vetryan15
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I had no experience, but was taught by a knife maker, (learned through his mistakes) who became my mentor. He has 25+ years of experience just working in his backyard. Now i usually just do this with all my knives, no matter the steel. But i tend to just use recycled materials. But i only use cooking oil, but i did all my tempering in the kitchen oven when i lived in NJ. u need to heat up the oil to roughly 125°, using water, and even cold water is asking for a catastrophic failure within the knife. which i just used some scrape steel to heat it up, and keep a thermometer in it. As you quench it, i tend to move the knife around in the oil for about 30 seconds, just because of the chance of cooler spots of oil, and there can be small pockets with possibility of popping oil. I like to make the 'harmon' lines, harder edge, softer spine. I usually dip the knife just to cover the edge, to the tang is submerged in oil, then hold it for 30 seconds. I dont mess with torches. You can do mutiple quenches if you are not happy with it. I wouldnt do more then 3 or 4. But i did have a buddy who with bad luck while he was learning. He had to quench a 10 times. Lol. Due to warping. But i believe the knife is still in service.
Hopefully i was able to help. Its usually easer for me to write out my whole proces. My thought pprocess is pretty out there.
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