Quenchcrack

Diamondback, I tried all day Friday to contact you because I had questions, I left phone messages on your cell and at home. I sent you an email. No response to any of my efforts to contact you. You may have a fine product but your customer service needs work. Please contact me at one of the numbers I left on your phone or by email. R K Nichols

Anyone ever put a Z-burner in a Whisper Baby? The burner is rated for up to 350 cu in and the WB is only about 140 cu in. Am I going to have a 3 foot dragons breath?

I used to know all that stuff........

Grant, do you teach at or attend Mines?

I will add my support for ITC. My WhisperBaby heats faster and more uniform than before I coated it. It still won't reach welding heat, though.

Standard quote regarding a careless person is "they could tear up an anvil with a rubber mallet".

Blacksmiths 200 years ago may have found out by bad experience that cold iron can break at loads that would not be a problem in warmer temperatures. This fact was not "scientifically" realized until our Liberty Ships began to crack up in the North Atlantic during WWII. Material that would be considered tough when warm begins to transition from ductile to brittle as the temperature drops. Every alloy has a peculiar curve which defines the temperature it is considered 'brittle". Today, ferritic steels can be tested at -40F and still be ductile. The big question is "does wrought iron behave this way"? Since Sulfur, Phosporus and Tin have a negative effect on toughness, I am sure the old anvils with the steel plate are indeed at risk of brittle failures at low temperature. The old guys probably just put a heated iron on the anvil and warmed it up.

Ed, join the crowd. Lots of confusion on this. When you harden the blade the first time, you hope you have achieved a fully hardened structure: martensite. However, in high carbon steels there is a tendency for some of the austenite (the stuff you form when you heat to non-magnetic) not to transform to martensite. This becomes retained austenite. The first temper after you quench will soften the martensite AND cause most of the retained austenite to transform to martensite. The martensite formed during the first temper needs to be tempered. So we temper a second time. I prefer to temper about 50 degrees colder on a second temper so I don't over-temper the steel but this is really hard to gage if you temper in your forge. If your wife lets you use the oven, it can be done pretty easily. You can temper a third time but this follows the law of diminishing returns and I doubt that for most of the alloys we use a third temper is of any real benefit.

Steve, do you know how many times I read the mis-use of a metallurgical term on this and other sites? Like "Austenizing" and "Retained Martensite" and "Hardenability instead of Hardness". I gave up trying to correct these errors because when you point them out, people turn on you. They accuse you of being a know it all. The glossary in that article was "borrowed" from a site on Japanese blades. The credit is at the bottom of the glossary panel. Unfortunately, the site is no longer functional. We can either perform a "Whack-a-Mole" routine trying to correct these errors , or we can just chill out and accept the fact that a lot of folks just don't really care enough to learn every detail. Misinformation on the web will flourish with or without our intervention.

JPH, no argument about Don Fogg. A truely unique man. As for The Fabricator, well don't do it unless you think you can do four or five more. They have no shame about coming back to ask for more articles!

Don Fogg is not just an artist but he is largely self-educated and formidably so. What he doesn't know about steel metallurgy, a bladesmith doesn't need to know. A very sharp guy.

I forgot to mention that Don had complete editorial control over that article and reviewed it prior to publication. And what did Don do for a living prior to becoming a bladesmith? He was a technical writer.

Steve, I wrote those articles. As any good writer knows, you must gage the level of experience, interest and understanding of your intended audience and write appropriately. As Phil correctly observed, these articles were written for a general metalworking publication, not an encyclopedia of bladesmithing. I chose not to dwell on the technical details of knifemaking since this was an article about Don Fogg, not about knifemaking. I'm sure "The Fabricator" would be glad to publish an article about pattern-welded steel if you feel qualified to write one.

Not sure where I saw the name "Little Uglies" but it seemed appropriate. Each made from a half turn of 5160 RR car spring about 1/2" diameter. Hardened in canola oil, forge tempered.

I'm not sure borax is poisonous in solid form; the fumes might be but I know when the stuff is molten, it will go through soft fiber refractory like puke through a prom dress.

Joseph, I have a smith-made chisel exactly as you describe. It is extremely well used. The socket looks to have been made as you said and it is NOT welded. Give it a try.

Woo Hoo! I am waiting for my bonus check to come in to buy one too! I am tired of my WhisperBaby just not getting hot enough to weld.

Very graceful curves. I have seen some "free-flowing" sculptures that look like a bicycle that got run over by a dump truck. Very nicely done.

You heated it to black????? It should have been a visible red at non-magnetic. Maybe you are just not getting the thing hardened? Thermal shock, not associated with a transformation to martensite can cause distortion. Also, if the cable is made of low and high carbon steels, you need to austenitize to a higher temperature to get the low carbon steels to transform to austenite prior to the quench.

Now you need to find a source of ITC100 to coat the kaowool with. It really helps.

I have a jar of ITC100 and the instructions say to lightly spray water onto the refractory, fiber or brick, and then apply the ITC 100 by spraying or brushing. It does not indicate that anything other than the water be used to prep the refractory. I will be coating my WhisperBaby forge this weekend and posting the results of the rehab job across the street.

I always thought you should progress to more more complex work and the need for special tools will just become obvious. At that point, you make the tool; that's what blacksmiths do.

Those are slicker than snot on a glass doorknob!

Jeremiah, my WB is 8 years old and had a puddle of scale melted into the hearth brick. I chipped it all out and repaired it with ITC 200. Gonna coat the whole inside with ITC100 tomorrow.

Yep, CGG for sure. I wonder where all the bogus detail about how it was built came from?