Iron Bear

I am interested in making my own clay mixture to try differential quenching. What are some different types of clay one can make? Which one is best for knives, swords, etc.? Which one is easiest to acquire/make? I know the basics behind the differential quenching process, but almost no idea about how to go about acquiring or making the clay application itself.

lol I sent an email to you already, Woody, but after reading through the rest of the thread I see you guys linked one of them there. I actually have links to the some of Verhoeven's papers dealing with Damascus, and I'll link them here. I already have them linked in another thread but I'll have to track it down, so I'll just link them again. The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades Continuing Study of Damascus Steel: Bars from the Alwar Armory, The | JOM | Find Articles at BNET Those are two separate articles that are sequential in dealing with a series of studies that Verhoeven did. They are quite interesting.

I looked at getting a Stanley blower utility fan for a while when I was looking for an air source. Rotating head, 4 adjustable speeds, , small size, $55, and it moves an extremely large volume very quietly. Only problem for me was it was a special order item from the local hardware store and would've taken several weeks to get. Also I didn't have the $55 at the time heh. I would check ebay etc. for small utility fans of the same type. This one was basically a much smaller version of the large rotary blower fans carpet cleaners use to dry carpets.

I almost bought a cast iron anvil waaaaaay back years ago when I was in my teens and extremely interested in making a lot of noise and taking my angst out on a piece of hot steel. Luckily, I was with a few friends one of whom pointed out the now-obvious disadvantages of the cast iron, and advised me to go another route. My dad, a structural engineer, gave me my first anvil which was a chunk of high strength structural I-beam. My second anvil which I acquired a year ago but only got around to using a month or two ago is a 12" section of railroad track. I am actually looking to buy an old forged iron anvil off of a local metalworker that I know hopefully sometime soon. It is quite old and might need re-facing, but it's large, has a horn, pritchet hole, and hardie hole which is more than I can say for my setup right now. I do not know the brand or weight, but my friend definitely concurred when asked about the reliability of cast iron vs. forged iron or cast steel or iron with faced steel. Cast iron = not good.

TYVM for the link, Matt. I was looking forward to the info that you had to pass on. I will try that method and post the results as soon as I gather the ingredients and I have a project I need a rust-proof finish on. Ty, again. And I am having fun, Bentiron! I am now 5 projects into my list of Christmas presents to make, and I have made a few more tools as well. I have found invaluable help from other blacksmiths, articles, and books. I have also found some great bargains! Picked up a 18" European style tongs at an antique store for only $10, which I can now use as templates to make more tongs. I am having such a blast and the work is such a great outlet for excess energy and creativity. Even my wife is getting into the spirit and coming up with ideas of projects I can make. I love blacksmithing!

sweet, now all I have to do is find some of these titles. Ty for the suggestions everyone.

gotcha, ty for making the explanation.

Vanadium as an impurity present in the iron used IS a carbide forming element. If you look up what vanadium is mainly used for today, it is as an additive to steels in the formation of specialty steel alloys such as high speed tool steel. Vanadium adds stable nitrides and carbides when it is added to steel as ferrovanadium. Regarding all this, though, wasn't the bulat steel similar but not the same as the wootz steel? I remember something about the bulat being developed in Russia by a guy, but wootz was originally from India wasn't it? The point is moot, I guess, seeing how close the similarity is and seeing how far away I am from making either one! Good luck to all studying and/or attempting this aspect of blacksmithing! I hope to learn more and eventually attempt it myself.

lol you all are making me feel old. I love reading, and have since I was a child (I snuck into my dad's study when I was 10 and read "Hunt for Red October" all the way through). I'm actually hard up for resources right now to read that aren't on the internet. I'm tired of perusing Wikipedia for blacksmith-related articles that may or may not be validated, and forums are great but I don't always have time to be on the internet (watching the kids) and I would love to have something to read on lunch breaks at work. I can't really borrow a bunch from the library because we're trying to get ready to move to a different town within a month or two. However, I COULD ask for blacksmithing books for Christmas! I just don't want to have someone blow a whole lot on something that turns out to not be so good. Several questions: Where did you acquire those titles you mentioned? How much were they? If you have read any yet, where they worthwhile? I would definitely appreciate your feedback, K. Bryan Morgan, and happy reading to you!

Matt, thank you for your kind advice. I'll have to say that my first foray into knife-making actually went pretty well considering I just dived right in. I find a lot of things that have to do with art or crafting intuitive, but you're right - I should research more for safety's sake and for better results/time. I tried following that link by both clicking and by search engine and it wouldn't let me follow it for some reason. Something about "server connection interrupted - page error". As it stands at the moment I have a beautiful finish on it at the moment. After I found I couldn't blue it using the method I had in mind, I had decided to just finish the darn thing. I heated the blade to a brownish color up to the edge before coating it with hydraulic jack oil, then heated again after it was on. The oil film coated beautifully, making a nice slate color on the blade. I put the handle on and gave it a final touch-up and now all I have to do is stain and finish the handle. It was a good starting project, and if I somehow learned something wrong with this project I have plenty of time to do my homework before the next one. I'm going to try searching "black oxide" on a forum aside from the one you mentioned and see if another forum will let me view it.

CurlyGeorge, I'm one of the fulltime locksmiths at the largest lockshop in our region, and my boss has been a locksmith for 27 years. I know he has an antique collection of his own (as do I), and I think he might have a couple old padlocks dating back to the 1880's. I'll have to check with him, but I can see if he has any exploded view diagrams or perhaps him and I can sit down and sketch one out for you. It really shouldn't be too difficult - older padlocks varied in design but they were all fairly simple owing to manufacturing limitations, limited types of metal available, and wider statutes of tolerances. I'll see what I can find out.

wow, a hardware store that carries coal? I wish we had something like that around here. I've resorted to either making my own charcoal if I have time for it or buying bag hardwood charcoal (not briquettes).

srry, those links I didn't quite link are as follows:The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades Continuing Study of Damascus Steel: Bars from the Alwar Armory, The | JOM | Find Articles at BNET sorry about that lol

Some more interesting reading material include:http://Continuing Study of Damascus Steel Bars from the Alwar Armory, The _ JOM _ Find Articles at BNET.htm,http://verhoeven-9809original paper.htm. There a couple other pdf docs I have that I couldn't link, but they refer to the research done by the same people, Dr. John Verhoeven and Alfred Pendray. The research is fascinating, and I wouldn't mind giving it a try in a year or two after I've nailed down the basics. It seems that starting out with sorel iron or another iron type with the necessary vanadium impurity is key to the whole process, but chromium or molebdenum impurities also contributed to the formation of the bands, but to a lesser extent. Since vanadium-rich iron is hard to get a hold of, one could possibly try chromium-rich iron, since it's probably more readily available. idk. The whole idea is provoking, mysterious, fascinating, and tempting. For other sources look up Dr. Verhoeven's papers additional papers on the subject. He's written several more since the original discovery back in the 90's.

I just finished my first pair of tongs yesterday (yay!), and they look pretty good... for a first pair of tongs. Nothing like yours, Aeneas, but they are even and rotate fine and grab stuff fine as well. One problem. Can anyone tell me how to groove out the jaw without a fuller or hardie for the purpose? Even more sad, my anvil is a 12" piece of railroad track, so I have no horn. After all is said and done, I have a nice matching set of tongs I made pretty much by the seat of my pants that can't hold on to round stock at all, or anything else that needs a grooved jaw to grip it for that matter.

Thomas: Did some more research. Bloomeries specifically are for smelting iron from its oxides. This is to what you were referring to. What I was referring to was crucible steel, which is a way of making steel by slowly heating and cooling iron and carbon in some form, as well as a flux to remove impurities. It is generally not used anymore as the Bessemer process for making steel is cheaper and about the same quality, but crucible steel can be made in a small shop for one, and it can also make more precise and specific steels with specific ingredients in mind. It is not obsolete, but rather niche, and it would be pertinent in a situation where a special steel not readily available was called for. Anyways, you were right - smelting more generally refers to the smelting of iron; but I was not far off in thinking that the making of crucible steel did utilize a process that at least in theory is sort of similar to smelting, although it is more of a melting thing. You'll have to forgive me - I do usually try to do my research before I dive into something, but blacksmithing in general has sort of taken me by storm, and I'm still getting the hang of a lot of the deeper terminologies and idioms.

I believe the critical temperature is 727 degrees Celsius, if I'm not mistaken. If one has an optical pyrometer (which I don't), one could measure the temperature from a safe distance. Also, a bit off the subject, the Verhoeven mentioned is the same one that validated the re-discovery of true Damascus steel techniques by Alfred Pendray. I read his papers on the studies and they were all very informative - recommend them to anyone who has the time/capabilities/equipment to attempt making true Damascus items vs. normal pattern-welded items.

I was just reading another thread and apparently the technique I heard about for bluing is called rust bluing. It does work, I was doing it wrong, and it's better for fittings than anything, but you could use it for blades. I'm going to have to do some more research on exactly how to do it correctly, but it sounds like a viable technique. Only thing is using gun bluing that you can buy in a store is probably a lot easier.

I did not get what I would think would be satisfactory hardness to it at all. I quenched at an orange heat in luke-warm water twice, once before I softened it and then once after. The reason for the two quenchings was because I thought by softening it the bluing would hold better, but this was not necessarily true. So I quenched it again. As is stands, the blade will probably not hold it's edge and is not truly a working model. As my first knife, I actually didn't expect to do as well as I did. I just finished roughing the handle out today on my lunchbreak at work and I though it looked pretty good! (Reason I'm doing a lot of the work at my workplace and why it's taking so long is because we haven't moved yet and I don't have my shop yet lol - I don't have any stationary power tools at home).

TY Unicorn, I haven't gotten the gun bluing yet but I looked it up and it really does look incredibly easy. I think I'll go that route lol.

Yeah I actually did anneal it, because I thought if the metal was softer it would somehow blue better? (I don't know how I thought that...) But anyways, ya, I was going to put it through another heat cycle after I was done to get the hardness back up. Didn't realize until later that another heat cycle would probably take off whatever blue got on there to begin with. But, like I said, it was my first knife and a practice project. I learned a lot of things and killed a lot of false notions about stuff, and I was still pleased with the results. I'll try to put a pic up once I finish the hilt, pommel, and handle. Just last night I made my first pair of tongs - I'll try to get a pic of those up too.

I just finished my first knife (yay!), and I was like, hey, this is a great practice piece, why don't I complete it in every way possible. So I wanted to blue it to prevent detrimental rust and/or corrosion. I heard that you can blue metal by submerging the piece in acid, then transferring it to boiling water after a set ammount of time, usually a couple hours to a couple days depending on various factors. My knife was standard weldable mild stock. I forged it to shape, then ground and planed it as best I could. I then hardened it at a orange heat in water, then annealed it. After polishing it, I dunked it in tetrachloride phosphate and some sort of ammonia and waited about 6 hours, after which I transferred it to boiling water. My result was: the water turned blue but not the blade lol. Am I barking up the wrong tree entirely as far as methodology, or am I just not doing it quite right?

yes I did. Smelting is the process of separating metal ore from surrounding minerals, melting is the process of forming cakes from ore and other ingredients. Slip o' the keys lol

Good idea. Maybe I'll just turn up the edges of the extra plate I have sticking out and use that to hold the brick in place. The cement comes off on it's own sometimes anyways, so I can probably just chip the rest off. Ty for the advice!

good point. I wasn't really thinking about long projects just yet, but I could see how that really wouldn't work for that. I would have to seal it if I was to make a tank out of it, but that's an idea. What about a kiln? Would I be able to line the inside of that and somehow make a kiln for smelting? Or are those open fires too? All I know is you need a ceramic crucible to contain the ingredients - I know nothing at all about any other elements of that. But anyways, I'll stick with my little portable forge for right now and worry about a bigger one, possibly a gasser if that's better for winter work, after we move. TY for all the advice, everyone. Sorry I'm such a dunce lol.