Thread: New oven

Nice!! Old timers told me the secret is to have absolutely no visual shadows in the material to be tempered at the tempering temperature. That meant that the materials or case hardening box was totally up to the temperature of the kiln, forge, or oven.
~Richard

Nice oven Bruno!!

Originally Posted by Geezer

Bruno has the money and not the time so for him that is a wise investment; the rest of us may be the opposite.
There are many possibilities and Googling "Kiln, Home made" will get you started.
~Richard

I built my first oven...and it was a great tool, both for learning all of the nuances of using the oven (to build a good tool you have to understand it completely), as well as for getting the best out of my steel. When I bought my current oven (Evenheat KF22.5), using it was a no brainer, no learning curve...just pure heat treating efficiency.

For me, I don't anneal anything, at least not as 'annealing' is understood by most. The biggest benefit to having an oven for me, is to be able to put the steel in THE most beneficial pre-hardening state, and then nail that heat treat to the wall with perfect accuracy. Even with simple carbon steels (assuming they are hypereutectic), there is definite benefit to being able to thermal cycle in this manner. For a simple 1% carbon tool steel, with .15% vanadium and .1% chromium, this process takes six hours or so. The benefits are well worth the time spent though.