Steve Sells

Bonjour

Welcome to I Forge Iron

shallow hardening means a lot more hardening difference with a large cross section as with a hammer or anchor, than in thin cross sections as with a blade, its all relative.

The ABS test is designed to show one knows how to control the heat treat of the chosen steel. Nothing wrong with making a blade to flex 90 degrees, but it is not needed for most. I rarely make a sword too hard at the edge anyway.

On a side note: Very few people are able to sharpen a 3 foot long razor safely, even fewer are able to use a razor sharp sword safely.

The reason the bolts are cracking is that the weld heat brought the weld area above AC3 and it re hardened part of it upon cooling. With out a proper tempering of the newly formed martensite it will be very brittle. This is a reason for post heating of the weld zone. You also have to remember if you did not entirely reheat and re harden the bolt you have uneffected areas, and the middle zone to account for also.

Welding nut to bolt is only 100% predictable for mild steel bolts, not the harder grades. Read up on heat treating and you will understand more about this effect. Most people do not understand this unless they work in an area that deals in heat treating.

Looks to me like a suitable punishment for apprentices that foul the fire pot.

Welcome to I Forge Iron, I think we meet at the IBA meeting/hammer-in a few months ago. Maybe I will see you a 2 weeks for our next one, at the steam show here.

Knee mail sent, I have been laid off 13 months here, Lucky I have side jobs or...... and this IS the correct place to post your request .

I try to edit the larger pics into thumbs to help with the Dial up up problem, but I sometime mess up an lose a picture, even have gotten Emails complaining that they want large pics for "detail" as if they never learned that they can click on the thumb for larger pics if they wish?

There are many on Dial up. The staff does have a life outside of the forum and downloading and resizing and re-uploading all the photos takes time and it may take a few days.

Sorry maybe we can get everyone to stop posting so large a pics on photobucket and linking them here. If they would just use this forums Upload photo feature at the bottom of the post area they are already using, it would make it easier for all of us, as that places a thumb at teh end of the post, and allows for larger viewing as needed.

I have been informed about people that can not get a page to load, as they time-out because of so many over size photo's.

it was Mild, I am sending him some of my stock of 5160H from security steel.

After I performed a normal hardening process and getting nothing, I over heated to 1600F and soaked about 5 minutes then quenched into cold water slack tub, after it cooled to the touch, I placed the bar in vise and hit with my 6# hammer, it bent a little. thats it ... so it is only MILD

My idea of fair price, has shocked a few that seem to think $200 for a Viking blade is over priced. so my quote of $3k for a pattern welded Type X nearly gave them a heart attack. Reasonable Price is in the eye of the check writer...

Welcome. Depending on what part of Ohio you are in, My local group meets near Ft Wayne on the first Saturday of the month, east of New Haven, off US 24.

Welcome the site. Plenty of smiths in your neck of the woods. try to hook upi with a local group and read all ya can here and you will have a good beginning.

Welcome to I Forge Iron, the owner frowns on use or abbreviation of language that isn't correct for children, so please be aware in future posts, as staff will tag ya for it some day.

As for getting a forge, it doesn't have to be elaborate, it can be a hole in the ground with small bellows to force air through the charcoal ( Not briquette, but hard wood lump). good luck getting started, to help I suggest reading some of the getting started topics located off the web site home page.

Welcome to I Forge Iron, we have a live knife chat every Friday night 10pm eastern time., as well as the regular 24/7 chat room, stop in sometime.

Welcome , look around and bring a pillow, it will take a while to get through all the 120k+ posts in here.

Welcome to I Forge Iron, There are a few thread in the forum, more in the knife sub sections about this, basically, we heat to yellow and tap gently, hitting to hard won't work too well.

The hot metal doesn't care if its the edge, spine or side. You should have learned that in the basic blacksmithing skills you learned. why should a knife shaped thing act any differently ?

Funny as most the time I am referring new knife makers to the knife sticky as that is the start point for knife making.

Either I post the same 4 pages of information to every one that asks, which IS why I made them a sticky in the first place, Or I get complaints that a 2 line answer cant answer the question they asked. They have no idea that metallurgy is a 4 to 8 year college degree, that cant be explained to beginners in a few lines of text.

So it is now a lose-lose situation as I even had a member accuse me of not being willing to share my information with others! Selfish is the word he used, but maybe that has another meaning where he lives in the UK than here in the states? I have never seen his posts too often in the forums nor has he ever shown up at any of the knife chats to try to teach or partake in any way during the year and a half I have overseen this, since the beginning in fact, I have only missed 2 days since it began, maybe he was here those 2 times hmmm.

Where are the other 10,000 members when all the new members ask the questions, and why blame those of us that do give to this forum when we send them to posted information we spent many hours preparing and editing, verifying and are still updating for them to have this information, if many wont read them, but demand a personal touch, do they really want to know?

we heated it to red so about 1000degrees and quenched it in motor oil, when we blued it it never changed color. would that have affected the temper

read the heat treating stickys at the top of the knife section, then ask if you dont understand something. Knives are not the best way to start, but Good luck, and welcome to I Forge Iron

This was posted to the Yahoo groups Blacksmith list, kind of a cool idea for a forge blower.

Smart stuff from old bikes

nice job Tom, but now we all know you are full of BULL :D

It all depends on a few factors. To answer I need to know what is normal power for your country? Also if you dont have 3 Ph power stay with single phase motors, rather than conveters.

US example of 120/208 "Wye"

The individual lines will actually measure about 125 volts each at the transformer. Code allows a 5% drop in voltage to the meter of the building, then another 5% allowed to the destination. In reality I have measured destination voltages from around 115 to 124 volts. This hopefully explains a little about power and where the voltage variations come from.

US is 60 cycle and has 120/208(Wye) 120/240/240(Delta) 277/480(Wye), as most common in the US, tho I have seen 575 and 4160 volts in large factories here. Delta is more common for light industry as it allows easy use of 220 or 240 Volt machines that could also have been in a single phase system. That has 2 legs at 120 volts, one at 240 (called High leg), and of course the 240 3 phase as well.

Having explained this, a 240 volt machine is going to be fine if you really do have 240 volts at your destination. Be aware that many factories would opt for the 220v machine to allow for the voltage drops that we know are occurring. All machines are fine with the normal variance we experience in any electric supply's.

IBEW 305 jiw
yup I be a sparky

Welcome to I Forge Iron, glad to have ya here.

not yet, low priority winter project.