thingmaker3

Another term for "nit picking" is "being precise." This has turned into a very good thread, everyone!

You haven't said what you'll use all this stuff for. Jewelry making? Specialty hinges? Custom auto bits & pieces? What you need first depends on what you want to make.

No disrespect meant to a fellow electrician, but I'm going to get nitpicky here. There is no magic number above which steel will harden or below which it will not. The maximum attainable hardness of a given piece of steel versus the carbon content forms a curve on the graph. The more carbon available, the more martensite which can be formed. (Up to a point, anyway. Maximum attainable hardness levels out around 60 or 65 points. Retained austenite can actually diminish maximum attainable hardness at carbon levels beyond this.) Run an internet image search with the terms "carbon" and "hardness" and a few renditions of this graph will show up. Or look in chapter 6 of Principles of Heat Treatment of Steel by Krauss for a very good graph. A spike or other bit of steel with 20 points of carbon can indeed be hardened. But no, it won't get as hard as another bit of steel with 30 points. Hot work punches. Bottle openers. Sculptures of funny little people. Tent stakes. Cobras.

Chase some threads on the thinner bar to make clamping screws for your mokume gane experiments. Make nuts from the thicker bar. Experiment with it to see if it makes a decent slitting punch. Might not work, but how will anyone know without trying? Make kiln furniture.

I've met a few ladies of Southern Oregon, and I can't think of a single one I'd want to see accurately wielding a fourteen pounder. Kenny, you are a VERY brave man.

On so many levels and in so many ways, I really like that piece! May your sister and your new brother have a wonderful road ahead of them!

The anvil is just an old hunk of metal. You get to keep the hands and the heart that made the knife and the weld.

http://www.bainitesteel.com/FlashProcess.pdf The "secret" is on page 10 & 11.

What is your project? A ladle? (304 would be fine for a ladle.) A serrated bread knife? (Some of the 400s would be just fine for a serrated bread knife.) Are you making an osthyvel? Perhaps an ulu? Or an usuba?

Looks like it is within spec for SAE 3340. :)

You want your carbon dispersed evenly so that your martensite may be equiaxed (all the same size and shape). The more complex a steel, the more stuff in the way of carbon. Soaking allows carbon time to diffuse. Simpler steels may only need a minute per inch of thickness. Fancy steels may need five or more.

Saying "stainless" is like saying "wine." Are we talking a merlot or a pino griggio? Some alloys of stainless will age harden and some won't. Some alloys of stainless are fine & dandy for knives and others are not.

I want to see a Venn diagram of one of them there "carbon molecules." :lol:

O1 makes a good mix with L6, as both have similar heat treatment requirements. Both respond well to forge-welding and forging. If you can forge-weld A2 to D2, I'll pay to take lessons from you.

Have you tried your local institute of higher learning?

I sit in bed and read. This helps take my mind off the body's aches and pains from re-organizing the trees. (Bringing 'em down is easy. Limbing 'em up & stacking 'em ain't.) Heinlein, Zelazny, Burkes, Hasluck, others...

Nitrates in the quenchant do indeed speed the quenching action. Doesn't matter whether they come from stale urine or not. Question I have is: Did any of the herbs added to quenchant in days of yore speed up the production of nitrates from the goat urine? (Collection from the boy would take long enough for nitrites to form without catalyst.) BTW, ferns act as a purgative, so after three days the goat would have relatively repeatable urine.

"Something someone would not think to buy for themselves." That leaves out books, dvds, tools or beer... How 'bout a nice antique, made by a long-gone smith in days of yore?

Thank you!! :D

Francis, may we please have a link for this foreign language video? Or search terms to use that we may find it?

I respectfully disagree. Not even ONE of the post drills used in the 19th century had cords!! On a more productive note: Have you tried a piece of wood instead of a bolster for thin stock?

There are copper alloys which can be precipitation hardened, but none of the brasses are among them. :(

Neither. It possibly is a result of either too thick of a blade for the temper, or too little temper for the blade thickness. Or too large a grain structure, as Matt has already suggested. If you have enough of that railroad spring left over, try this: http://blacksmith.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1529&d=1290409793

In my admittedly limited experience, I have found no equal to clinker when it comes to filling potholes in gravel roads.

Rob Gunter's Super Quench works because the surfactants help break up the gas jacket. It therefore cools the metal more quickly. Mild steel should be heated well above non-magentec (should be orange or so) when superquenching. Using Mr. Gunter's quench on other than mild steel will result in cracking and or breaking - the steel gets too hard too fast & tears itself apart. (But the SOUND it makes is worth experimenting with at least once!) I dumped my Super Quench a year and a half ago when we moved. I have not missed it. Medium and high carbon steel are very easy to come by. DO experiment with this stuff if you have the time and inclination. It is fun to play with!