Thread: Help with First Custom

Make friends with the Aviation Maintenance folks at your base they should have a heat treating oven in their Airframe repair shop.

Originally Posted by dustoff003

Make friends with the Aviation Maintenance folks at your base they should have a heat treating oven in their Airframe repair shop.

Wish I could, I'm at Caserma Ederle in Vicenza, which is almost strictly Army with no air resources located here. I suppose if I wanted to I could drive up to Aviano Air Base which is a couple hours away, but Mike seems like he can imbue the razor with magical qualities simply by looking at it so I think I'll stick with sending it out. Good idea though, I hadn't even thought of that!

one idea is to practice grinding some mild steel, cheap, easy to come by, but you cant really heat treat it as it is a low carbon steel, so not so useful for practicing finish grinding after ht..

you can however practice heating to non magnetic with mild steel, and im told the curie point (non magnetic point) is not that different between mild steel and 1080 and 1084..

note that you need to check for non magnetic as you are heating, as once you have heated past the curie point magnetism returns at a lower temperature, so heating above the curie point and then cooling below the curie point can still result in a nonmagnetic blade.

the critical temperature for maximum hardness for 1080 and 1084 is a bit above the curie point i think, but once you've reached the curie point enough of the steel has austenitized that it should still harden well i think. 1080 and 1084 do not require a soak time like O1, so heat to non magnetic and quench.

for the price of damascus or even 1080 or 1084 i'd practice on some mild steel first.

1080 or 1084 sounds like the simplest high carbon steel to heat treat among the commonly recommended steel, and it definitely can be done without a lot of equipment.

sending the blades out for ht to start isnt a bad idea, but i dont think it would take too long to be able to ht 1080 or 1084 yourself.