MattBower

I'm not entirely clear on what broke: the spear point, or the shaft of the spear?

I assume that since you posted this in the Solid Fuel Forges forum, this is either a coal or charcoal forge of relatively traditional design. Assuming that's correct, you would be wasting your money and time using ITC-100. IR reflective coatings serve no useful purpose that I know of in solid fuel forges. Satanite is not an IR reflector. It's a refractory mortar. (Not all refractories are IR reflective, or at least not to any useful extent. There's a reason ITC is much more expensive than the typical refractory.) Tell us a little more about your forge and we may be able to tell you if Satanite would serve any useful purpose in it.

Last time I water quenched I used distilled, but I didn't even think about entrained gasses. Thanks for that tip, Grant.

I agree with almost everything you said, John, except that mineral oils are faster than veggie oils. I don't think that's necessarily true, and in fact I read a paper a couple years ago (pretty sure it was posted here at one point) suggesting that warm, light veggie oils like rapeseed/canola are nearly as fast as some of the fastest commercial quenches. My own experience has been that warm canola will harden shallow-hardening steels that stuff like motor oil does a poor job on.

Gotcha.

So you're going to weld on a plain steel tang and then use a full tang design? It's just a matter of personal taste, but I'm not a huge fan of that two-tone look. Figured wood -- curly walnut, curly maple, curly koa, something like that -- seems like a pretty good match for the pattern. Very nice PW, by the way.

This is the first I've heard of bainite as a major microstructure in rail steels, so I Googled it. Apparently bainite rails are seeing use in this country now (see here and here). Interesting tidbit. But being that just about anyone here will be using old to very old scrap rail, most of what we're likely to find ourselves dealing with for quite some time will still be the typical ~0.8% C pearlitic steels that rails have been used for a long time. (The bainitic steels they're using for rails apparently are much lower in carbon than the older, pearlitic rails.) Of course if you heat your rail to forging temps (which most of us probably don't do, fortunately), the fact that it was originally bainitic ceases to mean anything.

If it's the size of a regular brick but considerably lighter, it's probably an insulating firebrick, which explains the corrosion. Get yourself a super duty firebrick split (1-1/4" thick) or two. They won't be totally immune to flux, but they'll last a good while.

Someone once told me that the knuckle high rule of thumb for anvil height was developed by industrial smiths using strikers and relatively heavy material. I can't prove that, but it makes sense to me. I, too, prefer my anvil closer to write height for working alone on relatively small stock.

I've done two styles of spike bottle openers -- several like Moose Forge described, and one like this: http://images1.vat19.com/covers/large/railroad-spike-bottle-opener.jpg The one point I'd make is that if you make the lip or tab that catches the underside of the cap too long, it'll grab the glass and snap the neck right off the bottle. It takes surprisingly little effort.

This thread is quite a blast from the past! Joseph R. Davis, ed., Stainless Steels (Materials Park, Ohio: ASM International, 1994), 3. Most stainless steels have nickel in them, but many of the martensitic grades (like 440A, B and C, S30V, ATS-34, 154 CM) don't. Nickel does improve corrosion resistance in some environments, Joseph R. Davis, ed., Nickel, Cobalt and Their Alloys, (Materials Park, Ohio, ASM International, 2000), 7, and it has other effects that are beneficial in some applications, but it isn't essential to making steel that's classified as stainless.

What kind of brick was it? Hard, or soft?

Thought about that, but I think it'd be upset at the deformed edge that way. I've cold forged rings from silver quarters like that. Give it a shot and see, though. I'm very curious.

I think it'd still bend that way.

Correct. There is also a federal regulation that applies specifically to pennies and nickels. It was created a few years ago, when the value of the metal in those coins exceeded their face value, or at least threatened to. Under that regulation, it is unlawful to "export, melt or treat" any penny or nickel. "Treat" means "to smelt, refine, or otherwise treat by heating, or by a chemical, electrical, or mechanical process." There is an exception: "The prohibition contained in § 82.1 against the treatment of 5-cent coins and one-cent coins shall not apply to the treatment of these coins for educational, amusement, novelty, jewelry, and similar purposes as long as the volumes treated and the nature of the treatment makes it clear that such treatment is not intended as a means by which to profit solely from the value of the metal content of the coins." Pennies and nickels generally aren't used in mokume; I mention this only as an aside. http://www.gpo.gov/f...ol1-sec82-1.pdf http://www.gpo.gov/f...ol1-sec82-3.pdf

Reminds me of a shinto rasp. I have tried to figure out how to make a shinto rasp from hacksaw blades, but none of the methods I come up with end up looking more attractive than just buying one. Your method is simple, but probably not quite as clog-resistant as the originals.

At least it's an interesting puzzle. Might have to try to replicate it sometime, just for grins. :)

I'm impressed that you were able to squeeze that much material out of a spike. Nice job. How thick is the blade?

You could try sheet aluminum in place of brass. I'd think it would much the same.

I have used boric acid as an anti-scale for heat treating. It does a good job of protecting the steel from oxidation up to about 1600 F. Beyond that it reverses course and starts to attack the steel fairly aggressively. It's probably not what you want for your purpose, since you'll want to heat well beyond 1600 for any heavy forging. Just thought I'd throw it out there. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than that Firescoff stuff!

A file card is the traditional solution. A better suggestion (stolen from Alexander Weygers) is to use the edge of a sheet of thin brass, and run it parallel with the teeth of the file. The brass will be soft enough to conform to the teeth of the file and form little teeth of its own, which will get down into the grooves and scrape out the embedded bits of metal. But brass is much softer than the file teeth, so it's much gentler than a file card.

I tried coin mokume with a hand-held propane torch and a stack of quarters sitting on a firebrick. That didn't work for me. When I said thin stuff, I was thinking of sheet metal. I have brazed sheet metal to sheet metal with a plumber's propane torch. I have brazed 1/8" angle iron to itself with one MAPP and one propane torch. It was a hassle, and one of those joints recently failed on me. A couple others seem to be holding fine.

Seems to me that he was trying to prove to prospective eBayers that a bunch of metal workers had no idea how to achieve this effect -- making the penny weird and valuable. But lots of folks had viable ideas, which probably wasn't quite what he hoped for.

When I first saw the pics on a small screen, I thought you'd done a bunch of asymmetric cutler's hammers. Hint, hint. :)

Yep, in Virginia your point must be at least 7/8" wide. Barbs aren't specifically addressed here, but they're illegal in many states. One of the Traditional Bowyer's Bibles (Vol. 2, maybe?) talks about making your own steel hunting points. They end up looking very much like commercial broadheads. Very thin, very sharp, no forging involved.