The hardening and tempering process of cold rolled steel strips is a major step in the production of band saws. Especially high flatness and high strength in combination with high toughness are major indicators for the band saws quality. Three types of steels, which are commonly used to produce band saws, were selected to investigate the influence of the degree of deformation during cold rolling and heat treatment parameters on hardness and impact toughness. Typical steel grades are C75, 75Cr1 and 75Ni8. A variation in the degree of deformation shows no significant effect on the impact toughness. In the experiments the steels C75 and 75Ni8 had the same hardness but the steel C75 had significant higher impact toughness compared to the 75Ni8. Additional to the material testing, experiments on a hardening and tempering line were conducted to investigate the effects of the degree of deformation during cold rolling and the cooling conditions during martensitic transformation on the strip flatness. Neither the degree of deformation, nor a variation of the cooling conditions seems to have any significant effect on the strip flatness. The result`s show that the cooling line, in which the martensitic transformation takes place, is not the place to influence the flatness.