sandman799

Well I’ll tell you from my experience with 5160 spring steel when I started forging I went out and bought two full leaf spring sets to play with, and I took and cut a 12” piece off and then cut that down the middle lengthwise and started heating and hammering one piece out and man it was hard to move, took 6 hours forging to thin it down and draw it out but I ended up with an 18” x2” billet and made two knives from it, the second piece I annealed overnight in vermiculite and the next day I started drawing that piece put and what took 6 hours before took a hour to draw out o the second piece that I annealed, so I can definitely tell you that annealing 5160 spring steel for me at least made it a lot easier to work and just heating it up doesn’t harden it, you need to quench it to make it harden back up, mine worked so easy I thought I had a different type steel at first, also I always forge my leaf spring steel down to 3/16” to 1/8” and if I draw it out to 3/16” I grind it down to 1/8” for making my blades from it and then thin the steel more on the grinder if I need it thinner then that BC