Hello All,

 

Yesterday I decided to start work on a knife as a gift to the guy at the pawn shop that gives me killer deals on old chisels and files. I have the 6" ruler for scale and the left over of the donor chisel. The chisel started 6" long and about 1/2 an inch thick. The spine of the blade is now about 1/8 of an inch thick. after normalizing it I did a water quench and the blade developed a slight bow in it. Would I do better with an oil quench?

 

Thanks for all the info that IFI has provided.

 

nite.

 

 

By bow do you mean the arch back towards the spine? If so, that's because the spine is thicker and draws the blade back in the quench and one method used by some Japanese sword smiths to curve swords.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

Oil is a safer quench. I am thinking that the bow is sideways to the blade, you may have moved the blade sideways as you quenched thus cooling one side faster than the other also it sounds like you have the blade pretty thin before the quench leaving it a bit thicker will help to keep things straight. I have this same problem as I want my blades thin (I am not making pry bars), I also tend to forge to close to finished size then when I have ground off the scale I am to thin.

Frosty, 

 

The bow is on the flat of the blade and Metalmangeler seems to have had the same issue. The spine is so thin that when I quenched the blade I caused the bow. If you have ever seen anyone play a saw for music that is what I am looking at by to a much lesser extent. 

Gotcha, I think of that direction of movement as warping. Bear in mind I'm not a blade guy so My terminology and opinions are mine and FWIW. Mark does make blades so his opinion is educated to the craft.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

I re-hardened the blade with oil, as recommended, and that did the trick. I the handle is oak flooring and linseed oil. The small chunk is the rest of the 6" chisel that the blade came from.