I do appreciate the thoughts Mike, and through this thread.
I picked up on your comment about the charcoal being a good insulator. A common observable practice is that during the quench, many build in some sort of delay between the oven and releasing the parts into the water. Often one can see that the the crucible is subtly losing heat by changing color.
Theres got to be many variables related to the size and thickness of the crucible and the volume/physical thickness of the charcoal layer around and between the parts. Even the oven soak and temperature stabilizing must vary between equipment and users.
Do you have any thoughts on if the apparent drop in temperature of the crucible during a delay in quench translates to some lesser temperature of the parts than the last stabilized oven temperature? Ive always been curious if there was any intention to have variable temperature across a single part, say slight cooling affects thinner areas with less mass first, with the possible hope of affecting color and distribution?
I know your time is valuable, I do appreciate your thoughts, Craig
