So I've recently started experimenting with stainless steel and i figured that 440c would be a good place to start. I have made and heat treated several knives and felt like i was getting good results so I brought one of my knives to my friendly local machine shop to test the hardness. We checked the knife in 3 places and it came up 61.5 rockwell C consistently. I tempered at 320 degrees for 2 hours 1 time(after letting them warm up to room temperature from a dry ice and kerosene bath). I was thinking at the time that I would rather have them on the hard side so I could see what is possible with my home equipment (I'm not a professional by a long shot) but 61.5 seems too hard for a 440c blade. I heat treated these knives about a month ago so I don't know if I can put them back in the kitchen oven for another tempering cycle at this point. I would just try one at say, 375 for 2 hours and bring it back to the machine shop to test but it's definitely time and money to go out there for another hardness test so if I'm guaranteed failure I'd rather not bother. Thank you in advance for any incite.