How To Heat Treat A Knife | The 4 Steps You NEED To Know

Knife Making – How To Heat Treat A Knife | Super Simple DIY heat treating. The 4 steps you NEED to know. More info below⬇️

Beginner knife making steel video. What steel I recommend⬇️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGml3gjDhek

Heat treating simplified! In this video I show you how to heat treat a knife the easy way. I give you 4 steps to heat treating, which include : Normalizing, heating, quenching and tempering your diy knife.

Heat treating is an exact science. However you can heat treat simple carbon steels using relatively crude methods. Simple carbon for knife making can include 1050,1060,1075,1080,1084,1095,5160 and others. However each of these particular steels have their own variations in both normalizing,quencing, and tempering temperatures.
Some of these steels require soaking time at the austenitize temperature in order for the carbon to “diffuse” through the iron.
This is why I wouldn’t recommend 1095 or o1 as a beginner knife making steel. As soaking time at temperature is required in order for the carbon to get fully into solution before quenching.
Yes, you can use these steels (1095, O1 ect.) and get a hardened blade using a forge, if you know what your doing, or get lucky. But, realize that you will most likely will get better results using a simpler steel like 1080 or 1084 that doesn’t require a soaking at temperature.
A 1080 steel blade will most likely Harden all the way through using crude methods where 1095 or O1 may not.
Remember this is an exact science. If you have any more questions about temperatures for a particular steel please google “Time temperature transformation graph” for the particular steel you plan on using.
Stay away from forums for info on heat treating. There is helpful info on forums if you already know how to sift through the mess of bad info. Quenching in motor oil, mixed with ice, heated to 180F, under a pale moon light, or any other home recipe, is generally a bad idea, and wont give you the full benefits of your particular steel.
Steel manufactures spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars finding out EXACTLY what works on their particular steel, with their particular ingredients. Always refer to their info for questions regarding temperature and quench.
This video is for the back yard knife maker looking to simply heat treat their knife using crude methods. Realize I can’t go into every aspect of every steel in a single youtube video. AGAIN😉, this is a simple video explaining how to Harden/ heat treat a simple knife.
If you have any questions please ask! However, If you have different
“opinions” thats fine too, but I will most likely refer you to Time temperature graphs from the a steel manufactures website. And their recommendations for their steel.
Hopefully this helps! Thank you for watching and hope you have a great day!

About⬇️
Hi, Im Alex, im a knife maker and YouTuber, based out of southern Pennsylvania and my youtube channel is Outdoors55. This channel started as an outdoor backpacking channel, but quickly grew into a knife/ knife making channel. Everything I do on my channel is family friendly. I primarily focus on knife / knife making videos but occasionally throw in something different. Thank you for watching!😀