Custom Knives: Quenching the Blade

Video Transcript

"Alright, now the knife is soaked at the temperature that it needs to be. So now we're going to pull it out and quench it. You have to do it quick so it doesn't lose too much temperature. Because you have to get from that threshold of fifteen hundred and twenty-five degrees, down past nine hundred degrees within three seconds or so. So it happens pretty quick. One thing you want to do is when you stick it in the jar, you can swish it around a little bit to agitate it and break up the vapor barrier that builds up around the outside of the knife. Sometimes, when you heat treat your blade, it will come out of the quench tank a little warped, with a little bow in it. As long the blade temperature doesn't drop below four hundred degrees, you can pull it out and it hasn't started to harden yet. You can straighten it out a little bit. It's still malleable. So as long as you quench it, and you pull it back out, it will just have a little bit of smoke coming off of it. That's about the right temperature. You can look at it. It's got a little bit of bend to it. You can straighten it back out by hand. Of course, wear another glove. Straighten it out, and then put it back into the oil until it drops down to about one hundred/one hundred fifty degrees, then pull it out and clean it off."