"Harold & Susan Vordos" wrote in message
...
That is one method for case hardening, packing in carbon being another.
Coked peach pits were the carbon of choice for pack hardening where I
worked as a young man.

Must be because of the cyanides...

BTW... what kind of temps and soak times are required to get how much case
thickness? I tried case-hardening a bit of keystock (galv. mild CRS) the
other week by cycles of heating it (the thin layer of galv. oxidized/burnt
off) to orange and dipping in powdered oak charcoal for a few minutes. Also
tried coating it with borax and dipping that in the carbon. (As sticky as
borax is, it doesn't seem to do much with powders. Bah!)

Afterwards I quenched it and it seemed harder, maybe up to a 1030-1040 range
I guess, Idunno... Spark test didn't show much, although I shouldn't be
expecting it to, eh?

Tim

--
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