mark stephen

I gave another quick etch to the letter opener after heat treat.Still have a way to go.

The romans used iron for their spears so using mild steel would be pretty close.Mabey case harden the edges.

It might be 52100,but it might not be.Thats the bad part of working with unknown steels.Bring it up to critical and quench in a thin oil.If you dont have real heat treating oils then a veggy will work.Pre-heat the oil to around 100 F .Temper in your oven at 375f to 400f for an hour.Let it cool and check the edge for brittleness.If its chippy ,put it back in for another hour at 400f.Continue this untill you get what you want for an edge.

Heres a new billet of 1095 and 15n20.188 layers.Still ugly and has to be ground free of scale.

This 275 layer 1095/15n20 hunter is going to my brother this week.

Silica sand was used as a flux when everyone was forge welding true wrought iron and not todays mild steel.The forge welding temps are higher for wrought and the silica would act as borax does with todays mild steels and high carbon steels.

Salt is faster than water?Sorry, but its the other way around.Im taking about heat treatment salts.These are low temp salts used by the steel industry for quenching and tempering certain steels.Quench a piece(i dont care how thin)of 1095 in these salts and you wont harden it because its a slower quench medium than oils(true heat treat oils or veg.oil).Water hardening 1095 is to risky and will most likley cause cracking.Id choose a deep hardening steel for a hammer head.

Made this last week.My first one.

Its 250 layers,random pattern.

I have those days.I call them my" drop everything and set every thing on fire days."