RainsFire

I didn't.. which is probably a big part of what went wrong.. but I still don't think that was all of it. I literally tapped, like you would to lightly beat in a brad, the blade on the horn of my anvil and it shattered.. I have a good 6-8 2-4in peices.. Plus I polished up a few of these peices to see if I actually got a hamon, and found it to be cracked in many places.. (ending at the ashi so something worked..) also, I thought tempering wasn't necessary because of the hamon?

It was at a light oarnge, and I normalized it 3times by laying it in my firebrick annealing bed. I heated it to a final heat of just under loss of magnetization, after clay coating with satanite with an almost 1/8th inch thick coat on the spine, and quenched it in a cool waterbath.

ya, I had forgotten about that.. that might be a little bit responsible, but I still dont think a sword should snap in half that easily.. I was literally lightly tapping the spine of the blade on my anvil horn breaking it into 2in sections..

so, I've taken two swings at making a katana blade, one out of 1050 steel, and one out of a car coil spring.. which I've heard is something like 1060.. the first one I made to thin, and hit one to many times after the heat treat so it snapped in two about mid length.. I just assumed this was my fault.. which it probably was. The second one, I made as perfect as is humanly possible for using a coil spring, 28in blade length, hammered close to perfect shape, ground and sen'd to final shape, and clay coated with a really thick coat on the spine, and a fine coat on the bit.. did every thing the best to my ability following the "craft of the japanese sword" descriptions and images. I even normalized it 2-3times by bringing it to light oarnge heat and letting it sit in my cooling gas forge. (very slow cool) anyway, my steel still had a gentle curve to the left with the spine facing down, so I stuck one end in the hardie hole to gently bend it back after the quench. needless to say it snapped.. I was kinda xxxxxx but not especially.. theres a point when you've worked on something for so long that when it breaks its like it doesn't matter.. but then I had a wakisashi, then a tanto, then a pocket knife.. now I have some prime damascus highcarbon steel billets.. I suppose I could take the 1050 from one blade, and the 1060ish stuff from the other and make a damascus katana.. anyway, at the end of this terribly long post... I would really like some suggestions.. cuzz I dont want to waste hours of work again. I think the steel I used was an oil quench steel.. because that really shouldn't of happened, It wasn't even heated to the de-magnetization point and it fractures all over. yep, so thats my vent..

wow, did it do any damage to you? I have a feeling I hold an angle grinder the exact same way..

I like WD-40 for aluminum, and use a cool water soluable oil stuff for everything else.. theres no mess, it sipes off like water.

^^dear xxx, 100 anvils? You're the reason why they're hard to find..now aday's!! I hate when people use stuff like anvils as old yard art.. It hurts me to see that kinda stuff. 200lb wrought Iron rotting away..

Ya, so I couldn't find a thread anywhere on here where The topic of Burns was brought up, and in the middle of swearing off one of my best, I thought it'd be kinda "cool" to hear some good ole' burn stories.. Personally I'm somewhat used to super heated gloves, burning slag, and speeding sparks, but every once in a while I get hit with a sweet one.. Today I did a dumb thing, and used the wrong tongs to hold my work in progress sen.. The yellow hot glob of metal flipped up and melted off my right hand pinky side palm.. kinda deep but I didn't feel it.. The scent and look of it was what was nasty..plus its starting to hurt now a little:rolleyes: alright guys, shoot!!

left handed, I put it to the right.. or I put it in the center of a room and walk to either side I actually want.. works well for me.

I've used torn up gloves to an obvious ammount of success.. THere was one hole in the index finger, and I was thinking about making a quick toss into my annealing bucket.. and flattened the tip of my finger in a few seconds of burn..

I use cheapo leather gloves, thicker the better and only on my right hand, and only if its to hot to hold by hand. I like the feel of steel in my hand and really hate the feeling of the gloves overheating and cooking your hands.. Im a left too.. so I only use a right handed glove for the steel..

yes, more than enough.

^^that makes a xxxx of a-lot more sense doesn't it.. The smoke has enough power? I was thinking rising heat would be usable, but I didn't know if it'd be quite that powerful.

what the? ha, that might be it I guess.. I'm a little ashamed to say, I meant paintball guns.. I used to be heavily into that and there was a guy named docsMachine that did stuff with them..

Docsmachine might you be the same person who does milling to certain obscure sport projetile launching devices?

thought someone would bring up the top's point of friction.. I meant free spinning.. but ya ya got me.. pressure cooker? thats a good idea, I was thinking along the same lines.. but your way would be a bit simpler to make.

yes it is.. something else I like to think about is where does space end? is there really a such thing as infinity? and if it does stop, whats after that? it hurts.. would space stretching on in infinity be considered propetual motion? do atom's die? I had always learned that space was a perfect vacuum.. I guess mabey I just assumed it though. cuzz I know propetual motion doesn't truly exist..to our knowledge anyway.. science is all based on theories. even laws of gravity could be changed by something devious.. but that's another story entirely back to subject.. anybuddy have a good design for a recirculating steam generator? is it like a water wheel where you fill one end (metaphorically) and the other goes up, only to have gravity pull it back down? I was thinking you could blast a jet of steam around a waterwheel in a closed unit, and have a belt attached to the wheel powering a fan which heats your forge.. you'd use more coal or charcoal, but not a whole lot and it'd be kinda cool. just need to figure out the mathematics to it.

^^ did you say that right? your first sentence agrees with me.. I think you meant to say energy in is way more than energy out right? yep.. cuzz you're totally right. Im just saying that mabey you take massive amounts of un-usable energy, and make it usable.. I think in the proper enviorment, you could make propetual motion work.. Like what if you were in a vaccume, and spun a top? would it go for ever? there are no other forces to act upon it, so I think it would. so that initial amount of energy invested in spinning the top would never be lost through heat or another force. nope, I have not taken thermodynamics yet.. and don't really plan on it. I'm in physics right now though, and I have a basic level of understanding from my Highschool science class. I've done some extra curricular activities also involving physic's related stuffs.. Robotics ect. (I was the fabricator and drafter). anyway, you probably know better.. I just think this would work.

well ya, I know that.. energy cant be destroyed or created, it is only transfered into different forms. strike a hammer on a steel beam, and the energy transformation will become very much evident in the broken brick beneath the beam. It is certainly always easier to loose something than to find/create something, and I don't really agree that you cant break even. Although you cant literally turn 2 into 4 of the same energy unit, you can trigger an energy release in something else. Look at nuclear energy, atom's would normally not put out large amounts of energy, but in a certain enviorment they can be forced to transform their energy into something huge and harness-able by us. But ya, that is not the case here.. what I'm bankin for is that the amount of energy I can harrness will be enough to power a blower. Minimizing the amount of energy neccessary to power something has the same effect as increasing the output of the energy created.. make sense? im sure it does.. my wording is probably just a bit off.. to late for real scientific terms.. but ya, I spent most of my spanish class today sketching up a simple steam powered forge blower that's heated up by the forge. should be interesting.

wow, you might have a choked out air supply maybe? are you using charcoal or coal? Charcoal will burn a little colder and is harder to keep going, but it shouldn't be that bad. I bet its your airflow, check and see how much is coming out.

wow, so you could almost make a self building fire, piping off the extra gasses from the burning coal (assuming you are using coal) and blasting them back in as you would with a propane venturi blower, thus sucking in the oxy you would need. I'll have to experiement with this. It'd be cool to have a totally efficient self sustaining shop where you make your own charcoal, and use the excess gasses to fuel it. Then you use the residue heat, or excess gasses from the charcoal (if they exist.. I think it is pretty much pure carbon at that point) to power a blower for your forge. Ha, Im going to have to draft some of this up.

I was just looking at that indirect method in link 2, and that is really cool.. I think I'll try that this weekend.. Is there much of a market for good charcoal? I guess I had never really thought about it. hahah, I just thought of something else.. If you read the 2nd charcoal link posted above by jimbob, it shows how you can use the "passed" gasses to heat the barrel. what if you pumped those back into the forge?

any buddy have a good idea of how to trap this residual heat? I was thinking some sort of steel sheilding or something, but I dont really know. Its always nice to kill an extra objective or two with a single stone.

I've read em both, but thanks for the links! my first crop of charcoal came out pretty well. mostly all charcoal with a few non cooked peices on top.. coffee can is destroyed though.. I guess I need something tougher. my blade I'm working on came out awesome also

what is a decent price for a hand cranked blower? I value mine fairly high.. but I dunno what they actually go for..