MattBower

Now that I'm no longer typing with two thumbs, I second Thomas's recommendation of the Hrisoulas books. A sword absolutely should not be your first foray into heat treating steel, regardless of how much experience you may have with other forms of metal working. Heat treating is a profession unto itself, and so is ferrous metallurgy -- which is also the subject of doctorates. I'm not saying you need to earn a doctorate or become a professional heat treater to heat treat blades, but to do it right, there's more to know than you'll get from a few quick posts on this or any other forum, and you really do need to gain experience with smaller blades. Theory is crucial, but in the real world there are a dozen little (or not so little) things that can screw up the whole program.

Stormcrow is dead on. Your understanding of heat treating seems very shaky. And that's the most crucial part of making a functional blade. Short version: after nomalizing as appropriate for the existing state of your blade, heat evenly to 1550-1600 F and hold at that temp for about 5 minutes, then quench in preheated oil. The long version will take more time than I have right now.

Ric, it looked in the video like you were preparing wrought iron for at least some of your crucible charges. Did I misunderstand what I was seeing, or is there some particular reason you decided to mix it up between wrought iron and direct reduction from ore?

Its has come up many times on different forums. Some folks use it. Vet grade is fairly cheap in bulk. A genuine quenchant guru told me it's a very poor quenchant. Realize that the term mineral oil can mean any oil derived from petroleum. The details of the refining and additives are crucial.

Soak in acid to remove scale. A overnight soak in regular strength vinegar will loosen most of it, then you can scrub it off with a wire brush or coarse sandpaper. Stronger acids will work faster, if you want to hassle with them.

I believe the Brownell's product is repackaged Houghto Quench G. Don't hold me to it. McMaster also carries two commercial oils, one slow and one fairly fast. I forget who makes 'em, but I think it's Houghton or Heatbath (which now owns Park).

As someone said to me when he first showed up, I doubt he's ever forged anything outside World of Warcraft.

Before cutting a propane bottle, I fill it completely with water to ensure there's no gas left inside.

Yes. This is one reason many folks recommend reducing the working temperature as the forging nears completion.

The advantage of commercial oils is that they're engineered to produce a nice cooling curve, and to oxidize slowly. Oxidation changes the cooling characteristics of the oil. That's the main disadvantage of some of the natural oils, like canola.

Oven tempering will be more accurate if you have good temperature control in your oven. Tempering by letting the colors run, e.g., from a hotter, unhardened part of the work, is imprecise and doesn't really give the work enough time at temperature for a proper tempering. Two cycles of an hour or so is a pretty decent rule of thumb for tempering. Of course with some tools the tempering temperature really isn't that critical. H13 is a very good hot work alloy. Others here can tell you more about it, but if it was properly hardened in the first place, the hardness can be in the mid-30s RC even after heating to up around 1200 F. If you take minimal precautions to keep it from overheating, it can last a long time. 4130 and 1045 are not not hot work alloys. Unless you cool them very frequently during use, they're not likely to stay hard for long. A lot of folks would say not to bother hardening them if you're going to use them in hot work. Just leave them normalized and cool frequently during use.

Huh. I dropped a big piece of orange hot leaf spring in a plastic slack bucket full of water, and didn't have any problem at all. Of course the steel was ruined. I figured the Leidenfrost effect saved the bucket.

Ductile iron can make decent anvils, though they'll be far more chip prone than a good steel anvil. However, I agree with Southshore: that anvil looks like junk. The design is just terrible.In fact I'd be a little surprised if someone wasted good ductile iron on something that crude. I'm very skeptical of this guy. Note that he has a feedback score of zero. Do a yellow pages search for "Kruse" in Westfield, Indiana, and you come up with nothing like an iron foundry. (There is a "Kruse Machine Company" about 10 miles away, according to Google.) I'd save my money if I were you. If you keep your eyes open and are patient, for $140 you can get a used, antique, quality anvil that'll be a known quantity.

Like TM3 said, 5160 is a deep hardening steel, so you can get away with a lot in terms of quenchants. Any reasonably low viscosity oil heated to around 120 degrees will probably do the job. Vegetable oil, peanut (including used)), canola, mineral oil, ATF, motor oil....the list goes on and on. However, be aware that many of these will not give acceptable results on shallower hardening steels.

Heat treating with coal can be tricky. Here are a few suggestions: (1) Use charcoal for heat treating. It's a little easier to control. (2) Build a firebrick "cave" on top of your fire to create a sort of oven. That way you don't have to actually insert the work down into the fuel. You can see what you're doing, and the steel won't heat as fast -- which in this case is a good thing. (3) Heat work by pumping or sawing it through the fire. This lets you handle longer work in a shorter fire, it lets you see the work as it heats and, again, it slows down the heating -- which in this case is a good thing. (4) Slow way down on the blower. You don't need (or want) your fire much hotter than the temperature to which you're trying to heat the steel. Coal forges easily get far hotter than that, so you have to make a conscious effort to back off. (Again, using charcoal as your fuel helps with this.) I second the muffle suggestion. In fact muffles are good for all kinds of forges, not just coal. Good luck.

A long bar known as a porter bar was run through those holes to provide handles for lifting the anvil (or pieces of it) into and out of the fire when it was being forge welded, among other things.

Indeed.

Yes, it can be difficult. But if you want to achieve decent results in heat treating, you have to learn to do it. What sort of forge are you using?

Is there a particular reason you must have a wooden barrel? 5 gallon plastic buckets ,or anything else with similar capacity that's watertight, will work just fine and can be had cheap or free -- unless you're concerned with the aesthetics or something.

I have used it successfully. It doesn't bubble like laundry borax.

I have used the 55 gallon drum method that Grant described, with good success. Lee Sauder and Skipp Williams use a lot of charcoal for iron smelting, and they make it themselves. Their charcoal retort is a modified steel dumpster. This is a pretty serious piece of work, and not something you'd want to light off in the middle of suburbia.

Great work on this, OddDuck. I've thought about this, but never had the time or the gumption -- or probably the skills -- to make it happen. Why not offer a few different attachments for the shaft -- handle for hand cranking, pulley for belt drive, sprocket, etc.

This is why I've never tried to mess with using this type of fan as a blower!

Agreed, although I do find the hardy handy. And I have recently started to appreciate the horn more, since I discovered how useful it is for drawing out. (Took a while watching Brian Brazeal and Mark Aspery videos on YouTube for that to click with me.) There absolutely are other ways to accomplish both things, but they're not quite as convenient.

Cones measure heat work, not just temperature. They're meant to be heated very slowly, by blacksmith standards. Heating at the rates encountered in a forge will mess with the results in ways I couldn't begin to predict. The charts don't address heating rates of tens of thousands of degrees per hour. Grant is absolutely right: a much easier way to answer your question would simple be to try to weld with the thing!