How To Heat Treat / Temper Hand Tools & More!

welcome back in today's video I'm going to show you how you can heat treat your hand tools for maximum durability using the method outlined in this video this can also be used for Center punches twist drills knives Reimers and other tools as well the heat treatment process is two steps the first one is to harden the steel and the second one is to temper the steel now when you harden the steel what happens the steel becomes extremely extremely hard but it also becomes very brittle now in the case of the screwdriver tip this could have broken off due to excessive torque or the tool was not correctly he treated resulting in the steel being much more brittle and it should have been so we want to do is ensure that the tools have the right temper so that the edge is very strong but not brittle and all these edges here on the scraper and the chisel you want them to be very hard as well and you also want that edge to retain the nice sharp edge that you're going to create using a new file or a whetstone the first thing I'm going to do is show you the supplies that you're going to need to get this job done after I do that I'm going to demonstrate using two or three of these tools that you see right here okay you're going to need cold water to quench the steel some people like to use motor oil but I prefer cold water you're going to need a propane torch a mill file grinding stone or sharpening stone a small piece of 220 grit abrasive paper and a strong magnet in this case I stuck a neodymium magnet on each end to make it even stronger and what we're going to use that for after I read ress the tip of the screwdriver I'm going to be filing this and grinding this into the new shape so it's not busted off when you heat this to harden it you want to make sure that it's glowing red-hot really really bright and when you do that what's going to happen when you have it at the right temperature the steel is no longer going to be magnetic so if you want to make sure you're at the right temperature for hardening what you're going to do is once it's glowing red-hot touch this make sure it does not stick or have any attraction to the steel once it has no attraction to the steel you're going to take the screwdriver and quickly dip it into the cold water to quench it once that steps complete I'm going to show you the tempering process next the first thing I'm going to do is take my mill file I'm going to clean up the end of the screwdriver and I'm also going to bring it over to my bench grinder and using the grinding stone I'm going to put a nice new edge on the screwdriver and the reason why I want to do that now is because once this is hardened after the first step it's going to be extremely hard and when you take the file it's going to want to skate right off of the screwdriver so it's a good idea to do this first or you could also wait till after the tempering process to dress it up but what I'm going to do now is clean this tip up come right back and go on to the next step using the bench grinder and the file you can see the tip of the screwdriver is nice again no longer snapped off now if you have a screwdriver that only the tip got damaged just a little bit maybe like a little chip on it you don't have to heat treat the tool all over again but what you can do is you could place this against the bench grinder and very carefully make the edge nice and straight again you do not want to push this against a grinding wheel long enough to make it become hot if you do that you're going to damage the temper of the blade of the screwdriver so the best way to do it you're going to take the screwdriver tip place it against the grinding wheel for no more than two seconds take the tip quench it in room-temperature water then you're going to repeat the process again until the tip is nice and straight and by doing that you're not going to damage the temper of the screwdriver tip now I'm going to turn on the propane torch we're going to heat up this much of the end of the screwdriver you see some color changes those colors are going to be very important when I go to temper the tool after the hardness going to take a while to large screwdriver and I'm working in the light so it may not be as visible when it starts to glow okay let me take the magnet make sure it's no longer magnetic nothing all right nothing up top let's heat it up again and then I'm going to quench it in the cold water grab the water hopefully to see it okay now that this is cool the next thing you want to do is you want to take the 220 abrasive paper and you want to clean up the blade of the screwdriver to make sure all this carbon and discoloration has been removed because when we go to temperate we have to observe the oxidation that occurs on the surface of the metal because that's what's going to determine the temperature at which we're going to dunk this into the water once again so let me clean this come right back and go on to the next step okay as you can see the screwdriver is now cleaned up nice and shiny when you saw me heating up the blade to harden the steel you saw all the different color changes that occurred on the blade now those color changes indicate approximately what the temperature is of the steel if you happen to have a tool that does not have a plastic handle such as this chisel if you know you want the temperature to be around 500 degrees Fahrenheit you can even place this in your oven little toaster oven for about 20 minutes take it out with a pair of pliers and then drop the whole thing into cool water in this case we're just going to reheat it again what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the flame in this area I'm not going to place it near the tip and I'm going to hold it further away because I want to gradually heat this up and as its heating you're going to see it start off as a very light straw color and then it's going to go through all the different colors when you see it get past purple into a dark blue color when that reaches the tip that dark blue that's exactly where I'm going to pull it away from the flame and put it in the water to quench it that same dark blue color would be used for Springs and it's a very high temperature probably around 550 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit just a little cooler than that probably around 500 degrees it would be a purple color you would use that to temper Cult rizal's and punches if you had a twist row you wanted to temper the tip of that you would use a light orange color if it was a reamer it would be a dark yellow and all your knives but the cutting edges would be a very low temperature 3 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and all you're going to see is a light straw color before you quench it in the water okay let's finish off the screwdriver by tempering the tip the water is right down here out of the way gradual process you don't want to heat it up red-hot again I see some colors starting now right there see the straw right there it looks like straw there you go right there it's got that yellowish color up see the purple I want to go home further away I want that to move towards the tip once that moves towards the tip see the blue little blue and right there okay you can see that dark blue that's after I quenched it yeah that's the temperature you want for the screwdriver tip after it's been sanded again now let me show you the same thing using the gasket scraper the edge is extremely dull I couldn't cut my finger on this if I tried so I'm going to do put this on the grinder file it come back and they're gonna heat treat it and take a look at the finished product okay the edge of the blade is all sharp again now that's hardened the whole end [Applause] see the end is getting that purple this is very thin that's heating very quickly that's why you always want to heat away from the cutting edge because it's so thin you want to start further in when you temper I'll let the heat move to the edge and you see the straw color then goes to the orange purple blue those are the colors you want to remember for temporary right dancing with coloring draw see little shades so start glowing in a minute this okay that looks pretty good right there to quench here we go alright so that's pretty good on that one okay this is all cleaned off let's temper it all right keep an eye on the color remember I want to have that purplish blue travel to the end I want to keep all the heat away from the tip and they just travel down the line you'll see it see the straw starting right there all right see the straw color just don't go near the tip and we'll see the blue and we'll let the blue move down see the tip is blue and that is it you don't want to go hotter than that dark blue clean this with sandpaper then I could take the tip if I want go over a nice grinding stone and this one's done it's as simple as that I hope you enjoyed this video if you did be sure to rate it a thumbs up subscribe and post links to this video on other websites and blogs also be sure to check out my video playlist as well thank you very much for watching

Channel: electronicsNmore

Views: 370,011

Rating: 4.7941213 out of 5

Keywords: amazing, awesome, heat treat, tempered, steel, tools, torch, heat, knives, how to, electronicsNmore, diy, make, hack, tutorial, Grant Thompson, CrazyRussianHacker, minutephysics, Colinfurze, DaveHax, expertvillage, gaming, phone, insurance, how to easily heat treat steel, how to heat treat steel, how to temper steel, easily heat treat tools, tempering screwdriver tips, step by step, simple, lawyer, pharmaceutical, donate car, genealogy, DVT, COPD, cancer, diabetes, mesothelioma, propane torch, quenching

Id: I9lgwNp7v0E

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2017