Woody

My condolences to the family. My prayers are with them

Woody

We spend countless hours at the forge creating beautiful objects and then devote mere minutes to applying a finish to the object. Often all it gets is a quick blast from a can of flat black spray paint or we burn some wax or oil on the metal and call it good. I think the fruits of our labors deserve better treatment. How about everybody listing their favorite ways of finishing their metal creations. Some of my favorites are listed below:

1. Watco Dark Walnut Oil with a little gold paint mixed in to give an antique bronze finish.

2. Dilute oil based paint with at least 50% polyurathane varnish to give a translucent paint finish where the metal will show through.

3. Cold gun blue with a lacquer or clear coat finish applied over it.

Woody

my junkyard steel list shows connecting rods from cars to be 1040 steel or plain carbon steel with 40 points of carbon. It also shows connecting rods from trucks to be 2340 which is an alloy contining 3.5% Nickel and 40 points of carbon. Either one has 10 points more carbon than a HC RR spike that many people turn into knives. Interesting idea for a blade anyway.

Woody

brucerdn:

My thoughts and prayers are with your brother. May God keep him safe and return him to you and your family.

Woody

Motor oil is an effective quenchant, but it can contain many toxic addatives that are vaporized when hot metal is quenched in it. Breathing the fumes can be hazardous to your body. Vegetable (cooking) oil is a much safer material for quenching steel. You should have a tight fitting lid handy for any oil quenchant tank in case a fire results and also a fire extinguisher at the ready. Although most of us have done it at one time or another, quenching steel in oil inside a shop or garage is not recommended. This is something that is safer to do in the open air.

Woody

When high carbon steel has been quenched and before it is tempered it is EXTREMELY hard and EXTREMELY brittle the state is called "glass hard" for a reason it will break with the slightest provocation just like glass. Blades should be tempered immediately after quenching. Also when making knives out of files be sure you grind all the teeth off the file first otherwise they will produce cold shuts when the blade is forged and make it even more prone to breakage.

Woody

Clark:

It looks very similar to what some of my Lakota Friends have had me forge for them as buffalo spears. The spears they constructed had a short shaft, 4 or so, and were ment to be used from horseback. If I were you I would have it checked by the Anthropology Dept at your nearest college before I converted it to any other use, you may have a valuable antique.

Woody

no hamon, I didn't differential temper them

Canman: you will need some basic blacksmithing skills to make a knife from a file unless you are just going to do stock removal, that is taking a file and grinding away everything that don't look like a knife. However you will need more knowledge about the properties of steel and the effects of heat upon the steel. A down and dirty file to knife process follows.

1. Heat the file to above critical temperature, that is the temperature where it goes non magnetic. You can check with a magnet to tell when you are there.

2. Insert the hot file into a bucket containing ashes, vermiculite, lime or other insulating material and let it cool overnight. This will anneal the steel and make it very soft.

3. Grind all the teeth off the file if you plan on forging it into a blade, otherwise the teeth will make cold shuts in the metal as you forge it which will develop into cracks in the finished blade.

4. Heat the blade to a bright yellow and forge to the desired shape, reheating as necessary. Don't try to forge the blade below a bright red or you will put stress cracks in it that will only show up when the blade is near finished.

5. Once the blade is forged to you liking, heat it once again to above ciritical temperature and let it air cool, this is called normalizing and will disipate the stresses developed by forging and shrink the grain in the steel that has grown from the forging process. You will get a more uniform grain structure if you can hold the blade at temperature for a while before letting it cool.

6. Once the blade is cool you can grind and finish it as you desire, then reheat it to above critical temperature and plunge it point first into vegetable oil, this will harden the blade to a glass hard state but it will be very brittle. Take the cooled blade from the oil, wash off the oil and immediately place it in the oven at 375 degrees and bake it for about 3 hours. This will temper the blade, removing some of the hardness and brittleness while keeping it hard enough to hold a sharp edge.

7. After the blade is cooled from the tempering process it is ready for final grinding, polishing and the handle of your choice .

Keep accurate records of what you do so that when something goes wrong, and it will, you don't have to make the same mistake twice. If there is anything I can do to help you let me know.


Woody

short sword is Torsion Bar off a Toyota, probably 5160 or perhaps 1095. Long sword is a piece of Rifle Barrel Blank according to my junkyard steel chart it should be 4140 but it got harder than what I would expect from only 40 points of carbon but it is very springy it will take a 45 degree bend and spring back but you can hardly cut it with a chain saw file. Both heated to just above critical temp and then quenched in room temp veg oil. Short sword tempered at 375 degrees for 3 hours, long sword tempered at 425 degrees for 4 hours.

Woody

Here is the Katana I finished this week along with the Wakazashi that I made earlier this year

Katana has a 28 inch blade and is 36 inches overall

Wakazashi has a 14 inch blade and is 21 inches over all

http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/1166/size/big/cat/500

Woody

Jason:

It is called an explosion. In the coking process, the gasses produced are extremely flammible and much of them goes unburned. Unburrned flammable gases collected someplace probably in the vent pipe and when they found their way back to the fire and ignited with explosive results. Glad you were not injured. I once left my rivet forge for lunch, put a block of wood in the fire and covered it with green coal and patted it down with a shovel. When I finished lunch, I came back fished the block of wood out of the fire, ignored the smoke wafting out of the intake for the blower. There was a boom that rattled the windows in the house, caused me to jump clear over the anvil and the neighbor lady to come out and see if I was ok. The unburned gases from coal are not only very flammable, then also contain numerous toxic components.

Woody

Aaron:

I generally bake my blades for 3 hours. This link Blade Steels, Steel Analysis and Heat Treating Methods.- 1st page has some good info that may be helpful to you

Woody

Ed you have been in my prayers for a long time. I will continue to pray for your recovery. Best wishes, may God be with you.

Woody

I too think that this movie is over the top, yet to the film industry nothing is sacred anymore. They can put anything on film. As long as it has multiple explosions every 5 minutes, tons of bodies laying around and dosen't mention God or contain a prayer it will make millions. The First Ammendment gives them the right to produce this tripe, but we can send them a message that it is unacceptable by simply not paying to see it.

Woody

Have you thought of using the face of the hammer to scallop the edges and instead of just dinging it all over with a ball pien using a straight or cross pien lightly at various angles to give it some texture then perhaps a nice rusty finish.

Woody

Welcome Pine. there are several knifemakers and blacksmiths in the Phoenix area and one in Bullhead City that frequent this site. You can usually catch them in the chat room in the evenings. They may be able to help you in your search for an anvil. There is a guy in Skull Valley that has anvils for sale on ebay from time to time but he wants a princely price for them. Used to be an antique shop in Show Low that had a lot of old blacksmith stuff there but it's been years since I been by there. Anyway welcome aboard.

Woody

Pam: My thoughts and my prayers are with you. Perhaps some of our able bodied smiths in the area would be kind enough to help you with your demo.

Take care and may God Bless you

Woody

Victor:

I think the anvilfire store sells it, don't know about the export end of it though.

Woody

Duck:

The two round pins suggest that the drill was built for use in a foreign country. Voltage used overseas is different from what is standard in the US. I am not absolutely sure, but I think that running a drill built for 220 volts on 110 would not work or it may do damage to the drill.

Woody

Very nice, good looking knife and sheath

Woody

I finished these three knives last week. The one on the right with the sheath is for my nephew who is a cop in Tucson, AZ it is a 5160 blade with a black Micarta handle. The one in the middle is a Cable Damascus blade with a Mesquite handle. Mesquite courtesy of Tio Pick, thanks Tio. The one on the left is a 5160 blade with a black Micarta handle.

http://www.iforgeiron.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=953

Woody

Excellent Robert, absolutely beautiful. You do teriffic work

Woody

Jim:

Your friend is included in my prayers

Woody

Here is another site with much valuable information, click on property data on the menu at the left and then select the steel type it will give you forging information, heat treating etc.

Principal Metals

Woody