Case hardening using sugar

Everything containing carbon can be used. Weed, horn, leather, charcoal are traditional ingredients.

Extra vergine? :-)

Kasenite is the classical method. Not stone old, but quite old. It has the advantage of being faster compared to sugar (later not tried out yet).

BTW: The more traditional and "real" casehardening in the oven is happening in a box (thus casehardening) and takes hours. Kasenite is much quicker and is not for casehardening, it would eat up the heating-elements in an electrical furnace.

Thanks for the links!

Nick

maximum.

In WW2 prisoners of war were known to case harden mild steel (for making wire cutters for cutting barbed wire) using sugar as the carbon source, and a spirit flame and blowpipe as a heat source, with the spirit being distilled fermented potatoes !

AWEM

that my memory wasn't playing tricks on me:

Ahh vodka is there anything it wont do =)

Make Hillarity look like a thoughtful intelligent babe?

ISTR that at some point in medieval China? Japan? the "best" swords were said to be those quenched by plunging them into the bodies of prisoners/criminals. Presumably part of the mystique of the craft guilds. Nothing new about urban myths?

On 18 Mar 2007 12:43:51 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, "Brent" quickly quoth:

Uh, sober you up?

-- Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.

Joe

Any source of carbon will work, case hardening is just producing a very high carbon steel on the surface of the metal. My grandfather grew up as a blacksmith and used molten sodium cyanide (well ventilated). Rule of thumb was 1/32" per minute. Pretty cool for a 10 year old to watch. Scared hell out of my dad when he found out, but he wasn't much into metal work.

Jim

Nick's talking about pack hardening----a process that can yield a hardened depth of up to .090", given enough time in the oven at the proper temperature.

Harold

Originally, but then it went rancid and the Wife threw it out.

I have collected all the old vegetable oil in the house, and it turns out that new corn oil costs less than real quenching oil or spindle oil. Peanut oil is best because it has the highest flash point.

I've read that in the old days, real machinists smelled of rancid lard oil.

I've read lots about the box method, which has to be millennia old, and when I get a furnace that would be the method of choice. In the meantime, it's all torch all the time.

Joe Gwinn

I think you need to get more dictionaries. This is a very old term, and should have had time to diffuse into dictionaries.

Your English is good enough that an English technical dictionary would work, versus a German-English dictionary.

These are all methods to achieve case hardening, where a surface layer is made much harder than the inside of the iron object in question. Case hardening always involves diffusing carbon into the surface from some nearby carbon-rich substance.

Carbonizing is the process of adding carbon to the surface.

In pack hardening, the iron object is put in an airtight box (made of metal, or of pottery) in a packed bed of powdered charcoal or bone ash or coke or whatever, and the sealed box is held at a red heat for an hour or two, the depth of the resulting case depending on time and temperature.

Another method is immersion of the iron object in molten salts containing some mixture of carbon and nitrogen. The classic is the cyanide bath.

Then there are the coat-and-heat methods, such as with sugar or Kasenite.

Joe Gwinn

Actually, cottonseed oil has a higher smoke point and a higher flash point than peanut oil. I use the oil out of my turkey fryer, cottonseed oil. The shop smells like fried chicken after quenching operations. Might be some schmaltz (sp?) in the pot as well.

Bacon drippings are used for threading on the lathe, eh? Tom

Works great with Kasenite. Also it has the advantage that you can select where you want the part to get hard. Could be done with case hardening to: Case harden it (without quenching) and turn/mill off that part that doesn't have to become hard. Of course you start with a bigger part. :-) Then harden and temper. Has been done that way a zillion of times.

Nick

It's a technical dictionary for machinery. Getting more and more disappointed from it. I should have bought the two-volume dictionary that would have cost more than 200.- EUR **shrug**

Sooner or later, I'll buy the Moltrecht (SP?).

Ah, so case hardening doesn't describe (precisely) how it is done, contrary to box hardening. Should I understand the "case" means the carbon-enriched area and not a case to put something in?

So I meant box hardening.

Thanks, Nick

And the old mountan man method of rehardening a flintlock frizzen("hammer" for you Brits), wrapping the part in leather and clay and heating it up in a fire, then quenching same in cold water. Just about any carbonaceous material will do, saw one writeup for doing color case hardening with flower pots and bean charcoal. Sounded kind of stinky, but I guess it worked.

Stan

Nope, lard oil. Google on same. You can still get it if you look hard enough. Pressed from lard, has nothing to do with bacon(except it comes from the same sort of critter).

Stan

As you suggest, a quick dunk in Kasenit will only provide a very superficial case, barely worth the effort. The instructions that come with the product provide up to 1 hour at 1600-1800 degrees. When I need maximum case depth I usually run the batch at 1 hour at 1650 degrees in an electric heat treat furnace.

I've used Kasenit for casehardening in an electric heat treat oven for years, I fail to see the problem.

Old timers used the dangerous caster bean oil - kills people but the arsenic like what is in Kasenit works just fine.

Martin Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Life; NRA LOH & Endowment Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot"s Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.

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