River-Gazer

hi. i did manage to get some decent forging in now that my forge is 4 1/2 inches wide and 6" deep (alot of heat. takes only a few second to re-heat from red to yellow) and did some work on what... i think it was irnsrgn, told was shock steel, which is very hard to hammer at high tempurature. I worked at yellow, and higher at a point when i managed managed to fix a lengthy crack down the length of the steel which i made before i could get decent heat. I still cant confirm what it came from, but it was railroad related, and has been called a tie plate by members of this forum and several others in my life. And apparently, from what i heard from former co-workers, i strong and tough enough to withstand a .50 caliber flint-lock rifle round (yeah, my co-workers are a little crazy. someone almsot died what that fact was found out). The orignial stock, which i painstakingly cut from the tie plate with a hacksaw after annealing it, was about 3/8 by 1 1/4 by 6". What im going to link is rough work. it's not ready to meet the file, for it would be fa to much work. I had ran out of charcoal before i could finish it. It was forthe best, because, due to the difficulty of this material, it required me using my 4 pound hammer for the entire 3 or 4 hours of forging. Wasnt exhausted, but i couldnt pound with fervor. As a said, it's not done on the forge. jsut rough work. If you wondering aboutthe tang, it's going to be a tanto. it's 8 1/4" long (7 sun, 8 bu, 5 rin) http://www.geocities.com/ender834/first_knife_back.jpg http://www.geocities.com/ender834/first_knife_side.jpg As a note, this shock steel, at yellow hot, had roughly the consistancy of cold wrought iron, so i was pounding pretty hard. Please keep this in mind when judging. I'm not changing my name. It's my name on more modernly prarticipated taoist forums, and i cant think of a better one thats not taken (like watcherinthewater). This name, despite it all, IS tied with respect, on forums where the word 'mole' has never been spoken (didnt even know what it meant till a few weeks ago), jsut not from here... or that martial arts forum. I'm going to lie low, as i have on this forum for the last while. I'll let my work speak as i make it. This is my first work, and it's incomplete. I do listen, there is just alot being said.

Hello. I apollagize for the previous.I managed to set up a forge with stove pipe, foundation block, a brake drum and a 6.5 horse shop vac i had to purchese since the ancient one i had burnt out. I have managed to get some time into the forge. Umm... im not trying to support the claims i made, but as notes i wish to say, on highlander, no sane man hammers what looked like a flattened steel bar, carburizing the whole way, into a katana. It would almost be quicker to set up the whole tradtional thing. hmm... i've became alot less insane having found some good conversation to level me out. *jokative caffine twitch* It's realy been a life hobby to discuss all sorts of theroretics, which is mostly what this remotely revolves around. ummm... nom sorry, the hammers were not fifty, but if you follow this link, i believe thats somewehre in the 20# region http://www.galatia.com/~fer/sword/fujiyasu/swordmk3.html Yeah... i wont bring up 6th sense again. Ummm... i've found a great source of metal is RR rail plate. 5- 8 lb peice of nromalized steel which seems alloy and above 1% carbon, nad normalized for toughness. unfortunately, my only one is an 'anvil', though is very strong. all my works been doin' is cleaning of the rust, and i made sure to test it's strengh, for long-term purposed, by seeing if it will withstand a sledge blow. i dont use sledge on the anvil, but i know it's not going to break from a normal hammer. It's takes a long time to discuss the sorces for knowedge, and i think natural selection is a very good thing, so, if im foolish and die from what i do, despite precausions i take, it's little loss, and if i pull something off, woot. Either way, ya all benafit. One as ideas, one is the termination or disconnection from a total moron. morbidly upbeat?

I forgot to mention a few things. That bar of steel i have is actualy 1-2% mangenese, not 10%. Havent been around enough tool steel to be able to sense it's content acurately. Secondly, the only reasoning i can come up with for this sense i have is that is some sort of 6th sense. I know metal even when it's blackened. it's vanadium, moly, nitrogen, sulper, phosphorous, crome, nickle and im getting used to mangenese. Rough melting tmepurature, toughness, tempering properties. i look at silicon carbide metal-grade sand paper and i sense Si carbide's toughness and im pretty sure low hardening tempurature. I look at plastics and i know their properties and tempurature resistance. I know various ceramics in sand. how much organic matter, how much alumina, silica, limestone, whatever that yellow stone is... Materials i've been around in purer forms. i dont study it with my eyes or the other 4 senses, though it's still possible to do so. i sense and know it when i simply shouldnt if it were not some form of psychic i've always lived with. Relatedly, as i think i will make my signature, 'im crazy, but not the way you're thinking' Whichever crazy you think i am, this is beside the point. Finaly, ive got to make a decently strong strike plate for a japanese-style 50ish pound lop-sided sledge. at either 10% mangenese or about 15% nickle, steel can no longer form carbides. Therefore, i will, after i get the air heating rig going, cast a strike plate (like an anvil, but featureless) with alot of ni-crome car bumper added to it, and throw it into water as soon as it become solid. Since it wont form carbides, it shouldnt explode, and should have a great deal of elasticity and toughness due to the content of nickle and crome. I'll add mangenese if i can. I could have one only 100ish lbs that cant be broken by a 50 pound japanese sledge. It will have properties similar to the soft part of the katana. --------------- I'm crazy, but not in that way.

irnsrgn, I must tlak on grain of cast iron, but after the following my understanding of steel is related to the japanese style of working it. Concideration to grain, multi-alloying (the super-swords of old japan were alloyed with many materials and some could cut through a sun (aprox 1.3") of wrought iron without a visible dent or chip, though the test for simply exelent swords, rahter than legendary was a sun of copper. The japanese, because of how they worked the grain, had extremely pure steels, often introduced silicon into the steels (i may not be right, but i beleive silicon may form carbides at a tempurature below what iron does. below red hot. if it does, the steel becomes dark), sometimes used damacles steel... all this added up, along with their clay tempering technique allowed them to use very high carbon steels, well above 1095. To work the extremely high carbons, even as high as into the low cast iron ranges, you just need alot of heat and to maintain it at a tempurature give-or-take 50F, about yellow-white. As for hardening the steel... besides the well-worked grain allowed a great increase in toughness and flexibility, the clay tempering technique bares only about 1/16 or 5 rin of the edge and the rest is covered with a highly insulative clay, carbon dust and high silicon earth mixture, which, along with burning rice straw in the forge, introduces silicon into the blade. They also tempered it in warm oil. In the end, this gave about 1/4 to 1/5" of har edge and the body of the blade was soft, as if it were annealed, though the 2 or so % carbon allowed elasticity in the soft steel. As a note, though i have to test out how to get Si carbides to form instead of Fe carbides, and get the balance right if i cant find out the compound, silicon carbides are extremely shock resistant, in spite of silicon's brittle softness. I plan to discuss how one might be able to make their own steels on another thread, having done the math and science to go along with the idea, but 1 Mn, 2 Ni, 3 - 5 Cr, 1.5 - 2 C and a not yet calculated percentage of silicon would make a hard and remarkably tough steel, hardened in warm oil and tempered to yellow (if my theory that Si carbides form sub-red hot, yellow is as high as i chance). Without clay tempering, it would not be suitable as blade steel, but if it's Si carbides that form, you likely could harden it in water. Also easily worked at white-yellow every degree you heat air up to before you put in in coal will increase a forges heat by 92% of the increase, and probably 955 with wood. Preheat the air to 1200 - 1500 F going into a deep coal forge, and in a fired-clay pot or enameled carbonless moly-steel pot you could make your own 1+ caron steels and alloy them well. thats what im working towards. steel is expensive and made from ridiculously poor quality. My best steel could be like damacles, with a few percent nickle. I'm gonna start a thread on japanese styles of metal working if there isnt one. i hope someone knows some about it, cus though i have researched a bit, i've got cetain things which im not entirely sure about. as a note, that 25 lb weight i was hammering on was made of pig iron. Since i use a ten pound sledge smithing, i shattered it easily, despite it was on the soft dirt (make hammering real slow). using a tie plate now. not big, but stronger than anvil iron. mangenese alloyed. Eventaly i'll cast a 100 - 200 lb strike plate and make a 1 carbon, ~2 nickle, ~1Mn, 5 crome 50 lb lop-sided sledge, as going along (loosly) with japanese style. I'm going to be a steel worker and ronin musha with a minimum 4 shaku blade that can cut copper without a visible dent or chip... someday.

i just realized something. judging my the color of the rust, how slow it rusts and the rigidity of it, i think that i have 17 pounds of high-carbon mangenese steel. What a great starting material. i can bother to spend the time to make quality. *seated happy dance* Maybe with practice on tempering i could give a shot at a clay-tempered tachi. Need to find out how much edge to expose, 'cuz im not sure how much mangenese is in it. Felt liek 10%, but i cnat be sure.

ill work with some of the other steel lying around my house. Some of the steel around my house seems to have mangenese in it now that i think of it, but ill need it to make a better set of tongs and a forge axe for splitting blocks. Good 17 pounds of steel for brgining tools. Though i still want to see if cast iron's grain can be worked into something useful through drawing it out. I plan to get skilled enough to do clay tempering half-decently and plan to make combat-grade swords. Also hard knives. Any money in that?

hello. I'm new to working steel, but im well researched. (bear with me) making sure i fix the grain through working it, the only material i have to work with right now is cast iron, so ill be starting out making thin clay-tempered knives. I'd re-pour the cast iron to fix the grain, but the 1400c tempurate would probably melt the concrete walls of the forge i'll have in a day or two. At least for now, ill be using a bottom air-fed wood-fueled forge. If i need to, ill set up something to pre-hear the air the increase the tempurature, but ill need clay-based forge walls before i do that. i someday want to make a non-fold clay-tempered steel tachi out of 2% carbon, 30% nickle, 20% mangenese silicon steel. Would be indestructable and quite shock resistant, but i have to use old cast iron weightlifting equipting for both an anvil and forging materials 'cuz i dont have any money. Well, at least 2- 2.5% carbon steel will give me good practice in using easier materials. Will take a careful tempurate balance (at about yellow-white to yellow depending on whether im rough-working or finishing, in case ya think im crazy). 'least ill have a good straight razor and carving knives. Well, i guess i am crazy, but not the way your thinking I look forward to chat and such.