Knife Making

Heat treatment for the knife maker

Great knives are more than steel and ornament. They should feel like an extension of the hand. Touch a great knife, and it feels alive. As the knife ages, its spirit remains as vibrant as the day the maker gave the knife to the world. The spirit in their knives lives on long after the master craftsmen who made them.

Test heat treating formulas

Owning a furnace means you can revel in testing different heat treatments for your blades. With a KM-series furnace you can try exotic heat treating methods at your leisure. Does quenching in dry ice improve blade performance? What happens when 52100 steel is triple-quenched with a one-day wait between each quench? After this treatment, will a 52100 blade bend to 90° without chipping? Then straighten the blade, fit a handle and test it in the real world!

With a Paragon furnace in your shop, all questions about heat treating formulas are settled. Heat treating is no longer theory. You find out for yourself what works. Testing and heat treating is at the heart of the knife making adventure. Here is where your confidence as a knife maker takes root. Through heat treating, you can master a tool steel and make it your own.

Experiment with differential hardening, an ancient blade smith technique. Try out the newest tool steels. Are they really as good as the tried and true D2 and A2?

The KM18 knife making furnace goes up to 1287°C, allowing you to experiment widely. The digital controller removes any guesswork. No longer do you need to estimate a temperature by the colour of the heat or steel, instead you just program a temperature. And no longer will you have to adjust a switch to maintain the hold time for case hardening; the controller maintains the hold time for you. You just set the hold time for as long as necessary.