MattBower

I've used Ospho, actually. Wasn't quite sure what the other ingredients were there for.

I completely understand. Mad science is much more fun than the easy way. But I usually find that it's not much cheaper in the end, if that's a consideration. And on occasion it turns out to be much more expensive.

Overmod, "This is exactly what I was trying to achieve by removing the blade from the oil at the 'right time'." That's fine, as long as you realize that this doesn't result in tempering (or at least not much, depending on your steel). After this process you have basically a full hard blade, which you then need to go back and temper. As far as what's causing the "activity" you're seeing, I thought I had posted something in this thread about carbide banding, but I guess I'm getting senile. (And I'm not even 40!) Check out this thread and see if it looks familiar. Dendritic Steel - Bladesmith's Forum Board Yes, normalizing should be done at decreasing temperatures to refine grain size. If you don't trust yourself to judge it by eye, think about purchasing some Tempilaq. (Tempilstiks would work, too, but I find Tempilaq easier to work with.) 1600, 1500 and 1450 would do. Paint the blade with 1600 Tempilaq and heat just until the lacquer melts. Let the blade air cool to room temp. (Or if you're in a hurry, let it air cool way into the black range, then quench.) Repaint with 1500 and repeat. Repaint with 1450 and let cool to room temp. Good to go.

I recently used a painted-on solution of alcohol and boric acid (roach killer) as an anti-scale compound during heat treating, and I was extremely pleased with the results. (Obviously, you let it dry first. The alcohol evaporates quickly, so this isn't a problem.) I did not invent this idea. More discussion here: http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/f90/heat-treating-my-homemade-anvil-14523/index3.html#post135362

It's not hard to order online, but I never had much luck finding it locally. Some folks say they've found it in the paint section of Lowe's and Home Depot, but the stuff I've seen usually has other ingredients besides the phosphoric. There's a Behr Concrete Rust remover that's half phosphoric acid, but I don't know what the other half is. (It could just be water.) Naval Jelly is mostly phosphoric acid, but there's other stuff in there, too. In your shoes I'd probably order it. Or just buy a parkerizing kit from Brownells and be done with it! :)

I think the problem is this: steels that are suitable for heat treating by eye are all water or oil hardening, and you'd have to remove the SS wrap before quenching in order to get a proper, reliably uniform quench. Generally if you stop to fiddle around with that sort of thing between the forge and the quench, the piece will have cooled too much. As far as I know, SS foil is normally used for air hardening steels, which don't present the same problems. You could use it to prevent decarb during annealing; in that case slow cooling isn't a problem.

I'd expect it would probably work OK on either extremely fine cross-sections -- like needles -- or on steel that has a very forgiving cooling curve. (Even then, you'd still need enough mass of quenchant for the blade size.) Stuff that will air harden in thin cross-sections should also harden in something like an apple or potato. But it's really just a gimmick. No way you can carburize like that. Too little time and temp.

I've gotten steel orange hot in an open wood fire, and I've gotten soda lime glass hot enough to get quite soft -- somewhere north of 1400 F, maybe a couple hundred degrees north of there. So yeah, you might be able to heat treat simple carbon steels in your fireplace. I wouldn't try to forge that way, though.

I'm going to guess that the standards for carbon content of ground rods are pretty flexible; I don't think carbon has much to do with how well they perform their intended function. If you etch copper with an acid or ferric chloride, and then put steel in the etchant, the copper will plate out onto the steel -- but there'll be no real chemical bond to speak if. You can wipe off the Cu pretty easily. So yeah, acid should take that stuff right off. The copper will probably re-deposit on the steel, but it won't be tightly bound and you should be able to easily scrub it off. Even an overnight soak in vinegar will probably do it, depending on the thickness of the copper. Of course a little coarse sandpaper would accomplish the same thing like, right now, and it won't create the problem of how to dispose of your metal-contaminated acid. Modern pennies (post 1982 or 1983, IIRC) are something like 95% zinc and 5% copper. I'm skeptical that copper in the forge is really a problem unless you're setting your work down in a big puddle of dirty, nasty, copper-containing flux in the bottom of the forge. I've made copper-nickel mokume in my gas welding forge and subsequently welded steel and wrought iron in there with no problem -- but the work never touches the bottom of the forge, where all the nasty crud collects.

Thanks, Jake, but I'm no guru. I know enough to help a new guy, I think, but I'm constantly reminded of how much I don't know! I'm just now getting to the point where I know what ferrite and cementite are without having to look them up every time. ;)

Limestone is useful as a flux in smelting and refining steel. But no, I don't think it's what you want to line a forge.

I Forge Iron - BP0078 The Metallurgy of Heat Treating

He means take a picture of the entire anvil from the side. You have pics from the horn end, the heel end, and straight above, but none showing what the profile of the anvil looks like.

Willowbilly, don't take this the wrong way but you need to get your terminology straight; you're confusing folks who're trying to help you. It's not entirely your fault; some of the old-timers had a habit of doing the same thing, and I can be confusing for a new guy to sort out. When the blueprints come back up, go read Quenchcrack's intro to the metallurgy of heat treating. It'll really help you get your head on straight. What you need to do with your forged knives is harden them. You do this by heating them above a certain "critical" temperature until the steel undergoes a phase change to austenite (yes, in the neighborhood of 1500 degrees F for most simple carbon steels -- we'll get into that more in a minute); this process is called austenitizing. The method of heating the steel can be anything from an electric heat treating oven to a molten salt bath to a propane/coal/charcoal forge to an oxy-acetylene torch; they're not all created equal, but they all can work. (More on that momentarily.) Once the steel is austenitized you remove the it from the heat source and immediately -- while it's still at the critical temp -- quench it in an appropriate medium, known as the quenchant. Depending on the steel that quenchant could be brine, water, oil, air, nitrogen gas, or what have you. For backyard purposes it's going to be one of the first three -- brine, water or oil. Now, ideally you will soak your blade at the austenitizing temperature for a bit. Eutectoid steels like 1084(ish) require almost no soak, which makes them great for backyard heat treating methods. Hypereutectoild steels like the stuff your file is probably made of (and also including 1095), as well as most higher-alloy tool steels, really want to soak for 10 or more minutes in order to get all the carbon and alloying elements into the solid solution of austenite. Unfortunately, it's very hard to hold steel at a steady temperature in a non-temperature controlled forge. And if you overheat steel during austenitizing, the grain will get too big and make it brittle. So overheating is something to be carefully avoided. A properly hardened blade will be extremely hard (it should skate a file easily), but very brittle; if you drop it on a hard surface it's likely to break, and the edge is apt to chip during use. To reduce that brittleness you need to temper the blade, which means heating it at relatively low temperature -- typically 300 to maybe 600 F, depending on the steel and what you're using it for. This softens the blade slightly, but makes it far tougher, so it's not so prone to chippage and breakage. This can be done in an oven, with a propane torch, with a special pair of heated tongs, on a heated block of steel, or any number of other ways. Colors such as straw, bronze and peacock blue are oxidation colors that occur on steel heated to a few hundred degrees. They can be used as visual references that give you an approximate idea how hot you've gotten your steel during tempering outside a temperature controlled oven. So when you talk about heating your steel to straw, then quenching, that's supposed to be a tempering step. If your steel hasn't been hardened before you do that, you've accomplished exactly nothing. High temperature salt baths are one means of heating the steel during austenitizing. They have tremendous advantages in that they're very closely temperature controlled (no chance of overheating, they prevent decarburization of the steel, and they heat the steel quickly and evenly. All of these are extremely desirable qualities. But molten salts are extremely dangerous, and the furnaces are quite expensive. (Of course you can make one yourself, but it takes some skills.) The salts themselves are relatively inexpensive; there are many different combinations of salts with different melting points that can be used in heat treating, but for our purposes you wouldn't want a salt that just melts at 1500 F, would you? You won't find too many folks on boards like this one who're using salt baths -- some, but not too many. As a newbie who hasn't yet learned the difference between hardening and tempering, high temp salt baths probably shouldn't even been on your radar yet unless you're independently wealthy and have nothing better to do with your money. (And if that is the case: wanna buy me a salt bath?) It turns out that iron -- the principal component of steel -- becomes non-magnetic (reaches its Curie point) at right around 1415 degrees F. There's nothing "subjective" about this; it's a reliable scientific fact. That's not far off from the usual recommended austenitizing temperature for 1500 F. So it's very common among backyard heat treaters with primitive equipment -- most of us -- to use a magnet to tell them when their steel is almost ready to quench. The conventional wisdom goes along the lines of "take it a shade above non-magnetic, hold for a minute or so, then quench." Now, yes, there is some subjectivity in that advice! And I'm not going to tell you that this is an ideal method of heat treating, because it isn't. If you're serious about getting the best possible performance out of your blades, eventually you'll want to move on to a more closely temperature controlled heating method that allows you to soak at a desired temperature for 10, 20 or more minutes, which many of the higher alloy steels need for best performance. When that time comes you can think about an electric furnace or molten salts. But why don't you make some knives first, and decide if you like this game before you go making those kinds of investments?

I went ahead and PM'ed those instructions to him -- in case he can't find this thread! newbladesmith, it'd help if you could describe your forge. It's a little hard to figure out what your current setup is. As far as piping in the air, have you looked at some of the other forge building threads here? I'd link to some, but as of right now all the photos have disappeared from the forum. So here's a simple one on another site: Air tank Forge Build

Here are a couple guys who get lots of good reviews, but I whom haven't used personally. Kelly Cupples can sell you 1080, 1065, 1095, 5160, O1, maybe other stuff -- ask him: octihunter@charter.net 2807 Butterfield Rd. Yakima Wa. 98901 509-949-5231 Aldo Bruno has a variety of stuff, but I don't know all the details; I know he frequently has 1084 (which he has custom rollled), W1, sometimes some W2 (yes, really), and who knows what else. Ask him for an inventory/price list: njsteelbaron@gmail.com

God bless you both. Heal fast and well, Frosty.

Common problem. More info here: http://www.iforgeiron.com/forum/f7/scrap-yard-wont-sell-scrap-metal-14621/

That is a "real one"! Nice work. Hardfacing something that size would be a lot of work; I've done it to a much smaller anvil. I'd try it as-is for a while and see how it goes. It's not like you can't hardface over dings if you decide you want to.

Couple interesting things I noticed: (1) It looks to me like he's using an oil burning forge. (2) Anyone else notice that he appears to have an automatic water spray/drip of some kind on the ram of the hammer, so he can wet forge without having to stop and apply water manually? The dude is nothing if not efficient. And yes, I also wish I could see the hammer better.

Heck yeah; if you Google Image "enclume" you get a picture nearly identical to that. I suspect that you may need to speak a little French (or get some help from someone who does) in order to get very far with this inquiry.

Are you saying that this blade was ground cool from a file (i.e., never got hotter than a few hundred degrees during shaping)? Or was it forged from a file?

Jealous I am! Rrrrgh. Mmm. Beef. It's what's for dinner.

I'm really not sure I see the point of this. Why not just find a big chunk of steel and beat on that? This approach seems to assume that it's really important to have an anvil that looks like a "proper" (London pattern or similar) anvil -- which many folks seem to believe That's about the only reason I can see to go through all these gyrations, and "it looks [sorta] like an anvil" is about the only mildly positive thing that can be said about ASOs. But anvils don't need to look like anvils! Throughout most of man's iron working history they haven't! So why go to all this trouble trying to make somethng useful out of a chunk of pig iron, when you could just find a chunk of scrap steel (or weld up several pieces of scrap steel, if you're into welding) and have yourself something far more serviceable for less work, or at worst the same amount of work?

I second DL's suggestion. A plate with a hardy shank will be more efficient, energy-wise, than a piece of c-channel like you propose