Thanks Bruce. Cool and interesting stuff. Mar-Quenching info on pg. 18-19.

I tend to not spend "too" much effort trying to become highly knowledgable about heat-treating, quenching and so-forth. But, I like to have just enough understanding to ... er ... understand... some.

If or when I ever get to the point where I try to make my own knife, I would most likely not even attempt to heat-treat. I would send any knife I would make to a "Professional" to get professional results and quality.

I can appreciate that some people might want the full experience of making a knife from bar stock. But, to me, if I am not making the bar stock either, so I wouldn't feel like I made everything from the ground up anyway. I wouldn't feel I needed to do the heat-treat and wouldn't need that part of the experience. I would rather have a HIGH quality heat-treat and feel the blade was treated as well as reasonably possible by a professional, then mess up a blade I spent a lot of time on. I have seen people spend MANY hours on a blade and then crack it or not get the most out of a certain type of steel by not doing the heat treat correctly, then their blade breaks, chips or similar after all their efforts.

To become a "Professional" at heat-treating, you really need a LOT of training and experience IMO. LOTS of different steel types = LOTS of different techniques.

.