Books on heat treating?

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SCLead

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I'm burning through my stack of "books to read" rather rapidly lately, so I'm looking for suggestions for good heat treat books.

I tend to buy older, turn of the century/wartime era books regarding machining and general metalworking. Unlike manual machining techniques and tricks, I figure metallurgy has come a rather long way in the last 100 years.

Now, I know less about heat treating than I know about brain surgery. Aside from the "heat it 'til the magnet doesn't stick, then stuff it in oil" trick, I'm clueless. I'm at least relatively certain you have to open a skull to surgerize a brain, so I figure I'm farther ahead there.

With that in mind, are old-timey books worth reading for the fundamentals, which presumably haven't changed *too* much? If so, any titles you'd suggest I keep an eye out for (I'm a sucker for having old books on the shelf, it's about as bad as tool addiction)?

Or, am I best to avoid old books to skip potentially conflicting data? I'd love to get my hands on some ASM handbooks, but I'm afraid they tip the budget a wee bit too far.

While I'm mostly concerned with steels, aluminum processing also interests me. I've slowly been gathering pieces for a small heat treat oven over the last several years, I'd like to turn it in to something useful rather than a one-stop shop that I've essentially got the full baking recipe for my given project, requiring no original thought or knowledge.
 
Kind of a nut about old books myself. Have you looked at suvivorlibrary.com?
Dave
 
Most of the steel manufacturers publish detailed heat treatment procedures for their products. Steel vendors will also publish heat treating information although not as detailed. Blacksmithing books also have that information. Machinery's Handbook has a twenty page section on heat treating steel as well as a ton of other useful information.
 
I hadn't even though to look in machinery's handbook, maybe I'll pull it out this evening. I've got an EMJ catalog a friend just gave me because he got a new one, didn't really think to look through there either.

Blacksmithing...a hobby I've been aggressively avoiding, because I don't need another black hole for my money. :big grin:

I haven't seen survivorlibrary, I'll definitely take a look.
 
"Tool Steel Simplified" is a good read, it was one of our required apprenticeship books, otherwise old books from the 1930s onwards are a good resource, and convey information in an easily understood way.
 
"Heat treatment, selection, and application of tool steels" By William E. Bryson
I like this one!
 
I learned almost all I know about Heat Treating from the Machinery's Handbook.
 
I've begun reading the section in Machinery's Handbook. So far it's three pages of tiny-text dictionary treatment haha. I've got the others added to the shopping list. I appreciate everyone's input!
 
For a modern classic on the topic, try Number 1 of the Workshop Practice Series, Hardening, Tempering and Heat Treatment. Only 124 pages, but well written, with good explanations of what is happening inside the steel.
 
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