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[Bruce in Texas]

As you may know, A2 is an Air Hardening variety. Brake diesets would require quite a large furnace, not to mention the power requirements. I'd recommend having them processed by a vendor. Usually there is a job queue that will have room for yours to run at shop's minimum charge.

My press brake is a manual one, which derives it's stroke from a 20 ton hydraulic jack. The blade (top die) is 5/8" material, which is 12" long and 4" wide. I've run into a problem bending flat stock into C sections because of the mounting brackets, so I want to make another blade that will be 5.5" wide. I also want to machine bottom dies to make other than 90 degree bends. Paragon has a furnace, costing about $1,400 that will heat treat all of these items. To purchase just one bottom die I was quoted a price of $2,500.