Thread: Heat treating

Now if you REALLY want to go crazy, there is actually a company in Providence that does salt bath HT. There minimum order for quench and temper is only like $75.

Our resident guru on HT uses salt...

Salt is wonderful if you work to order and have to use different recipes a lot.
However, If you learn to work with the steel you have and HT yourself, your knives will be just as good.

For kitchen knives I use stainless niolox (SB1) and I HT it myself in a charcoal fire, using just the color to gauge temperature, and quench in maize oil. In the beginning I broke knives to check the grian size, and I sent pieces to Mike for hardness testing. I got a consistent 59.5 which is plenty hard enough for a general purpose kitchen knife. My wusthof knives score lower than that (58 iirc)

Using salt I know I could get it higher. Put the cherry on the cake, so to speak. My main pet peeve when it comes to HT is that many people are so obsessed with the cherry on the pie, but wouln't know how to make even a simple pie. First learn to make good pies. Then worry about the cherry.