MattBower

This is why I use Tempilaq and Tempilstiks.

Funny that this comes up, because I was looking at that mace page about a month ago and researching how to make a flanged mace. And Thomas, in the course of that research I found the old post you're talking about! That's a clever suggestion you have there. But why would you need to cut the flanges? Why not just make one big series of accordion style folds, then weld the two ends? (Then copper braze the whole thing to the socket, as seems to have been the case with some of the originals.)

If the face is still steel, but somehow softened, it doesn't need to be carburized. The carbon is already there. It just needs to be heat treated -- which is not a simple thing for a mass that size. But unless it was in a fire large enough to get the whole anvil quite hot, I don't know why the steel face would be soft. It seems much more likely that it was milled away.

Hmm. I think part of the problem here is that the term "normalizing" is not very clearly defined. When I do a normalizing cycle on simple high carbon steel I do the first cycle to around 1600-1700 F, then allow to air cool well into the black, but not to room temp. (The temperature doesn't have to be precise; it just needs to be hot enough to deliberately grow grain and help make it uniform.) The next two cycles go to 1550 and then 1500 to reduce grain size, cooling well into the black in between. All of these are non-magnetic temps, and at least orange to my eye. This is a pretty typical normalizing strategy for bladesmiths. It produced the grain structure you see in my pic above, which was just fine until I overheated the edge immediately prior to quenching. Grain grown does not begin until you reach full austenite, and it is far more sensitive to temperature than to time. Take a look at this O1 held at 1510 F for five hours, then quenched and broken. (This was done just to prove the point that temperature matters far more than time when it comes to grain growth.) The grain is superb. So I can't agree with the claim that you should never see orange when you normalize. If you're not making austenite, I don't think you're refining grain.

It's easier to split them green, certainly, but what would be the harm in ripping it in half and bandsawing out a blank (or a couple) from one of the halves? Of course I'm assuming it isn't riddled with knots and checks to begin with.

That's a pretty good sized piece. Make yourself a bow and you'll still have plenty left over for a few dozen handles! :)

No, as a practical matter I don't think there's any way to carburize a wrought iron anvil face sufficiently to turn it into a real, hardened steel anvil face. Although it's temperature dependent, as a general rule carbon penetrates iron quite slowly. With pack carburizing, at 1800 F you might get a case depth of 0.01" per hour. At that rate you're talking dozens of hours to get a meaningful thickness of steel. You'd probably also get blisters on the anvil face. Then you'd have to heat treat the thing, which is not a simple thing to do well. When industry carburizes, they're looking at depths of hundredths or thousandths of an inch. You're talking half an inch or more. If you've milled off most or all of the steel face I would tend to think your best bet is probably to reface it with hardfacing electrode.

Who cares about the specs? That's a deal you shouldn't pass up even if you can't use it in this particular project!

That's certainly true. I've heard that old time blacksmiths had a tendency to develop cataracts later in life. But even if that's true, they were full-time professionals -- and I gather that even among them this was only a problem for the minority. So the risk is probably quite low for hobbyists and part-timers, even without shaded lenses. OTOH, some people smoke for decades and live into their nineties; that doesn't necessarily mean we should all try it. Some folks are more risk tolerant than others.

The red and buried part is likely what did you in. Normalizing typically employs air cooling. Grain growth is a fuction of time and temperature. If you bury a hot piece of steel in vermiculite, it'll stay hot for a long time. If it's hot enough when you bury it, grain growth will continue for a portion of that time. Normally I'd say red isn't hot enough to form austenite and cause grain growth, but I guess that depends a lot on your calibrated eyeball and the lighting in your smithy.

We've been over this subject -- what kind of eye protection to wear while forge welding -- on a couple different forums that I frequent in the past few years, and have never reached what I consider a completely satisfactory answer. That said, I'm not convinced that didymium is really especially useful for smiths; in fact I think if you're not careful it may be counterproductive. Didymium blocks the "sodium flare" of bright yellow light caused by sodium in molten glass. But even assuming that forge welding produces similar wavelengths of visible yellow light for the didymium to filter out, the fact is that the sodium flare is mainly an annoyance and an inconvenience; apparently it's not really harmful. More importantly, at least some didymium glasses apparently block almost nothing other than the bright yellow visible wavelengths: this seller specifically says, "More of the Didymium (we carry 202ACE) standard glass workers glasses, blocks bright yellow flare, but not much UV and no IR." That's a problem! IR and UV are the wavelengths that do the damage! If you have a pair of those glasses and you're assuming they'll protect you from all the nasty invisible wavelengths coming from your forge fire, I think you're asking for trouble. AFAIK normal smithing fuels emit little ultraviolet, but they spit out lots of infrared. So it looks to me like standard didymium glasses may actually be counterproductive for forge welding using common fuels, in that they create a false sense of security and keep your pupils fully dilated, without blocking the harmful wavelengths that you're probably actually encountering. As best I can tell you want glasses that block IR, and ideally UV. Anything beyond that is basically gravy. Somewhere online I once found some OSHA standards for eye protection in industrial settings. For the closest situation to forge welding that I could find, the recommended minimum was something like a #2 or #3 welding lens, just like Glenn recommended.

To answer the original question, yeah, that's big, nasty grain. Below is a pic of the end of a freshly hardened and broken piece of high carbon steel. The satiny part -- everything but the part right near the edge -- shows pretty good grain. You can see where it got a tad hot at the edge, and the grain started to grow. Not good. That may be why it cracked in the quench, and thus became available to be photographed. (By the way, that's a penny in the foreground for scale.)

Besides heating the whole thing evenly to the proper temp, there's the matter of quenching (you'd need a big tank, and a good amount of quenchant). Tempering something that big would hold a couple challenges, too. (But perhaps your shop is much better equipped than mine.) Professionally made leaf springs aren't very hard to come by. I, too, would leave this one to the pros.

The spare tire mechanism is really just a clutch, and by all accounts a good one. It happens to have been first used on a Dupont style linkage hammer, but you could just as easily use it on a Rusty style. That's what I'm leaning toward, if I ever have space for a power hammer.

No, not all oils are created equal. That's why each commercial quenchant manufacturer makes several kinds. Some are fast, some are slow, some are fast at first and slow at the end, etc., etc. Generally speaking, for oils, lower viscosity means a faster quench and vice versa. Warm canola is a relatively fast oil with a very good curve -- fast when it should be, slower when it should be.

I'm no chimney guru, but here's an article that you may find useful: http://www.beautifuliron.com/chimneys.htm

The oxides that form on stainless at high temperature are really tough and will prevent filler metal from wetting the steel. You probably formed a thick oxide layer during forging. Did you sand/grind it off before you brazed? What sort of flux did you use?

You have plenty of blacksmiths/bladesmiths in your neck of the woods. Find yourself a reasonably local group (leads here: http://www.abana.org/affiliates/affiliate_list.shtml#statelist) and go to a meeting. Ask about getting stock for making tools. Let 'em know that funds are tight. Someone will point you in the right direction, and there's a good chance someone will just give you some material. If you lived nearby I'd be happy to give you a couple leafs from a leaf spring, but shipping them all the way across the country would be silly. And yes, the clips -- a.k.a. rail anchors -- will probably serve pretty well for what you want.

So you're welding 5160 to 5160 on the folds? That's not too bad, I guess. I've seen a lot of folks complain about having trouble getting 5160 to weld to itself. Nice job. You've got some pretty different steels in there; I hope they hold together in the quench.

Wow. That's a very neat trick. I wish I had the time and tuition...

Well, I said it helps. I didn't say it's necessary, or that I routinely do it. But for the really motivated ones out there... :)

On scale removal, it helps to take the piece out every few hours and scrub with a bristle brush. Cleaning off the loose oxides helps the vinegar penetrate and work faster. I only recently learned that vinegar is great for uncured epoxy cleanup, and much safer than the usual solvents like acetone. I see BIGGUNDOCTOR beat me to that one. Citrus juices (probably also citrus cleaners) should work as well. The acidity is the key. Rusty vinegar will blacken woods that are high in tannins, like oak. It seems to be a fairly common technique on antique knives. You could do faux bog oak this way. If you're working with a lower tannin wood, you can add tannins by soaking the wood in really strong tea, walnut husks, etc. (Or you can just use tannic acid. It's readily available on the Internet.) More info here. That guy uses quebracho bark powder to make his tannin tea, but regular ol' store-bought tea also seems to work well.

On the knife handle I put a few coats of shellac as a basecoat (mainly because of the oiliness of the rosewood), then about three coats of polyurethane. The rawhide got three coats of polyurethane with no base coat. I don't necessarily love the look of heavy varnish, but I hope this knife will see plenty of use and I wanted to make sure it was sufficiently protected from the elements.

It's not smart to breathe smoke, period, and coal smoke is worse than many. It contains sulfur dioxide, which combines with water (as in your lungs) to make sulfurous acid. Heavy metals. Particulate junk. Probably some carbon monoxide. Hanging out in a cloud of the stuff for an extended period of time isn't a great idea. Could be that you just coincidentally have a case of the flu, or it could be that something in the smoke is causing your problems. I'd get it checked out either way. And be careful next time. [Edited for scientific accuracy.]

Thanks, Brian.