One of the most beloved summer time activities is spending time at the lake. When you are enjoying a cruise around the lake, you probably don’t think about how your boat was made or the role that heat treating played. As a continuation of our series on how heat treating plays a role in nearly everything we do, we would like to focus on how it contributes to your day at the lake.

A large portion of the metal on certain boats is aluminum. Aluminum is commonly used because it is light weight, malleable, and durable. Aluminum is used for parts such as hulls, deckhouses and railings. These aluminum pieces were formed and strengthened through a manufacturing process using various heat-treating applications such as annealing, solution treating, hardening, stress relieving and tempering.

If you look inside your boat’s engine you would see components that were manufactured with a die casting process. The die casting process takes metal ingots and loads them into a melting and holding furnace. The melting furnace turns the ingots into molten metal that is poured into a cast to create the part. The cast is then cooled and goes through additional heat treatment processes such as solution treating, annealing or hardening to set the metal’s properties to the required strength and hardness.

As you park your boat on the lake to soak in some rays, the anchor that you toss into the water was also manufactured using a die casting process. When you climb up the ladder after a dip in the lake remember that may also be made from aluminum which was heat treated in a furnace prior to being installed on your boat.

These processes and many more allow your lake adventures to carry on through the summer and for many years in the future. You don’t always think about the different ways heat effects our lives but we hope with this series it’s becoming more and more clear. Stay tuned for next month when we talk about heat treating and sports!