HEAT TREATMENT.
The heat treatment of tool steels is of the utmost importance. Tool makers of the old school proved their ability to accomplish certain desired results in the art of heat treatment without really fully understanding exactly how or why they were able to do so. Today, however, progressive manufacturers are using the results of research and such thorough scientific investigation that the process has become far more complicated and complex, and the results obtained are correspondingly more remarkable.
Chemically perfect steel may be easily and completely ruined during the process of melting, cogging, rolling, hammering, annealing, heat treating and tempering. It is the business of the steel manufacturer to carefully guard his product up through the process of annealing, but it usually falls to the tool maker to undertake the delicate operations of heat treatment and tempering.