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Quench. I used peanut oil. Note to self, next time check to ensure quench container is deep enough to accommodate the entire tool! Even with this fairly major blooper on my part, the steel seems to have hardened fairly evenly. (It did go in deeper than it appears in this picture.)
Temper. I used the household oven at 550 degrees, and left it in for about an hour. I chose this temperature because it is supposed to yield a hardness that’s about the same as the quality saws I know of. Shouldn’t be (and wasn’t) too hard to file.
The teeth look pretty dismal after the heat treatment. Can there be any hope?
Like a phoenix emerging from the ashes…
With teeth filed and sharp, there’s still a little more cleanup, or you can skip that if you prefer to leave the oxide coating formed during heat treating. I chose the cleaned up look:
Now all that’s left to do is to fashion a handle—using your favorite wood, shape, and method—and join it to the blade. Voila! It’s an edge float. Here’s mine.
A couple of notes in closing. First, if it isn’t already obvious, a 3/16” thick edge float is much more substantial than one that’s 1/8” thick:
Second, I did go back to my first float and heat treat it. It may just be my imagination, but subjective evaluation of the annealed vs. heat treated teeth is that the latter seem to be sharper. The side-by side picture above was taken after heat treatment. Well, that’s it. I hope this has been of some help. Please keep in mind that I’m no expert on float making. If you haven’t made a float yet, at this writing you’re only two behind me. And again, I heartily recommend that you get Todd’s video. It will provide far more information than I’ve shared here.
Chuck Myers
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