Tempering, Heat Treating, Cryo-Treating 5160?

Greetings all -

I'm busy forging away, and having a great time. I'm currently using only 5160, and making mainly camp and hunter-style knives, will post when I figure out how to polish the center of a blade on a grinder. I keep getting big scratches... drives me nuts! (I'm using a cheapie 1x30 Delta, so that might be a large part of the problem...)

I haven't found info on the proper tempering techniques for 5160. I heat past critical, edge quench 3 times in heated vegetable oil... then what? The file test shows that they're hard where they should be, and soft everywhere else... and they don't chip when dropped on the concrete floor. (Not that I meant to, but hey...) I haven't been too happy with their edge-holding abilities, but that's probably more of a function of my lack of sharpening-skills...

I can heat-treat in my kitchen oven, cryo-treat at work... anyone want to tell me where to go with this?

Thanks.

Nathan

Start on Ed Caffrey's web page--he has a great article on making an ABS test blade from 5160 that includes all heat treating and tempering information. From there, you might post something on his forum.

John