Tempering oven

[FOXonthefarm]

Thinking i want to have a go at making my own hardened steel similar to hardox400 for wear plates suitable for mini digger bucket blades and other farming implements.
Erecting a rectangular forge to fill with anthracite then into a vat of cooking oil.

The difficulty in my plans is finding a cost effective solution to the final stage “tempering” i would need an oven 1.2m wide to fit the parts in, and as such so far this seem difficult to find at an affordable level.

Has anyone else gone down this road, your insights would be welcome?

 

[hotponyshoes]

Can't you make a well-insulated forge type hotbox, gas heat it for hardening then make an insertable electric element for the tempering?

 

[BrokenBiker]

what is the cost difference between buying the parts vs going to the vast effort of making your own and then hardening/tempering and potentially ending up with less repeatable results?

 

[Memmeddu]

what is the cost difference between buying the parts vs going to the vast effort of making your own and then hardening/tempering and potentially ending up with less repeatable results?

That's a fair point.
Especially with such big parts it's pretty hard, if we add the gas forge to the equation....
It's even harder to get consistent controlled heat through the metal and even hardening it's a challenge cause you are moving big hot ( I mean really hot incandescent hot) bits of heavy steel and when you quench them it'll just vaporize the water oil or kerosene or whatever other quenching fluid.
Leidenfrost effect will just insulate the bit of steel from the fluid, that's why you have to move it while quenching.
And it's not going going to be easy at all.
It's very impractical in my opinion, extremely dangerous, it's likely to send someone to the hospital with serious burns and potentially destroy the shop.

 

[Kram]

Your over thinking it, hardening is the hard part, hence the name. Harden, quench, then put the parts to one side. When your forge has cooled back down to 200-230c, stick them back in.

 

[Kram]

However back to the opening post, hardox is high alloyed with plenty of chrome. You will not get anything close to the same results by hardening a plain carbon steel. You'll get better results by welding hardfacing rods.