prop treating

[bob horowitz]

Guys,
I don't think nitriding is the way to go. It is only a surface treatment, only about .005" deep. 17-4 is a heat treatable steel. It is what they call precipitation hardening. If you heat treat it at about 900* F for about 2.5 hours you can get a Rockwell C of about 46 or 47. I work for a dental instrument company and we use it all the time. If you want to try it out, I will put it in with one of our batches and do it for you. We have an inert atmosphere furnace so there won't be any scale, only a little discoloration. Let me know, there won't be any charge, you just might have to wait a bit until we run some.
Regards,
Bob

[CraigP]

Going full hard makes the most sense. Very generous offer Bob. 17-4 is a relatively low temp heat treatment and the quench cycle isn’t too fussy, so the risk to the prop is low. You might want to take that offer Gary.

[bob horowitz]

Craig,
With 17-4 and other precipitation hardening steels there is no quench. It's just a soak at the proper temp.

[ray schrauwen]

Is that a Jae 21 Rigger?

I must say we always go back to using the original Octura and Prather props . i am using an Octura on a p limited rigger as it works better than an ABC prop.

[ray schrauwen]

Steve Reesor used to just use a propane torch on a ceramic turntable to get it to the right shade of orange/yellow and then into his oven on a cleaning 600F cycle for so long. Worked fairly well for him and he was near impossible to catch before his eyes went bad and got out of it.

[CraigP]

Craig,
With 17-4 and other precipitation hardening steels there is no quench. It's just a soak at the proper temp.

At a tooling machine shop I worked at, we still considered it a quench, or returning the metal to room temp. We did 17-4 blades to cut rubber parts. I can’t remember the exact recipe, but we had the heat treat oven programmed with a temp controller and a cooling channel that dropped the temp from something around 1000 degrees to room in 6 hours or so. The oven followed a heat profile. We also had oil and water quench for high carbon steels, going full hard, around 63C Rockwell.

[rol243]

Yes Ray, motor is a low 1500 kv on 4s . but the other high kv jae,s like the ABC,s.

[Gary]

Guys,
I don't think nitriding is the way to go. It is only a surface treatment, only about .005" deep. 17-4 is a heat treatable steel. It is what they call precipitation hardening. If you heat treat it at about 900* F for about 2.5 hours you can get a Rockwell C of about 46 or 47. I work for a dental instrument company and we use it all the time. If you want to try it out, I will put it in with one of our batches and do it for you. We have an inert atmosphere furnace so there won't be any scale, only a little discoloration. Let me know, there won't be any charge, you just might have to wait a bit until we run some.
Regards,
Bob

Thanks for the offer. If I don't do anything before tour ready I will send some to you. Thanks.

[Shooter]

Well Bodycote just quoted me $450.00 to do the props {3} that I have. Ummmmm...I don't think so. I will just keep a few in stock this year . LOL

Cripes! That is way more than they charged us to do a sample run. I think it was around $75. Maybe because they were already running something else? Bummer.

[bob horowitz]

Thanks for the offer. If I don't do anything before tour ready I will send some to you. Thanks.

Gary,
No problem. I'd be glad to do it for you. I would just do one to make sure it works okay. I am assuming they are cast, and that can get hinkly sometimes. At 900* it shouldn't be a problem, but I would want to do a test.
Bob