Heat Treating Knives, Blades etc

I am a blacksmith working at a local museum. I came across an old pair of tongs in their collection. The surface shows a little rust and lots of grain , typical of old wrought iron. It's clearly hand forged and massive. It's about 24 inches long overall. The bits are (each) one and a quarter inches square and about five inches long. It's clearly designed for holding flat stock . Can anyone suggest what these tongs were used for? I heated the jaws to a dull red heat and clamped them on to the spine of a scrap knife blade and in a short time I could see the tempering colors flow from the spine to to the cutting edge. It was easy to arrest the action witho…

Making a hawk- heat treat and tempering rages? Can't find one of the scrap lists that has metal types- tired of looking and searching. Thanks Dave

I have been trying to harden a knife I forged out of leaf spring steel and I have heat treated it in vegetable oil while above non-magnetic and won't harden. I have done this several times. Then I decided to try to harden it in water so I got it non-magnetic and didn't want it to shatter or warp so I just dipped the edge in the water and after little bit dunked the whole thing. I have no idea why my knife won't harden. Last night I finally thought I had hardened it is vegetable oil the file seemed to skate across (I am not experienced) and I tempered it in the at 350 for 30mins then 400 for 30mins (All in the same hour) and today did 350 for 20mins and 400 for 40mins and …

Hi, I just started forging mostly knifes, what is the best oil to quench? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hello everybody I'm making a knife for my buddy. The blade is 52100 and G-10 black and orange scales. My buddy is a vet, so the pins are supposed to look like dog paws. Everything was going fine until I went to heat treat it. I'm not sure if the steel got cooked or if I tried to take out a warp when the steel was too cold. I used some very light taps to straiten out the mild warping. If anyone could give me some advise, I'd appreciate it. I have a propane fired forge. I heat cycled it 3 times, then took it to just above orange and quenched. While it was still hot I tried to straighten a couple of warps, then put back in the oil to finish cooling. …

I been looking around on the forums and on google but cant find anything, only found about hand held chainsaw bars and what they are composed of, so if there is another thread on the forums or a list of possible types of steel that are used for the chainsaw bars from forest harvesters I would love to know, it is cause I got a huge amount of them to use for practice and thought it would be nice to know how to heat treat the steel if I do feel like forging something out of a piece. Sorry if there is already a thread about this but cant find anything.

Hi guys, I started working on a parring knife for the wife and I put a test piece of left over 1/8" thick 52100 in the forge and toaster oven when I tried to heat treat it and then temper. sorry if the picture isn't as clear as it should be, I took about 20 and this was as close as I could get. It kept wanting to focus on the vise instead of the blade. I heat cycled them 3x, then went past critical and quenched. Then I put them in the toaster oven at 350 for an hour. After that I put them in the freezer overnight. This morning I went out and put the test piece in the vise and put a crecent wrench on the end of it to flex test it and it broke very easil…

Wanted to ask a question on how to heat treat really small tools, im making myself some jewelry wax carving tools the metal part that sticks out of the handle are at 1 to 3 cm long, some are 0.3mm and others are 1-3 mm thickness, I could take a picture of em but they are in the oven for tempering right now, just hope I didn't mess everything up, reason im asking. I used 1095 for the tools that are smaller and need to be flexible and O1 tool steel for the thicker pieces chisels and such, I used a propane torch to heat them up before quenching in oil, then im tempering at 300 celsius. was really careful and heated the thicker parts first before getting a even heat of each…

Okay, here is my latest project! My old friend is a unique individual and asked me if I could make knives for him to give away to the three people standing up for him at his wedding...and one for him. I told him I would give it a go and reinforced all the realities of my incompetence in the knife making realm. He sent me a design he wanted and asked me to make them as big as possible within the limits of my equipment and ability. Here is his design. He wasn’t certain how he expected me to get those shapes around the spine and ricasso..he just liked the design. I decided to keep it thick at the spine and grind the blade thinner below it...if that mak…

Hey all, I'm planning on forging a kukri-like blade out of 5160, which I want to mount onto the end of an axe handle. I've used something similar in the past, and it's a great tool for clearing small to medium brush, limbing branches, and otherwise chopping through things up to 3"-4" thick. The stock I'm starting with with .25" thick and 1.5" wide, so the final blade will be close to those dimensions, and approximately 8" long (not including tang). The question is, what do you all think the best heat treating process would be for it? Should it be more like a knife, with the entire blade hardened and tempered, or more like an axe/hatchet, where only the edge is …

Ok so, im curious, if after hardening you temper for two straight hours at 400°F would it be harder or softer then if you did two one hour cycles (letting cool completely inbetween) at 400°F? I dont feel like the alloy matters but this was a 1095 farriers rasp. Thanks in advance!

Hey all, I have a piece of 5160 (purchased as such - not scrapped leaf spring) that I am making a small hiking/utility blade out of for my wife. For all the reading and research I've done on the heat treating process, there is one thing that I have not yet found a definitive answer on: if I do three cycles of normalizing, would there be any detriment to the steel if I did not immediately follow it up by heating and quenching it? That is, if I wait to do the quenching until a few hours later (when it's dark enough to see the color of the steel), or a few days later, would I be introducing any potential issues into the final product? Worth noting: I'm a complete…

Alright so, i know a guy that works at a welding shop. he ordered me some "1084" flat bar, the reason i put 1084 in quotations is because i dont know if it is.... i cut out 2 knives and before i annealed them i decided i was gonna test the steel. I got a scrap peice from cutting the tip into the blade. I heated it up to a bright red/ dull orange quenched in pre heated (about bath water hot) vegstable oil and it did not harden. I quenched again a little hotter this time same, cut off a new peice quenched it a little cooler, let it cool down, checked it, soft. So at this point im frustrated, so i heated it up to a bright red (just like the first time) quenched it in water a…

Found this on YouTube what do you guys think? From what I understand you get pipe and fill it with oil then heat it with a torch.

Here's a small video of my tempering setup. I temporarily put the solid state relay out until I insulate the inner wall. I am very please of how this cheap PID completely leveled out the temperature. Notice the duty cycle light blinking, it has a self ajusting duty cycling.

I want to make a sword. I have made some knives and a small but rough sword and now want a new challenge. I have a nice piece of 1/4 O-1 and I just want to know what is the best and easiest way to heat treat it (I am going to make a 35 inch longsword with no fuller and any other general sword making tips would be awesome thank you.)

Hey guys long time. I have an interesting question to ask but it might be a stupid one? I recently watched a video on youtube about quenching and heat treating, the question is the guy said that smiths quench with the blade facing magnetic north to reduce the possibility of warping. Is this an old wives tale or does it hold any credibility?

I'm working on a short-ish blade right now, and I'm trying to make my chances of a successful heat treat as high as possible. I know all most of the basics and some of the chemistry, but I still have one question: What is the best method of thermal cycling/normalizing? I know that you should get it to crit temp then let it cool to black, or room temp, but how many times should I do this? What I've been doing is heating it up to crit, letting it cool to black (I do that three times in a row) then I heat it a little bit above crit and let it cool to room temp, then I heat treat. It's worked so far, but y'all probably have more experience than me. Thanks, …

Hey everyone, first post here. just found this site and its incredible how much info is one here. Ive just finished making a drawknife ( ill post a pic soon) and ive hardened it and tempered it already but i have some questions about how i could do it better. It is made with a coil spring from a train. and my quenching solution is used motor oil, which i understand to not be the best. When hardening it i had a difficult time keeping it from curving or warping. it took me 3 attempts after it to get it to harden and maintain a (reasonably) straight edge. ( its still a bit wiggly) I then made a little torch using a block with a hole in it over my forge …

Hey guys so i have a question i have been using some dama steel and looking at there website and spec sheet the tempering temps seem low around 345 F However looking around on some of the forums people seem to be tempering much higher at around 450 and even 500.....now yes i know the higher temp just makes the steel a lil softer i am just wondering for those of you out there that do use damasteel where do you normally temper it and about what is the resulting hardness? Thanks ahead of time!

Ran across this yesterday and thought it might be useful for a lot of people. Essentially a metallurgist with an interest in knives started a web page and it has some great info on the scientific side of what we do. Apologies if it has already been posted. Nothing new, in fact we already have an entire section devoted to blade heat treating, I will relocate this there, Contact the site admins to arrange payment for your Advertising

This is related to my "Forging and strength" thread. I started reading studying metallurgy as related to bladesmithing in the "80's. and have been mostly off until recently, I'm a slow learner, so bear with me. I remember somewhere along the line that lightly hammering the edge at a dull red would refine the grain (aus forging?) Actually I forgot this until recently when I read from a forum that the heat treat erased any grain refinement at the dull read stage. That's what prompted the F and S thread. My knowledge of this edge packing aus forging is very vague, I searched first. So is there such a thing as aus forging? Edge packing? Mark

Knifemakers, I recently ordered a blank of 3/16 by 2 in 80crv2 from Steel baron. It says that it heat treats like 5160 which I am familiar with. I am looking for input on how well this steel works for small to midsze or even full sized knives. I generally use an oil quench. What temperature should I temper it to?

I've just gotten a bar of 1095 and plan on making several medium to large knives from it. Any input on hings like heat treating? I've heard that 1095 can be finicky with somethings but everyone says different things about different steel. I can't forge yet so I've just been doing stock removal.

I’ve forged a Kukri from a blade from a John Deere mower. Does anyone know the right quench liquid for this? I have plenty of oil and water available, but I want to make sure I get it right. Any input is appreciated.