What is Heat Treating?
Since this FAQ is for the beginning knifemaker, I have written the following in a VERY basic manner to get the point across on heat treating. This includes hardening, tempering and WHY we have to do them. I do not explain anything technical that is going on in the steel, just a laymans way of explaining it so that the point gets across to the new knifemaker. After you understand what it is, you can look up the info on the technical info on your own. Very often people will ask questions about how to temper a blade because they did this or that to it. But being new, they are misusing the terms and getting themselves confused. Therefore, when they ask a question to the more experienced people the answers, although correct, are not really right because the wrong question was asked. This VERY unscientific explanation may help. I am not going to talk about the steel components and how they react, you can get that later in more detail. I just want to help people understand hardening and tempe
