[TheForge] First hammer heat treat foolishness....

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Wiser than i will answer, but in the meanwhile...
The file will tell when all the rest is variable..alloys vary from Mfg to mfg.
Personally, i like the hammer eye softer than a yellow temper..
not terribly important if the whole hammer isn't too brittle
If the center of the face is hard, that's hard enough.
I try for a very pale yellow temper on robust impact tools ( like a hammer) ..but that varies with the alloy and mass of the tool.
Dark straw is rather soft for my taste....But good to preserve a properly hardened anvil face.
Used deep fry oil is often cheap or free, works well and can be returned when it begins to stink.
Plenty of oil volume is desirable  for quenching, along with a tight lid to quell flash fires.
Motor oil, while traditional, almost, is nasty stuff...a last resort.


On May 16, 2014, at 2:10 PM, Mike S. via TheForge wrote:

Learned a few things about an oil quench…
First and foremost is that I need more oil!
A gallon is not nearly enough for a hammer head, I’ve done acceptable harden/temper treatments on knives and punches with just a large soup can of motor oil or ATF.
A 3 lb rounding hammer, not a chance.
The oil (motor) boiled up to the rim and the bucket got well over 100 degrees.  Hammer head was too warm to touch after the second quench of the second face, but OK to hold in hand with the rag I was wiping the oil off with. It took not quite an hour sitting on the anvil to cool to the touch.  The faces are hard, but a file will bite at the eye.  Going to grind and polish the faces this weekend and once I get enough oil,  seeif a MAAP torch in the eye will transfer the heat needed to bring the faces to dark straw color.

A couple of questions.

How much oil is generally needed to quench a hammer, 3 gallons? 5 gallons? Heading to the ArmyNavy store to look for an ammo box to hold it, and

With 3 lbs of 4140, is an oven temper at 400 or 425 for a few hours a workable solution to tempering this hammer?

I’ve also got a burnout furnace, used for firing small scale ceramics that bottoms out at about 400 and will sit at 800 or 900 degrees pretty consistently.

Considering how long it took the hammer head to cool down, could the residual heat in the steel have effectively tempered the faces? (Long shot, I know)

Thank you,

Michael
                       

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