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I finally learned to heat treat right after a disaster at a ren faire demo
Was at a local ren faire last fall doing a demo on making simple knives. Got a bit too confident and tried to eyeball the quench timing on a scrap piece. Thing came out soft as butter, bent right in front of a crowd of like 15 people. The guy running the turkey leg stand next to me laughed and handed me a magnet. Now I always use one to check temp, never again winging it.
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the_gavin12d ago
That turkey leg guy was probably the most useful person at the whole faire honestly. I've seen way too many demos where people treat heat treating like some kind of mystical secret instead of just checking the damn temperature. What nobody talks about is how much the steel thickness matters for quench timing too. A thin blade loses heat way faster than a thick one, so even with a magnet you gotta account for the cross section. I had a buddy ruin a nice piece of 1095 because he got the magnet temp right but waited two seconds too long before quenching on a thin blade. The magnet trick is good but it's only half the battle unless you factor in the steel's mass and the type of quenchant you're using.
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