Oberu

Mr Frosty, WIll you by chance be attending the Northwest Blacksmithing Association Spring conference in Longview Wa? Its this next weekend. Would like to shake your hand and buy you a lager. Also, excellent advice on prepping welds. I'll steal this from you and try it. My issues weren't welds but the center steel being absolutely man handled by the cladding.. splits, cracks inside, questiong my life's choices. I appreciate the wisdom an be good Sir!

Hello Mr Frosty, good to see you still around. I'm using store bought borax and it's in a parmesan shaker. I use a brush to clear off the slag and sprinkle it on the edges before putting it back in the forge.

Greetings all, been gone a long time. So I'm having a reoccurring issue. I'm making a laminate blade using an edge steel of high carbon, clad in 15n20, and that is clad in wrought iron. I'm on episode 3 of explicatories and thought I'd ask some of you beautiful minds. First attempt was using an edge bar of 1095 and it went great until the temper where the edge bar split down the spine as shown here. Next attempt I used an edge bar of 1084 and everything looked really good. I started hollow grinding the edge and found this. I noticed it was only on one side of the blade so I began chasing the crack trying to get past them. So my question is.. what the heck am I doing wrong? I know my temps were good and the material was good. Quenched in the proper oil at the proper temps and tempered twice at a reasonable temperature. I'm about to run out of curse words here. Thanks for letting me rant and I appreciate any feedback.

I'm wondering if the shape of the blades might have been something simpler. If you hammer in a bevel on a piece of metal it thins on the cutting edge and the spine begins to curl. You straighten the blade and continue. When you are done straightening you'll end up with something resembles a seax. Could it be that simple? I don't know but I love them as well!

Very nice work!

Thanks fellows. I quenched vertically. After thinking on it a while I don't think it had a choice. The geometry in cross section was so aggressive that the edge must have contracted much faster. I'm a bit surprised there aren't any cracks seeing the warp. Much appreciation again!

Hey fellows, So I cycled three times and then quenched this 1084 blade in canola oil today and it bent.. not in the typical direction.. at least not for me. The blade is triangular in cross section and 20 1/4" overall. I expect some warping down the spine on occasion but I've never had one bend toward the cutting edge before. Can anyone give me some advice on what I did wrong.. or a way to avoid this?

One of the handles carved up. Slow but going!

Further along.. now to finish carving handles.

Plugging away

Vince Evans and Jake Powning.

Nice! I recently made one similar following information Wayne. Mine is a single burner and I used one of Frosty's 3/4" "T's" and so far it's working great! Lots of great minds here and years of experience to learn from. Can't wait to see it fired up!

I play a lot at renaissance festivals with half a dozen old friends and it's good stuff. Years ago I realized that none of us would ever be able to afford things to add to our outfits so I started making them. I've made boots and belts, bags and kilts. Wasn't long before the knife bug hit me. This is the blade I started today. Followed by one I started a few weeks back that's further along. Big one is 1080 and the cleaner is 5160.

If you're worried about them coming apart, perhaps try drilling a series of holes through your "bread and welding them back up?

I like draw filing personally. It flattens and it's a good exercise.

I bought a hammer and it was pretty expensive to me. I spent a good deal of time shaping and polishing the faces to fit my needs. I worked with this hammer for a few weeks and needed a smaller hammer so I dug through my tool box and found an old hammer head that was my grandfather's. I roughed out the simplest handle you can imagine.. basically an oak stick and called it good enough. If I had to choose a hammer I'd take that old stick handled hand me down hammer all day long! The fancy hammer is just too hard. It all depends on YOUR tastes. Find what you like and what you need to get results.

Very nice grind lines! I use a file to get lines like that.. Nicely done!

I got it up to the colors i could find reference to normalized it three times, (( 1500 ish )) and quenched it in veg oil that i'd warmed by quenching an orange railroad spike into. I tempered it in the oven ( after cleaning it and scrubbing a bit.. the Mrs would kill me ) at 400 degrees for an hour.

Got my propane forge up and running thanks to of lot folk like Mikey and Frosty. Just getting things tuned in and kicked out this little knife ((en't really little )). 5160 that started out life as a 1/4" x 2" and ended up as .160" at the spine. Handle is from some wood an old friend gave me from some rich folk's porch that was demo'd. I'm not sure of the name but the grain matched the curve I was working with and it turned out nice. Let me know what you think! Lots of fun!

I would advise putting it in your forge as you would run it and adjust it there. From what I've learned you'll be looking for "dragon breath" or fire licking outside the forge to be be blue with orange and yellow flames to be a neutral flame. This will be what you are after.

Brazier, you aren't alone. This particular forum isn't very user friendly and the few people that are knowledgeable will usually scald you a few times before you get useful info. Keep at it and eventually they'll see you are serious and help. I wish I knew enough to answer.

Well it's alive... as for tuned or effecient I do not know. What I know is it will take this 1 1/4" round bar to a yellow heat in 25 minutes. I am going to make proper doors next. This was the third and final heat to get the ITC ready as per specs I can find. I'm psyched as it is but I'd love some advice if you see anything that can improved upon. I do not yet have a pressure guage but it couldn't be more than 10 psi I'm confident. I've been picking brains on this and I thank you for your advice up to this point and further yet. *Happy Dance*

I found this, hope it helps http://hightemptools.com/faq.html