Has anyone tried this stuff?

[Nortonscustom]

It's called Kasenit surface hardening compound. I was talking with a local gunsmith and he swears by the stuff. If it works it might be a cost effective way to harden tools and tooling.

norton

[Wray Schelin]

Hi John,

Case hardening works fine for some applications but not on others. What type of tool were you thinking about hardening?

On Ebay you can buy lots of small drops of tool steel inexpensively for tooling needs.

Wray

[Nortonscustom]

Wray,
I don't have any tool hardening jobs in mind, I was just wondering if anyone had used it before.

norton

[bobadame]

Yup, I've used it a couple of times. Once years ago to make a huge easy out to salvage some kind of valve and recently to surface harden some spherical ball studs that are part of the mechanical fuel injection system on an old BMW tii. The spherical part needed to be hard for wear resistance and the bottoms of these pieces had to be soft enough to swage into a hole. I'm still driving that car. It seems to be holding up. For a hard surface the stuff is great. The hard surface only goes a couple of thousands deep though and I'm not sure how it would hold up to impact.

On a side note, I think this stuff is basicly cast iron powder which has a lot of free carbon. This carbon alloys with the parent metal to create a high carbon surface. So i'm thinking that it might be possible to flame harden cast iron casters that some use on their English wheels. I know this is a common process used for wear resistance on lathe beds. Might be worth a try.

Bob

[Wray Schelin]

Hi John,

Case hardening increases the carbon content of steel at the outer surface , which will make the surface more wear resistant. Shafts are frequently case hardened. Usually the hardened surface depth is only 5 to 10 thousands or so. I've used Kasenit only once. I did it inside my shop-big mistake You need to do it outside because the fumes are extremely nasty. Kasenit works very well, you can do multiple applications to increase the casehardened depth.

Wray

[mr.c]

John: I used a lot of it back when I was a shop teacher. One of my student projects was to make a cross pein hammer. We made them from hot rolled steel bar stock. When they finished their hammer heads, I would place a bunch of them in a gallon can from the school cafeteria with the Kasenite compound and put them in an electric ceramics kiln that was in the shop when I took the job. At the end of the period I would grab each one with tongs and quench them in a bucket of water. The kids loved that part. The resulting case hardening made a serviceable hammer head. I still have some leftover hammer heads that I still use. If a student did a really nice job on their project, I hard chromed it for them.

[Tony Sanchez]

Originally Posted by Nortonscustom

It's called Kasenit surface hardening compound. I was talking with a local gunsmith and he swears by the stuff. If it works it might be a cost effective way to harden tools and tooling.

norton

---John, I make my own dies for my plannishing hammer. I use kasenite to surface harden the dies. Works good.
---Tony.