There seems to be an assumption here that hardening is a requirement for the project. I'd like to play devil's advocate here and ask - Is hardening really necessary? Desirable sure, but necessary??? If this was a tool that was going to get constant daily use in a commercial machine shop I would say definitely yes. But in the home shop where tools get relatively minor use, I think we can get away with not hardening.
I'm just an amateur home shop machinist with not all that many machining hours clocked yet, so I may well be off base on this. What do you more experienced hands have to say about this?
