Sly

Ok well to start you would have to understand a few things about the metalworking process itself. Not counting those who work with mild steels a smith will usually heat the steel to cause a transformation in the grain structures, for blade steels usually austenite, and then soak the metal for a sufficient amount of time until the grains have grown to allow forging. There is plenty of videos of armature smiths using a torch to heat the steel and not maintaining phase transformations and then just hitting it, mild steel doesnt seem to care but for tool steels and high carbon steels this is a big no no, the steel requires heat and time to maintain a transformation. The higher the heat for a longer period of time the easier the steel is to forge. As well when the grains sufficiently expand through a process of diffusion they break apart and reform into larger grains. if the same heat is applied for a period of time the grains will grow at the rate of the heat. This makes the steel ductile enough to forge, too cold or the wrong phase state and the steel will break (applying again to medium, high carbon steels and alloy steels) (a grain is a collection of iron and carbon as well as other elements in a crystalline structure which acts as a single particle) So onto propane. It is very easy to adjust the settings to maintain an exact heat, it is also fairly clean but without special methods the steel can experience decarborization during welds (see the bessemer process) welding is less effective using propane due to oxidation, a smith may use flux to compensation for this or spend time cleaning the steel outside the forge and welding not using the forge to bypass this, it wastes alot of material though. unless the forge is specifically rigged to create a reducing atmosphere. Some smiths will mix carbon in with their flux to compensate for this. The advantages is that it is very consistent allowing a smith to reference sites like this one and others, gather information and then use the desired parameters to heat work and quench the steel for something like a tool or a knife. Charcoal has the advantage that is very easy to create a reducing atmosphere, has a much higher potential heat and has less loss of metal if a proper reducing atmosphere is applied thus the steel can gain carbon content. you can make your own steel using charcoal and nails welding steel together and carborizing them in this method. Welds are easier to preform because the reducing atmosphere has lower oxygen content, the added carbon gets absorbed into the welds making them stronger. Maintaining a charcoal forge however is a skillset of its own making, you can stir and pile the coals and adjust airflow but it requires the smith to actively monitor and be vigilant about everything, including crap that gets in it like decomposing firebrick that can ruin the steel or drain heat. its also messy and causes pitting moreso then propane, a smith has to do alot more cleaning of the steel using charcoal as well as the surroundings, the smith also gets soot and lots of other crap on them. when forging with charcoal I usually come away covered in black when I use propane I dont worry about sitting down on my couch afterwards. Cost wise I would say charcoal is a little more expensive but I prefer propane for the forging and heat treatment process because its cleaner and pits less, but for the welding I use charcoal and flux. Alot of smiths will have their own experiences with both methods and each smith usually has their own unique forge and tools. Each person you talk to will have their own opinion and experiences, im sure there will be follow ups with: I get different results, but they are doing different things im sure.

20 mule at home depo is like 4.50$ a box, you can also use straw, bone, or ash.

I would like to point out that flux can be used to protect the steel when heating the steel over a prolonged heat from burning up. I use 20 mule borax, love it.

Satanite is your friend.

unstable phase states are something us smiths know exist and play around from experience and theres alot of times a smith will just put the steel down and leave it alone for a time period but never really explain why, same thing with heating the steel and working it, in videos the smith doesnt exactly say: im going to austenize it to do this to do that. In fact most smiths dont know the specifics but they have a passive comprehension of whats going on from experience. Just remember grain size matters equally to the phase state. If youre working on steel you are an applied metallurgist, the more you know or the more experience you have the better your results I just spend my free time doing my homework

ennnngh thats correct and so incorrect at the same time. So to attempt and correct as well as compliment your statement; Martensite is not in a stable state after quenching, it has its own unstable phase state, which is not listed on most diagrams like other unstable points, so give or take it requires a cooling period to stabilize. There are two schools of thought on quenching depending on the method. the first is to allow the steel to cool all the way down allowing for (some) the martensite to dissolve back into iron matrixes and carbides, straitening/grinding and then tempering afterwards. The more common secondary method is to quench the steel but keep it above 275 with room to spare for transport into the tempering method maintaining a continuous phase transfer where the martensite is potentially brought back up for an extended period of time to the desire phase state, potentially developing bainite because it has gone UNDER the magic S curve if so desired. The first method requires a specific higher austenizing temperature which usually thoroughly hardens the steel but retains austenite which independently resolves back into iron and carbide depending on the steel. phase states are a form of dissolution and formation, it takes time for the structures to reconfigure, the higher the temp the steel is exposed to the faster this happens. so to say you can VERY rapidly normalize steel up to forging temp 3 times and have sufficient austenite to quench, or you can maintain an exact temperature just above where you want to quench but it will take a VERY long time to get there. Same stretch of road the speed you use just determines how fast you get there basically. same principle with tempering, if you do several very quick high heat tempers it can achieve the same possible results as a very long soak time at exact tempering temp. it is in a sense a matter of how the heat and matter slowly or quickly shifts. another important factor is not just the phase state or the real important factor is the grain size, when the steel is austenized it forms nice neat structures in the grain boundries. when you quench they shrink down and compress giving you your hardness, the tempering allows for those grains to grow, the time and heat again determines how large they become allowing for the steel to become ductile again. The smaller your grains the harder the material is but also the more brittle (not factoring in carbides which have their own hardness independent of grain size) the larger they are the tougher they are. Train tracks deliberately are austenized for days until the austenite expands so much the grains burst and reform into extra large grain spheres and their sized is maximized, basically hot rolling but the mechanic to this is that the internal structures are destroyed and reformed into the most ideal and evenly spaced out as they can get because in a state of dissolution the matter wants to be as far away from itself as it can get. you can also use this principle to weld steel because the grains will eat the welded material and reform it, in a sense repairing the steel, bloomeries are welding in this fashion, either very hot for hours or mild for days, achieving the same effect, but you wont find weld lines on bloom steel where the steel has bonded and mills hot roll steel for days in the same matter to ensure the steel is what it should be. However those spheroid austenite grains will turn into spheriod martensite and then disolve back into iron and cementite (not martensite), if you quench them because they are inconsistent with the rest of the material. you only see this effect after hours but if you were to continously forge your steel and keep it always at austenite and then quench it, it can happen. This is why we cool our steel all the way down, restart the phase diagram, normalize and then specifically quench and temper. The Spherite has its own unstable and stable points NOT found on the phase Diagram. (so basically if you dunk a part youv been continously working on it may have stable austenite and small amounts of spheriod austenite that isnt yet stable, bad idea.) You always want a sufficiently stable point at the start and relative stable point at the end. So looping back around it is possible to have a blade you can quench to martensite but have large enough grains for your blade to be ductile enough to cold forge strait without tempering where the steel decides it really likes its formation, or you can have something so brittle it will shatter if you touch it. it depends on your grain size. Where and when you can hit it depends on your phase states stability as well as its size. This is sort of a sweeping statement but http://www.hybridburners.com/documents/verhoeven.pdf this pretty much outlines the exact details. Hope that helps -Sly

http://www.hybridburners.com/documents/verhoeven.pdf here you go, download and print this off, everything you need to know.

also blacksmiths dont make mistakes, make the first part into a cleaver.

Well to help with your problems, what is the steel, was it annealed prior to normalizing, how are you normalizing, what Austenite time are you holding/ temp and is it water/oil? also if you work it at all you have to reundo any stresses.

I had a neighbor complain so a cop took a measurement of 63 Decibles, the tree stump and given its a wrought iron/steel plate anvil its not too bad, its loud enough to echo but not in the danger zone of 85. I am limited to 7 am to 7 pm city limits though which sucks. havnt been around those parts in about 5 years so im not up to date on the sites anymore, but its like any other junkyard you just pay for the salvage, any turbine part is usually CM 154 though.

If I was going with a guillotine flatter personally I would just make a 3 inch wide guillotine tool like a fuller guillotine, thats alot of expensive steel though.

I was sort of in the same boat, flatters are expensive to buy one and its a massive block of steel, you can do it by hand but with a block that big you gotta whittle away at it. I ended up settling for rehandling a 10lb S7 sledge and shaving the face flat to work as a flat surface hammer and just use very gentle but firm deadblows of sort s grabbing it by the throat.(firmly slamming the surface and not letting it bounce off) it follows the same principle but its not as nice, plus side is you dont need a striker but you do need to be accurate. its a ghetto alternative. Other thing iv done was use S7 oversized stock and just hit that when I have a striker.

Yeah but flatliner you can raid the junkyards near the airport on california avenue where the aerotech gets dumped.

that new knife looks really good, I like your tastes in woods as well, the big rectangular block (bloodwood) in the center is what I would use for that, save that sexy purple heart for something special

I had to think about that for a moment I suppose that might be an issue of environment, I mostly forge outside in a backyard where its not too much an issue but if you were in a enclosed environment with concrete floors I definitely could see that being an issue. As an army vet my hearing is sort of already messed up, so the anvil doesn't sound that bad, I still pass hearing tests but I have an angle which is a blind spot that I cant hear from. sorry to disturb the forum.

anvil rings are sweet music though...

you never want to quench the normalizing heats but quenching the temper is always a good idea after it is finished, in some cases it can add extra martensite. If youre using propane then you need to set the temp in the forge to sustain an austenizing temp for about 30 minutes, the purpose behind this is that you will allow the austenite to fully form and alleviate stresses. if youre using charcoal then you will want to thermo cycle it by evenly heating the blade and then letting it cool to glowing red and repeating the process till at least 3 times for best results, charcoal isnt exactly an even heat so air cooling the steel allows for the heat to disperse evenly, it still applies with propane but its less relavent when you can simply sustain a temp. Where the color scheming comes into play is for the traditionalists like myself who use the forge itself to temper the blade, in which case the steel is being exposed from 1000-2000 degrees of heat to temper it depending on the method and the heat has penetrated the steel quite efficiently, it doesnt work if there is a simple exact tempering temperature of heat in which case time is required to diffuse throughout the blade and allow the martensite to breath as it were. If I can put it in an oven afterwards I still do it. It looks like a decent knife, hand made objects will always have intrinsic value, I still carry and use my first shoddy knife. Hope that helps. -Sly

because it wasn't written "heat treatment for blacksmiths" it was labled for bladesmiths; then "other people", which is sort of true I guess in who manipulates the steel the most, would be bladesmiths in basically making their own steel and then knife makers and then smiths, its just the wording can also be read: people who treat the steel and then try to work it. Which isnt that off considering for some steels like A2 we have to austenize it fully each and every time before hitting it since it air quenches and has a plethora of unstable phases as it cools. or that can be "youre doing it wrong". if you read the title to someone who isnt involved in our world they would ask "there's a difference?" It's clever because its an insult and not an insult at the same time, if you misunderstand it then the fault is on you, but its an insult none the less. It's an oldschool type saying something without saying it. But then who is insulted anymore with titles like: Blacksmithing for dummies.

The problem inst necessarily the stock, its the stresses. even though its a thick part of stock the stresses end up located about half an inch to an inch on the right of the blade on the tang. the blades mass adds to that and creates a sheer point, if you have a tapered tang then the stresses end up getting distributed down the tang in a shared load versus localized, not entirely but enough that it wont care. there are a couple ways to avoid that. One of the ways to avoid that would be to have a curve instead of a 90* angle where the blade meets the tang, just a single one. On smaller knives you might not care but on a bigger blade like this you would notice it if you took the spine of the blade and smashed it on your anvil repeatedly, its kind of difficult to make that though with the fittings snug against the blade (assuming that is your intention), a popular way of doing it is to have that curve meet the tang and then have the fittings further down the tang. The second method is to quench the entire blade and then on tempering, bring the tang short of glowing and let it air cool to give it strength. the third is to do the tang as found on swords. Its especially important when you add the holes for your pins, I would recommend giving that hole at least a inch n a half distance from the blade on the tang if you add one that close, you don't want it on the stresser.

List of simple tools, harbor freight belt sander, cheap whetstones. harbor freight usually has pig iron stones for about 3$ as long as you level them you can use them to make a knife sharper then a razor as well as some sand paper, and then later get nicer stones to work up the grits going from lowest for stock removal to a finer grit belt to get the edge and then stones. Charcoal forging is very much an experience type deal, you can do more with it then propane, but propane is more consistent. I like propane but my hearts in coals. I also recommend looking up Vehoeven's guide for bladesmiths and others who heat treat and forge steel. (yes the name is an insult) I would also recommend investing in some 1084, and looking up Kevin Cashen, a ABS Mastersmith who practically wrote the book (he actually did write the book) on heat treating knives. His website has the info for some of the steels. That said about 80% of the problems with heat treatment come from batch variance, The steel conforms to standard usually with a +5 or -5 variance in carbon and a range of around +10 or -10 in alloy content. A slightly different part of steel can effect heat treatment in silly ways so take a grain of salt when you get slightly different results. Merry Christmas

I might also add you might get better results quenching and keeping it above 200 and immediately tempering while its still above that 200 line, as one single phase shifting rather then cooling it off all the way and trying to modify it as multiple heats, you will retain more martensite that way. (that method also uses a secondary quench to room temp in water or cold oil to seal the temper)

Looks like something that might be found in a doctor strange feature. its interesting.

very good geometry on that fuller, I like the fluidness of the construction on this blade, also the leaf behind the blade made for a very nice presentation! Keep it up

Color temperature is a form of surface change and doesnt indicate much, except in cases where you heat a part like the tang and let the color shift up the blade, because then it is an indication that the steel has heated like a thermometer. Blue is usually at a temp of 590. the air in your oven is usually much hotter then the temp setting, while the object may only heat up to the setting because it has to absorb that heat, especially near the coils. so you blade may be blue colored and light blue colored, but it doesn't mean your blade was tempered to 590. did you quench the tempers at all?

New to this site but I would agree on the tang being too thin, thats a huge stress point. the tang should usually taper, it means you have to have a bigger notch for your fittings to attach to but the tang should always taper, strait barstock is the weakest structure, triangles are stronger. also that looks like a pretty serious crack on the face, if thats a crack and not a scratch, scrap it and start over.