What Is Ice Tempering?
The word “ice” is so popular that a lot of regular carbon steel shears proclaim to be Ice Tempered, which does not make any sense technically. The important thing to remember is that ice tempering is only beneficial on stainless steel. In a simplified form, stainless steel is regular steel with chromium added to make the steel more rust resistant, thus “stainless” steel. The disadvantage of the high content of chromium in stainless steel is that the cutting edges dull quicker. To overcome this, the steel is subjected to very low temperatures (frozen or “ice tempered”), to optimize the steel structure for hardness. To make steel hard, it has to be heat treated. To preserve this structure, the steel is cooled rapidly (quenched) and tempered at about 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Now you have a pretty good hardness and flexibility on your tool except that the chromium in the steel will not permit a long lasting cutting edge. To make the cutting edge last longer, the steel is subjected to about
