Going to be cutting a new sear out of mild steel in the next few days. I need some options on hardening the contact surfaces or the whole piece itself. My oven gets to 500 degrees, I do not have a torch and i dont plan on buying one. I have a grill though and i dont mind playing with fire! thanks guys!

Please be specific

Mild steel can only be case hardened which is a lengthy process involving building a steel box and filling it with bone meal and baking it in a furnace at over 1000 degrees for several hours and then the hardness is only about .010 to .020" deep. If you use mild steel, the contact points can be made by building up a surface with a 70 or preferably 80 series welding filler rod. This will be much harder than the surrounding mild steel, but probably not quite as hard as using a high carbon steel blank. If you know someone with access to an acetylene torch, you could find an old leaf spring out of a truck and have them cut you a chunk and anneal it for you. When you are done with all but the final grinding, they could re harden it by bringing it up to a cherry red (or when a magnet stops being attracted to it) and quench it in water. It would need to be tempered after that. You could do that by polishing the side to a high luster and suspending it over your flame until it starts changing color. When it appears to be a yellow straw-like color, it is at it's hardest non brittle stage. Purple will give you spring steel hardness and after that, you start to soften it again. Quench it between straw and purple and you should have a toughened steel. To check hardness the poor man's way, run a file over it's edge. If it just bumps along, it's hard. If it takes shavings, it needs to be hardened and tempered all over again. Good Luck.

i was hoping more along the lines of get it hot and sprinkle fairy dust on it and plunge it into dirty atf. damn.
Errrr i dont have a welder and I dont know anyone with one.

Could i get away with doing just the last couple steps you mentioned?...Like get it cherry, dunk it, then polish and get it purpley-yellow and dunk it again?

the contact surfaces will be wider and cleaner than the crappy tin can sear the quest came with so youd think with some polishing and moly and more load bearing surface area I should be fine?

I've tried that myself. Unfortunately, no. There isn't enough carbon in (mild) or low carbon steel to give it a hardened crystalline structure. That's why some steels are case hardened, hence, wrapping a 'case' of hardened steel around the softer steel. If you try googling blacksmith, or case hardening, you could probably find out how to do it at home. Ultimately, you need a pure carbon to immerse the steel in and it needs to be hot enough to absorb the carbon and then cool. The absorbed carbon forms the case, but also adds a bit of size (.010") to the dimension of the piece being case hardened. It can be done in a clean piece of pipe with screw on caps, but not air tight. Pack bone meal in the bottom, add your part and fill the rest of the way with bone meal. Loosely screw the cap on (to allow the gas to vent) but you don't want oxygen to get back in. Put the contraption in a HOT wood fire and let it burn for a few hours. When it's ready, you unscrew the cap and pour the whole mess into a bucket of water. If it's done right, the part should have a nice gold, blue and red streaked color. It's a lot of work.

gunz.....that was too funny!

damn. fuckin bone meal man? this is 2008! for Bob's sake u sound like a shaman.
I guess im going to have to shoot a lot more grackles off my neighbors porch while hes at work in order to get enough bones for this project.

Ok, since i live in an apartment i dont think that i can shoot enough birds to harvest enough bonemeal. Hmmm. i think im going to borrow onof your ideas fromanother place about using a busted file. anneal, shape, polish, harden, finish, right?

You're killin' me:lol: You can get bone meal at a flower nursery or most places that sell fertilizers. It's the crap left over from slaughter houses. I've been told that peanut butter will make a good carbon base too. The file trick should work. You have to get it very hot. Almost glowing orange and then let it cool very slowly. Don't just pull it out of the flame or it will harden again. After it cools, you should be able to smooth the old teeth off , cut and drill to your specs. Bring your closely finished piece back up to heat (cherry red/non magnetic) and quench it in water. Polish and temper. Check hardness with a file. Should be good to go. Let us know how it works out or at least tell me I'm full of shit :moon:

Shaman

thanks again i will report back in a few days onmy progress or lack thereof....For now i should get off theputer before i get too drunk

My dad showed me, 30 years ago, a way that works very well.
He took a piece of leather and burned it so that it was slightly
charred. He then ground that into a powder which he mixed
with grease into a paste.

Then the part to be case hardened was heated with
a torch and then plunged into the above mixture. I use this
method to harden trigger group components after
geometry changes.