heat treating your own steel for gongs?

[EXPRESS]

Before anyone suggest just buying some good quality steel, or gongs I have to point out that where I live it is very difficult to get these materials and shipping gongs from the US is not even thinkable.

Last week I sent out 30 odd email to steel suppliers and the like to get 1 reply, who asked for more details then never got back to me. Frustrating.

So, I got to thinking, could it be that hard to get a half decent temper on some of the mild steel that is widely available here?

I have a large furnace and a wood fired oven that can both provide plenty of fairly stable heat, surely the worst that could happen is that a gong is too brittle and cracks??

 

[jcvibby]

I can ship 20 lbs of steel for $35 USPS priority international.

Making steel harder is actually very difficult. It needs to be right at the correct heat for the exact time and then liquid cools right away and then heated to another temp for a correct amount of time and then air cool. Would be pretty tough.

 

[EXPRESS]

You have a PM!