Heat Treating 440c Stainless Steel Knife

Stresses created in hand forging 440c are destructive and permanent.
Heat treating 440c stainless steel knife. Everything i ve been able to pull up on various websites about heat treating 440c is conflicting. 440c is mid range that used to be a high end stainless steel that offers great corrosion resistance and great wear resistance and will take a great mirror polish so the answer is yes it s a good steel for knives but it has low toughness. This grade is magnetic at all times. Remove the blade from the.
The excellent wear and resistant qualities of 440 c steel make it the natural choice of knifemakers. Some say oil quench some say air hardening some say you can do either which i didnt think was possible but ive been wrong before and some on either sides of those spectrums talk about a cryo cycle after hardening. 440 c is a high carbon chromium stainless that resists corrosion from fresh water steam crude oil gasoline stains from food acids and fruit. Hot rolled and annealed typical chemistryc 1 00 mn 45 si 30 cr 17 00.
440c is a hardenable chromium steel. Decarburization is the number one reason for bad heat treating results. It has one of the highest attainable hardnesses of the corrosion and heat resisting grades. Therefore i wouldn t recommend it for hard usage a boning knife for example it would be a great knife for the wet environment fishing knife or kitchen knife and it holds an edge for long which is great for an edc knife carry.
Place it into the oven and heat slowly to between 1 400 and 1 450 degrees fahrenheit. I hope this helps others who are trying to heat treat their stainless knifes. The method we use to heat treat 440c ss knife blades. This can also be done wit.
How to heat treat 440 stainless step 1.