class022

thank you for all the help. I, like most young men it seems from reading the articles, intended to make blades initially. The more I read the more I become convinced that is a gradual process and can be dangerous without experience. I think for the moment I will stick with tools, like iron pokers and tongs. As such, I don't believe I will be annealing them much since I don't need to drill a hammer (punch it yes, drill it no). I have a class soon my an ABANA organization here that will show me how to forge some tongs, I will let you all know how I do.

Hey all, I have been on the site for a little while now and have read a few of the metallurgy books recommended on this site. I have tried to piece the heat treatment process together but I'm still having some trouble understanding. , As far as I am aware, normalizing and annealing reduce stresses caused by forging, additional heat treatments, etc. The differences between them seem to be annealing is done through heating to either at or slightly above critical temperature and then placing the metal in a temp-controlled substance, such as vermiculite, to slow the cooling process. Normalizing is essentially the same thing except the metal is brought to a temperature higher than annealing and the metal is then allowed to air-cool to room temperature. After hardening, tempering is used to reduce some of the brittleness caused by the quench by bringing the metal below critical temperature (for most medium carbon steels I seem to get answers in the brown-blue oxidizing region for this) and then quenching again to prevent additional heat build-up and start the hardening process over again. My first question is do I have my terminology correct? My second question is when is annealing more preferable to normalizing or does one try to use them both when forging, for instance, medium carbon steel? My last question is how many times should one try to use annealing or normalizing during forging? Some will recommend performing these during forging to prevent warping and to prevent cracking when quenching. However, as far as I understand, too many heatings weaken the metal by either decarbonizing it or allowing too much grain growth. I have a propane forge very similar to Larry Zoeller's metal bucket forge only I used an old propane tank instead. I apologize if there is any information I didn't think to put into my question and will add that information when needed.