stainless heat treat coating

[mwhuston]

I recently came into a ht14d paragon kiln at a reasonable price. Now that i can heat treat my own stainless i'm wondering what others use to prevent scale. I know there is Turco, Brownells, and a few others but what is the most economical? I can use foil too but am wondering what others use, why they use it, and how they use it.

[Bob Hatfield]

I use the stainless steel foil that is rated for 2200 degrees to heat treat my S30V knives. It comes in a 25 foot roll at a cost of around $70.00. I heat treat 2 knife blades at a time in the same foil packet. I cut 10 inches of foil off the roll, fold and double crimp the ends and one side into a packet. Two of my hunting knife blades will fit into the packet.
That works out to 30 packets per roll and 2 blades per packet or a total of 60 blades heat treated per roll of stainless steel foil. Just a few cents over one dollar per blade for the stainless steel foil.

[Ray Rogers]

I feed argon into my Paragon to prevent heavy scale. The result is a light, thin, soft scale. I grind my blades after HT. Doing that removes the thin powdery scale and and surface decarb or slight pitting that might have occurred. It also saves a little time getting to the quench since I don't have to remove any foil (coating the blade would also have that advantage). Argon is cheap and apply it to the furnace requires only a cheap regulator available on eBay. Lots of ways to skin this particular cat ....

[Bob Hatfield]

Ray I do not remove the foil prior to the quench. I remove from oven and place between two alum. quench plates and I can pick up the foil packet in 4-5 minutes and it is down to room temp or lower. I also keep my alum. quench plates in my shop fridge-freezer that really helps the rapid cooling. 95% of my S30V blades come out of heat treatment & tempering at 60RC and every now and then I will get one at 59 or 61RC.
Just have discoloration on the steel blades and no carb buildup. Also by using Alum. quench plates, I have never had a warped blade.

[dtec1]

Foil is best for plate quenching also spray compressed air between plates...

for oil (I use parks 50) I use brownels

[Ray Rogers]

Bob,

Sounds like you method works pretty well. As I said, many ways to skin that kitty ....

[mwhuston]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate your time and insight. It seems that foil is probably the easiest for starters. I have some aluminum quench plates so I'll start with that.

[dtec1]

Yeh the reason I said I use brownells for oil is I think things would slow down dipping in oil with foil still on some guys sware by putting a "catch basket" hanging in the oil and as soon as they pull it out of the oven they cut the packet and let it fall into the oil....well me I am not quick enough cutting the foil especially when your handleing something that is 1900 + deg yeh not me