Heat Treating, general discussion

I wanted to make a hammer, similar to the one Brian Brazeal has demonstrated making. I got the shape to my liking and normalized the hammer. As I had put quite a few hours into making it, I wanted to harden it as well as possible. So I heated it to non-magnetic and quenched in oil. It did not harden. I was using spring steel (~50CrV4), that has hardening temperature slightly higher than normal carbon steel. So next time I heated it a tad past non-magnetic. Still not good. One more heat, again slightly hoter than last time, but this time I only heated the two faces. Now the faces hardened alright. BUT, there was a crack on the other end! Any guesses whether the crack wa…

So I have been doing a job using a steel called Allvit or Univit. It has almost pure iron with minuscule amounts of carbon and alloys. I have been using it to do repousse. It does get workhardned eventually and it can tare after a lot of cold working. I was just heating it up to where you can barely see color and putting it in a can with a whole bunch of previously heated leaf blanks to hold the heat. My helper who generally knows more than me about heat treating claims that it needs to be heated to nonmagnetic and allowed to cool slowly but I find this raises too much scale. What I did worked for me. My thought is it has basically no carbon I would think different…

HELLO, I INHERITED SOME STEEL A FEW YEARS AGO AND HAVE BEEN MAKING BLADES FROM IT BUT LATELY I CAN'T SEEM TO ANNEIL THE STUFF. ON THE WRAPER ITS CALLED WARPLESS AND IM ASSUMING ITS O1 IT IS A OIL HARDING STEEL. MY FREIND THAT PASSED WAS A MACHINEST. I USE LIME AS A ANNEILING MEDIUM THOUGH IM READY TO SWITCH TO VERMECULITE AS IT SEEMS THAT MOST PEOPLE USE IT.ANY IDEAS?

I was at the rental yard today and got to talking with the owner. I asked what he does with the bits and he said he just throws them away, so i offered to sharpen and harden them, i figured it may be a bit of extra cash for my hobby! Anyone have experience with this process. I have a general idea, i was gonna bring em up to non-magnetic and quench in oil, and temper to straw, or maybe blue? I'm not sure the exact steel type, and neither is the rental yard owner, i am gonna do a few for him so he can see how they work, and he said he will give me a bunch of stuff to work on. This will be good for me to make a little extra cash for tools. Thanks Brian

OK

Hi guys iam 15 old and i just started blacksmithing iam new here .iam a hacker from albania andi love blacksmithing. i have saw different metods to temper the steel so which is better? using hot steel and parafine or used oil? post your oppinion and your way to temper please thanks .

This might be suited for the tools section, but it's about heat treating tools. Anyway, I just came into possession of a whole whack of hardies (42 in one big bundle for cheap cheap cheap). The only problem is that some of them are in really rough shape (big gouges, rust, pitting etc.). Also, out of all of these, I have not one cutting chisel. So, I have two ideas: 1. Smooth out any ugly bits to make the hardies more usable. 2. Reshape a hardy into a cutting chisel. I have a few bottom blocks like shown here that I was thinking of drawing out into an edge. My questions are: 1. If I do these things, will I have to harden and temper the hardies to make them usabl…

My son collects watches. He has a punch for removing the pins that hold the band links together. The punch has replaceable pins. The pins that came with the punch are brittle and break easily. I tried replacing them with some mild steel ones I made but they bend too easily. I have been trying to make up some from round spring stock. As supplied, it seems too hard and breaks easily...so far my attempts to draw back the temper has been unsuccesful. I either get them too hard (breaks) or too soft (bends). Any suggestions for tempering these small pins? They are only about 1/32 inch in diameter and less than 1 inch long. I seem to remember someone tempering small to…

I have used H13, S5 and S7 for hot work. I have a job coming up where I have to punch a bunch of holes for small hammer eyes. I was wondering if there was any steel or other material with greater red hardness than these steels. The punch will be relatively small so it is more likely to get distorted than a thicker punch and I hope to work fast so I can make time on this. I am really interested in discussing other possible steel options no matter how exotic or even other metals like cobalt or tungsten even if its not totally practical. Not how to make the steels listed above work for my application I already have a working knowledge of these steels.

Hello people!! Happy New Year. I was out digging some post holes today and grabbed a set of diggers left by the previous owners of my land. The diggers bent on the first attempt!! The edges on each blade "curled". It seems to me that they may have been sharpened and overheated in the process. My question is what kind of metal are posthole diggers and shovels made from and how to temper them.

What do the codes on rebar represent? What are the percentages of carbon and maganese? I'm aware that it is a medium to low carbon steel with some amount of maganese and that it isn't the ideal material for blades, but I've found rebar to harden up nearly as well as spring steel. I heard from an old timer that maganese improves its' ability to harden. Is this true? My heat treating process: *coal-forge heated and forged with a nearly sharp bevel. (slight case hardening from carborizing coal fire and pounding into edge?) *normalize/hot filing, 1 or 2 times. *heat edge to critical temp and quench in light oil (water seems to get it too brittle) *rainbow temp…

Hi. I love fiddling around and trying to make do with less. So, when I surfed around the Internet, I noticed lots of references to using sugar for case hardening mild steel. Apparently, the legend is that POW's used this method to harden homemade wire cutter jaws. The sugar would melt and coat the steel, allowing the carbon to diffuse in at a bright heat. So, the other night I tried this out on a piece that was a little too precious for an untested process. Not such a good idea . Also, having watched sugar burn, I should have realized that this was not going to work. After heating the piece to a good red heat (starting to scale), it was dipped into a mixture of…

As I also belong to a small town theater group I am trying to make brackets to hang some black curtains from. I started off with 2 - 1 1/2" wide strips 1/4" thick and 6" long. I then take 2 of these pieces and weld them together to make a 3" x 6" bracket. Will after all the welding and then grinding down to smooth out the weld I got the metal to hot and now to hard to drill through as I need at least 8 holes in each bracket. I tried to heat the brackets up to a red almost light orange color then let them air cool but still no luck. So I need to know just what I can do if any thing to soften the metal so I can drill them out. Any ideas please let me know, Thanks bill p

Ok, I'm not a blacksmith, but in the course of clock repair and restoration, I sometimes come across clocks that had faux bronze finishes applied. I just found a new recipe I'd like to try, but I need to know the correct temperature to create the finish. In the recipe, the oven should be hot enough to turn a raw cast iron piece straw yellow to light blue. Can anyone tell me what degree of heat will do this? Thanks, Chris.

Could someone tell me in plain english what QT, AR and T-100 plate are, what they're comparable to and what uses a blacksmith might have for them ? I know they stand for qenched and tempered, and abrasion resistant, I know that all three can be horrible to drill through or machine, and that I couldn't get QT-100 to harden worth a darn. Thanks in advance, Drq.

I'm making a gift, the item is a frost-pin/bull-prick, its blunt, and you hammer it into the ground to create a hole. The receiver told me 'The top must take hard blows and not mushroom. The bottom must penetrate small rocks but not be brittle.' Any suggestions for how to heat treat this? Its 18" long, about 3/4" thick, blunt at the bottom. I can make a few. I have a lot of O1, so one will definitely be O1. I also have some motorcycle axles, and some D2. Its been a while since I've heat treated anything... I do have quenching oil and a bucket of ash for annealing... Thanks, -Tod

Not sure if this belongs in TOOLS or HEAT TREATING, but here goes... A buddy gave me two of these auto body? tools. I reworked one to use as a handled punch. Cut off the flat end, forged down the pointy end, filed everything smooth and air cooled. My question is should this tool be rehardened/tempered or used as is? If I did temper it, oil or water? My best guess would be oil, but??? Also, when I was filing it, it seemed pretty hard just air-cooled. Plus, even if I did temper it, when I use it as a hot punch, won't the hot steel draw the temper anyway? Whattaya think, huh? Thanks in advance...bart

A 1964 book, "Metals for Engineering Craftsmen," states for following regarding tempering colors. "The temperature is estimated by the surface colours of the steel, formed by oxidation, but these will only show it the steel is free from scale. It should, therefore, be cleaned with emery cloth or on the grindstone, but must not be polished, glazed, or burnished as this results in different colour changes" I wonder about this. Comments? http://www.turleyforge.com

Does anybody have any thoughts or designs for a salt pot- mainly for knife blades or other small items please? I was thinking maybe about a stainless design with a quickly removable lid.

Hello, I have been forging and fabricating for 10 years, but haven't really done any heat treating other than annealing and case hardening when I first started. It has come to my attention that there are some terms that I just don't know or was never taught. These are magnetic and non-magnetic heats and normalising. Would be thankful if someone could enlighten me. Thanks and forgive my ignorance!

I have made some dies from CRS cuz it's all I had, Can it be tempered to function. I have taken it to non magnetic and quenched it in water. would it be senseless to continue? Here are the dies in place before hardening Thanks for the help

I have a question on the usefulness of an annealing oven. I have not needed one in the past but am starting to make more tools now. Hammers, hardie tools etc... I am looking at some smithing stuff and the guy has an oven and would like to sell it all as a package.He thinks max temp is 500f and it probably plugs into 110 volt. I dont do anything as critical as knifemaking now, but... I will try to post a pic. Thanks Rob

I found a bar of steel with a label marked Vulcan nonshrinking die steel. It spark tests like nothing I have. Some experimenting suggests it is an air Harding steel. I found this in an old metal spinning shop. That been around since the 1930's. Any idea what alloy this is? I welded something to a piece of it and it cracked all over even with a preheat.

You know how that little bump in the supposed-to-be smooth curve can become the only thing you see ? Well, the beeswax /boiled linseed oil finish is already on and that bump's driving me nuts. I recall re-heating an already treated item and had problems with the heated section getting all ugly and sticky. Is this the only way to go ? Thanks ! Naz

I am sure that this has been asked before, but since I have not seen it ... I will ask again. If I quench H13 chisels in the anti-seize grease that I use between uses will I risk re-hardening them and hence risk breaking them. brad