Heat treat oven question.

S

SeanMK

Member
I now have a heat treat oven. New to this part. In the past it's been 1084 and forge. I will use heat treat foil on air hardening steels. The question I have, on oil quench steels , do I NEED to use the foil? Or when quenching do I need to take blade out of the foil before putting in quench tank.
 
I only deal with SS in my HT oven. But my understanding only SS needs foil wrap. Oil quenched steel would need to be taken out of foil wrap before oil dip quench and that takes way too much time for proper heat treat.
 
I would avoid the foil on plain carbon steels. That foil will inhibit proper quenching with those "fast" steels.

There are coatings available that one coats the blade with prior to HT that just go direct to quench and don't interfere. Two names that come to mind are ATP641 and Turco, but there are others. Some use really light washes of clays.

Enjoy your furnace.

PS: those coatings are for temps well below that of blade stainless, to answer your eventual question... :)
 
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So I just heat treated a knife this evening that I forged the point on. (Maybe I should discuss this one in the "what is forged" thread) Since I needed to normalize it and do a couple grain reduction cycles, I foil wrapped it for the first three heats and then when it was time for final austenitizing heat I removed the foil and quenched as normal. This greatly reduces decarb.
 
It's worth noting that I don't *prefer* foiling carbon steel blades and don't do it as standard practice, but after forging I really didn't have the extra material to grind away and keep the thickness I wanted.
 
tkroenlein said:
So I just heat treated a knife this evening that I forged the point on. (Maybe I should discuss this one in the "what is forged" thread) Since I needed to normalize it and do a couple grain reduction cycles, I foil wrapped it for the first three heats and then when it was time for final austenitizing heat I removed the foil and quenched as normal. This greatly reduces decarb.
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That is a great idea. Pure and simple.
 
I coat a carbon blade with borax or dry graphite when HT'ing or temp cycling in the oven. Cheaper than SS foil when temp cycling carbon steel and works just fine.
 
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