3V heat treatment

[dcv]

I could do with a little help, I am wanting to take a major step in my knife making ''career'' and move on from using the simple carbon steels to using 3V, I have the steel, oven, foil and the crucible spec sheet. What I would like to know is ''real'' world expiriences of heat treating this steel, I was hoping that I may be able to use what I have heard refered to as a pressure quench, which I understand to be placing the heated steel between two thick aluminium plates... a question that springs to mind is should these plates be hot,cold or room temp?

Any advise would be appreciated and before anyone suggests Paul Boss, I live in the UK... bes##es it's got to more fun learning to do it yourself?

thank you

[Jerry Hossom]

I think the quench plates are fine at room temp; their purpose is simply to heat sink the blade to below 1000F as fast as possible without removing the foil wrap (some continue to quench them to below 400F). If you are doing a number of blades you may need some way to cool the plates after a blade or two.

Paul Bos uses 1975F for hardening, 8-hour cryogenic quench, and a double temper at 950F to get Rc61 with 3V. That's exactly what was used for the blade I described in the destruction testing on another thread.

[PeterAtwood]

I'm wondering, if you were to follow that schedule but not temper as high, would the end result be more stain resistant? I realize that 3V is not particularly stain resistant but in another thread someone mentioned that if you don't temper ATS34 so high and do it at around 450F you get a much more stain resistant steel but with a slight sacrifice of edge holding. Could something similar happen here?