Ok to say I am a bit overwhelmed with GREAT responses and information, would be an understatement. Wowsers! I never knew such a post would draw such high interest. Very good though. Lots of great information. I cannot for time constraints this morning respond to all of you, although I would love to. I am gleaning from all however, please know this.
I do have a question for Gottesman. <When you spoke about testing with the file> if I were to test with a file and the file would no longer cut, I would have surpassed the stage conducive to sharpening.YES, you would be at a glassy hard state. It could be sharpened with an abrasive but edge retention and ability to flex would be reduced due to brittleness. I need the tooling to be hardened to an extent but not so much that I could not resharpen. After the tooling has been cooled down and cellular rearrangement has taken place, it will again regain its nature to be attracted to magnets just as strong as before or stronger? To go from glassy to useable, you need to temper it via low slow heating so that it will be hard enough to hold a suitable edge without chipping or bending. So, yes it will be back to it's original magnet attracting self. It is a balancing act with Harder = increased brittleness and Softer = tougher.
I have tempered some tooling in the past with propane and old motor oil quenching and have been pleased with the results. Most all of those tools however were created from screwdrivers whereby I needed a special shaped cut on the ends for blind cutting. I totally understand all of the various compositions of steel on the market and am certain screwdrivers are composed of a fairly decent type, dependent. I have actually heard of using concrete nails and hacksaw blades but they are so brittle, they would definitely have to receive the ol' tempered treatment to make them a little less so. I understand that old sawzall blades make excellent tooling as well and are good for creating cutoff tools for use at the wood lathe, their temper wards off heat really well, that would be brought on by cutting off burly woods and the like.Two things re: Sawsall blades. (1.) make sure they are the same metal throughout as some have just a hard metal edge on the teeth. (2.) The solid steel ones seem to be some variety of HSS (High Speed steel) that retains its' hardness at temps that would soften regular carbon steels.
Hope that answers your questions. My advice is to make a few and see how they preform. Adjust your method as needed.
The micro-tooling I am wanting to make however would not be used at the lathe. I am wanting to make a large batch of various hand carving toolin this go round.
Its just that I do not have time to execute experimenting on a vast array of various metals and procedures, thus the reason for the questions.