Hot Shot or Evenheat which one

Tooln

Tooln

Well-Known Member
I'm looking to upgrade to a 240 volt oven. So far I've narrowed it down to either a Hotshot or an Evenheat. Any suggestions pros or cons of either, or first hand experience.
Thanks for your input
 
I have a Knife Dawgs oven from Paragon and am very happy with it. It's a little more affordable but only 14" deep. Good enough for 95% of my work.
 
Haines Custom said:
I have a Knife Dawgs oven from Paragon and am very happy with it. It's a little more affordable but only 14" deep. Good enough for 95% of my work.
Click to expand...
My current oven is a 120 volt, 14" Knife Dawgs from Paragon. Being 120 volts doing a HT on stainless is questionable. If I do a fillets .040 or chef's .100 thick i'm ok. But move up to .130 thick getting a good HT is questionable. Nothing against Paragon but $$$$$
 
I've got the Evenheat KH 418 and love it. It's a 120v though. Takes a little more time to ramp up, but I've had no problems with it. Been able to heat treat 1084, 80CrV2, AEB-L and Magnacut without issues. Picked mine up from USAKnifemaker with TAP controller and solid state relay. Planning on picking up the WiFi dongle soon so I can monitor from my phone.

If I could've upgraded to a 220v, I was looking at the Jen Ken 21 vertical Airbath. Gene Kimmi has one and I really like the smaller footprint.
 
I have a Paragon that 24" deep and has their digital controller also 240V. I chose this for some reasons over the Evenheat. 1 of the reasons was that they came standard with electronic relays and they weren't an up charge it also came with a door power disconnect again no additional charge. The money I saved on these couple of options I paid for the digital controller (not as nice as the Evenheat IMO though) I got mine from Boss and at the time they had free shipping (Paragon offers this quit a bit!). As far as the other brand I cannot speak too. Good luck with whatever you go with they are a game changer with your heat treat!
 
Last edited:
I talked to both the Hot Shot dealer and the Evenheat dealer at the last Blade Show West. While I don't remember the details I came away with the impression that the Evenheat ovens are a much better value. Just my two cents
 
I spent roughly $1200 and built my own 240V oven, 27" x 7" x 6.5" chamber in it. I went with a Wifi Ramp/Soak PID, premade element, did the wiring myself, etc. It's not the prettiest or fastest (I used cheap Amazon K23 bricks that weight 2.8#/brick instead of 2#/brick!), but it gets to 2200 in 3 hours (due to the extra density/mass it needs to heat; it's about 60 minutes to 1500). I combined RedBeards wiring style/schematic/project box with Jarod Todds method of suspending the coils on Quartz glass tubes across the top. I did dual SSR's, fuses on each power leg, fuse to protect the PID, Door Kill Switch, Manual element kill switch, etc. I do some Shechita/Chalef knives that have 18" x 2" blades, plus the handle, so 24" was iffy length wise, so I went to a 27" deep one. The WiFI capability is awesome; I can program it and monitor it from my phone from anywhere! So I can plug it in before I go to work, then set it to turn on so it can be up to temp when I get home and am ready to use it. So much easier to program ramp and steps from the phone instead of the control unit.

I will eventually get real K23 bricks (not chinese knock offs), and convert this oven to a 110 tempering oven with a simplified PID controller and rebuild the heat treat oven with the better bricks. I learned a lot on the build and my welding is a lot better for the frame/door build. Plus I learned how to repair anything I need to as well!

I used to use a EvenHeat 14-6 120V kiln, but it maxed at 1700 (3 hours to get there, 90 minutes to 1500) that I hooked up a PID control box for, but it was too short length wise and couldn't get to stainless temps. Rebound time was horrible, too! My oven rebounds in a minute or two once soaked. The longer ramp time sucks, but it holds heat pretty well once it's there and rebounds fast! I've had the PID reading over 100 degrees the next morning after was off for over 10 hours.

Paragon has a nice vertical HT oven that looks very nice as well!
 
Taz575 said:
I spent roughly $1200 and built my own 240V oven, 27" x 7" x 6.5" chamber in it. I went with a Wifi Ramp/Soak PID, premade element, did the wiring myself, etc. It's not the prettiest or fastest (I used cheap Amazon K23 bricks that weight 2.8#/brick instead of 2#/brick!), but it gets to 2200 in 3 hours (due to the extra density/mass it needs to heat; it's about 60 minutes to 1500). I combined RedBeards wiring style/schematic/project box with Jarod Todds method of suspending the coils on Quartz glass tubes across the top. I did dual SSR's, fuses on each power leg, fuse to protect the PID, Door Kill Switch, Manual element kill switch, etc. I do some Shechita/Chalef knives that have 18" x 2" blades, plus the handle, so 24" was iffy length wise, so I went to a 27" deep one. The WiFI capability is awesome; I can program it and monitor it from my phone from anywhere! So I can plug it in before I go to work, then set it to turn on so it can be up to temp when I get home and am ready to use it. So much easier to program ramp and steps from the phone instead of the control unit.

I will eventually get real K23 bricks (not chinese knock offs), and convert this oven to a 110 tempering oven with a simplified PID controller and rebuild the heat treat oven with the better bricks. I learned a lot on the build and my welding is a lot better for the frame/door build. Plus I learned how to repair anything I need to as well!

I used to use a EvenHeat 14-6 120V kiln, but it maxed at 1700 (3 hours to get there, 90 minutes to 1500) that I hooked up a PID control box for, but it was too short length wise and couldn't get to stainless temps. Rebound time was horrible, too! My oven rebounds in a minute or two once soaked. The longer ramp time sucks, but it holds heat pretty well once it's there and rebounds fast! I've had the PID reading over 100 degrees the next morning after was off for over 10 hours.

Paragon has a nice vertical HT oven that looks very nice as well!
Click to expand...
I originally was gonna build one. But I was an outside salesman at the time and got a quarterly bonus check at the time and rewarded myself!! This is a good option if you have the time and knowledge to do it safely!
 
Yeah, I worked 80 hours on the July 4th week last year, so some of that OT went towards the supplies! Never would have been able to afford a commerically built, 27" long HT oven, so I put the time to educate myself on how to do this. It was a fun, but frustrating project! I spent a bit over $1200 because the first element and tubes were too tight and broke the element and tubes, so I had to replace those, but I still saved a lot and have a lot of electrical connections and tools I didn't have before!

One thing I see with the HotShot ovens is their very fast ramp time; I wonder how long the elements will last? My buddy loves his and it has the stuff to track the cost to run the oven, performance history and all that stuff, which is really nice!
 
Taz575 said:
I spent roughly $1200 and built my own 240V oven, 27" x 7" x 6.5" chamber in it. I went with a Wifi Ramp/Soak PID, premade element, did the wiring myself, etc. It's not the prettiest or fastest (I used cheap Amazon K23 bricks that weight 2.8#/brick instead of 2#/brick!), but it gets to 2200 in 3 hours (due to the extra density/mass it needs to heat; it's about 60 minutes to 1500). I combined RedBeards wiring style/schematic/project box with Jarod Todds method of suspending the coils on Quartz glass tubes across the top. I did dual SSR's, fuses on each power leg, fuse to protect the PID, Door Kill Switch, Manual element kill switch, etc. I do some Shechita/Chalef knives that have 18" x 2" blades, plus the handle, so 24" was iffy length wise, so I went to a 27" deep one. The WiFI capability is awesome; I can program it and monitor it from my phone from anywhere! So I can plug it in before I go to work, then set it to turn on so it can be up to temp when I get home and am ready to use it. So much easier to program ramp and steps from the phone instead of the control unit.

I will eventually get real K23 bricks (not chinese knock offs), and convert this oven to a 110 tempering oven with a simplified PID controller and rebuild the heat treat oven with the better bricks. I learned a lot on the build and my welding is a lot better for the frame/door build. Plus I learned how to repair anything I need to as well!

I used to use a EvenHeat 14-6 120V kiln, but it maxed at 1700 (3 hours to get there, 90 minutes to 1500) that I hooked up a PID control box for, but it was too short length wise and couldn't get to stainless temps. Rebound time was horrible, too! My oven rebounds in a minute or two once soaked. The longer ramp time sucks, but it holds heat pretty well once it's there and rebounds fast! I've had the PID reading over 100 degrees the next morning after was off for over 10 hours.

Paragon has a nice vertical HT oven that looks very nice as well!
Click to expand...
I built my own tempering oven, SSR, PID controller loop. Holds 450 F plus or minus 3 degrees. But I'd rather spend my time making knives not the oven.
 
Awesome! I am doing a tempering oven next when I sell some blades! I have most of the materials already.

I think I just saw on USAKnifemakers that there is a new controller for Evenheat out now? I got an email yesterday about it.
 
Taz575 said:
Awesome! I am doing a tempering oven next when I sell some blades! I have most of the materials already.

I think I just saw on USAKnifemakers that there is a new controller for Evenheat out now? I got an email yesterday about it.
Click to expand...
I actually built 2 both from a garage sale $10 toaster oven. Add another 30 for PID & SSR controller. I plan to use my current HT oven for tempering once I get the new oven. Going to try to sell the others. Just starting to get to much stuff laying around.
 
Tooln said:
I actually built 2 both from a garage sale $10 toaster oven. Add another 30 for PID & SSR controller. I plan to use my current HT oven for tempering once I get the new oven. Going to try to sell the others. Just starting to get to much stuff laying around.
Click to expand...
That's exactly what I did. I insulated mine on 5 sides (Glass front I didn't do) with some Kao-Wool I had from a previous project. It will hold + or - 3 degrees. Only problem with it is if I do large knives.
 
Have you checked into Jen-Ken? I've always been impressed by their stuff and when I get set up for ht that's the route I plan to go
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top