ThomasPowers

The breaks make me wonder.

Seax, wakizashi, kleine grosse messer? You should have what you are trying to make identified before you light the forge and pick up a hammer!

Yes there is still rifling in the barrel. There is a story about an old President of NM Tech accepting some Naval surplus guns not realizing how big they actually were and the Railroad not being happy that they were tying up some special heavy weight RR cars and them finally getting cut in half, buried and used to store radioactive research materials....wish I had a Geiger counter!

Above the curie temp steel becomes non-magnetic; as it cools below the curie temp it becomes magnetic again. Being magnetic has very little to do with hardness---save that all steel gets softer at elevated temps! Now as steel heats up it goes from a body centered cubic crystalline form, exp: ferrite, to a face centered cubic form---exp. Austenite. If quenched at the correct speed for they alloy used; you get Martensite which is hard and brittle. You trade some of the hardness and brittleness for toughness by tempering. WAY over simplified! As mentioned you check hardness with a fil

Another gag I've seen is a regular wooden hammer with an electrical cord coming out the end with a plug to make it a "powerhammer".

What's the distal taper on it?

I'd check that it wasn't cast iron before trying to weld it!

Yes forge welding is more traditional than splitting, especially when working with pre 1850's real wrought iron! To smooth out interiors when split you could let it cool and take abrasive cloth and thread it around and "shoe shine" it. Or open the basket up to where you could use small files on the interior surfaces. Frankly I would forge weld round stock. (Or sq stock, I have even seen forge welded twisted sq stock baskets.)

If you usually work the same size stuff a rein loop near the end would be handy.

Remember to treat them as HC! Goods: Ti seems like an excellent choice for those! I would have temper coloured them though.

Air travelling through is better than air swirling around inside---sort of the opposite of a propane forge! You want to minimize the hang time of any bad stuff you might be breathing.

Doesn't look too hard to forge a new piece that might be tougher.

Another trick would be a hinged door that opens up with drop down legs to make a porch to forge under. Hard to have too much ventilation!

rotometals sells 10 different Babbitt alloys too. (I buy my tin from them for re-tinning copper pots.)

Too small.