Heat Treating 1045

[steponmebbbboom]

how do you keep the sides straight like that when youre punching holes in hammerheads?

[rthibeau]

Here's a couple more examples of the tempering colors for a hammer...note there are just traces of purple on the face and pein. The bulge from drifting the eye is reduced by using a flatter on the sides while the drift is still in place.

[Frosty]

Originally Posted by steponmebbbboom

how do you keep the sides straight like that when youre punching holes in hammerheads?

Once we slit and drifted the eyes we forged the sides flat again using the drift in the eye to maintain the shape.

You need to reheat the hammer head and cool the drift before doing this step or they become one.

I tempered mine by heating the drift and putting it in the eye till the colors ran to what I wanted, then quenched. The drift needed to be reheated several times so the tempering heat had a good long soak to do the job.

Frosty

[MooseRidge]

Using a torch into the eye works quite well for bringing up the heat for tempering the face and pein... especially for larger heads....

[FERRARIVS]

Ah, okay, thanks guys- that's the answer then, I just tempered it a bit softer than I should have. I'll give her another go and this time stop at slightly purple edges- thanks much!

Matt

[blksmth]

When I attended the Tom Clark Ozark School of Blacksmithing, Tom and Uri Hofi made many of their style hand and sledge hammers out of new 1045. After forging, they did not normalize. They just brought the hammers up to a low yellow heat and quenched them in a 5 gal. bucket of water. They did not temper them. I have duplicated their process and have produced very good hammers. I find them a little soft if you are hitting hardened steel (some chisels etc.), but they work fine on hot iron and are softer than the faces of my anvils, which is they way they should be.

[matt87]

That's pretty neat. I've read Sims ([i]Iron for the Eagles[i/], where he experiments with unfaced wrought iron hammers. He concludes that for forging hot iron, hammers can be very soft. After all, the anvil and hammer, even if both are wrought iron, are many times harder than the hot iron. He does note that after some time they can mushroom, especially if striking chisels etc.

I've been thinking about making some forging hammers from mild steel; cheaper and easier than a tool steel.

[rthibeau]

I find that tempering hammers a little on the hard side is better than leaving them soft. Depends on you hammer control I guess.

[Frosty]

There are a lot of times you want a soft iron/steel hammer rather than a hardened one.

Using one on struck tools makes a huge difference. The tool has less tendency to mushroom but more importantly it bites into the hammer and gives you much better control of the end results.

Another good place for a soft hammer is over the hardy, even the best miss occasionally and while it's no problem sharpening a hardy it is time spent that could be put to better use.

For general forging I like a good hard hammer with a polished face. They just move metal better.

Frosty