blue and is still a bit brittle with my samples just snapping before any real deformation occurs. It does however seem to have a LOT of tensile strength as it is very difficult to snap. It is getting a bit tougher the higher I go with the temp. Two cyles for 2 hours at the max temp of my little toaster oven made the steel just barely springy. Next I will try the oven in the house. I'm not sure if additional tempering cycles will benefit or not. I did torch a piece with propane for about 2-3 minutes and it got pretty tough so I think it just needs more time/higher temperature to get it where I want it.
 
Well, I just got done testing a piece that I tempered in the kitchen oven at 500 F for two cycles two hours each. Put one end of the piece in the vise grabbed the other with a large crescent wrench and proceeded to flex it to only about an 8-10 degree angle and snapped it. Still quite brittle. I sanded the piece down to a knife edge and it was tough going. Once there I did an edge flex test and it was still quite "chippy" I guess I'll have to send this stuff out for treating because I don't have anything that will go past 500 F in a controlled sort of way. What is the tempering temperature that most of you experienced guys use? Does it sound normal that it would still be brittle with a temper at 500 F or is it just the oven?
 
The good news is, it seems like you're getting the steel good and hard in the quench. I think that's a good starting point.

According to my notes and the charts I've found, 500F should give you about 59-60Rc... which in my experience shouldn't be that brittle. Sounds like it might be the oven is not getting as hot as the dial says it is. Kitchen ovens are notorious for being inaccurate to begin with, and not having an even heat throughout the fairly large chamber.

If feasible, I would send a piece from the same bar to a pro HT shop or a maker who works with it and has a Rockwell tester to check it with and ask them to see if they get the same results.
 
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