If you have a balcony and work with simple carbon steels (1084, O1), as well as do midsize knives in the 4 inch blade range, you might be able to get away with a coffee can forge powered by a propane torch for heat treatment. No more dangerous that having a small grill doing things that way, its how I heat treated my first few blades. You could also look into buying/building a small electric furnace, though that's both expensive and overkill for one or two blades.
Honestly though, if you're only making 1 or 2 blades at a time, sending them out for hardening is probably easiest. The cost is reasonable, I paid $30 for 2 AEB-L blades to be heat treated and cryod with Texas Knifemakers service, and turnaround time was about a week.
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