Heat treating services for HSS

[benjam...@gmail.com]

Hello everyone,

When I used to be an employee at Superior Die Set Corporation, my supervisors knew that I was a budding hobby machinist and as such they were kind enough to give me the opportunity to frequently pick through crashed/ruined tooling. Originally, my plan was to recycle the morse taper shanks of bent HSS drill bits and grind them square to make lathe tool blanks. Little did I know that the shank on older HSS drill bits are often left annealed. Does anyone know any places where I can get these chunks of steel hardened, or have the ability to do so? Ideally, I would like to find a place that doesn't have a minimum order charge, though I know that most do. Its about 13.6 oz of HSS. Yes, I know that it would be much more efficient to just buy HSS blanks from McMaster, but my frustration from learning that the shanks are not hardened HSS has sort of made me determined to make this work. Anyone able to help out?

[Vito Gervasi]

Maybe service heat treating.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 20, 2025, at 2:02 PM, benjam...@gmail.com <benjam...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

When I used to be an employee at Superior Die Set Corporation, my supervisors knew that I was a budding hobby machinist and as such they were kind enough to give me the opportunity to frequently pick through crashed/ruined tooling. Originally, my plan was to recycle the morse taper shanks of bent HSS drill bits and grind them square to make lathe tool blanks. Little did I know that the shank on older HSS drill bits are often left annealed. Does anyone know any places where I can get these chunks of steel hardened, or have the ability to do so? Ideally, I would like to find a place that doesn't have a minimum order charge, though I know that most do. Its about 13.6 oz of HSS. Yes, I know that it would be much more efficient to just buy HSS blanks from McMaster, but my frustration from learning that the shanks are not hardened HSS has sort of made me determined to make this work. Anyone able to help out?

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[Eric Berna]

The term High Speed Steel covers many iron alloys. To get the best performance out of a particular HSS alloy requires a specific hardening process. Since you don’t know which HSS these parts are, all anybody can do is try the general process of heating it red hot, quenching it, and then tempering it. We can do this at the Norwich location, in the forge shop. We have gas and coal burning forges, and water and oil quenching tanks. You can learn to do it yourself, and experiment with different temperatures, quenching methods, and tempering to find the best way you can harden these parts. 

Eric Berna

On Jun 20, 2025, at 2:02 PM, benjam...@gmail.com <benjam...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

When I used to be an employee at Superior Die Set Corporation, my supervisors knew that I was a budding hobby machinist and as such they were kind enough to give me the opportunity to frequently pick through crashed/ruined tooling. Originally, my plan was to recycle the morse taper shanks of bent HSS drill bits and grind them square to make lathe tool blanks. Little did I know that the shank on older HSS drill bits are often left annealed. Does anyone know any places where I can get these chunks of steel hardened, or have the ability to do so? Ideally, I would like to find a place that doesn't have a minimum order charge, though I know that most do. Its about 13.6 oz of HSS. Yes, I know that it would be much more efficient to just buy HSS blanks from McMaster, but my frustration from learning that the shanks are not hardened HSS has sort of made me determined to make this work. Anyone able to help out?

--

[benjam...@gmail.com]

Yeah I took a look at their website. I'll reach out and see if they can help.

[benjam...@gmail.com]

I should probably clarify; I am not 100% certain what alloy they are, but I am fairly confident it is M2 steel, as its the most common high speed steel out there. Hardening HSS is different from hardening a tool steel like O1 or A2. For M2, it needs to be slowly heated to 1550 degrees F at a rate no faster than 400 deg. F per hour, and then soaked at that temperature. after soaking, it needs to be rapidly heated up to 2200-2250 F, and then soaked at that temperature for anywhere from 1 minute to 15 minutes depending on the size of the tool. It then needs to be quenched in oil, molten salt, or molten lead. Oil hardening is preferred. For oil hardening, it should be immersed until it is around 900 degrees F, then air cooled until it is 125-150 F. Tempering is supposed to be done immediately after quenching, M2 tempers at a temperature of 1025-1050 F, and must be held at that temperature for 2 hours. Double tempering is required as well.