Help with hammering a farriers rasp

[walkerironworks84]

I'm trying to forge a knife from a farriers rasp but holy cow, this stuff is solid! I hot cut a piece off of the end, got it up to forging temp and with a solid blow I hardly moved any of the material. It just seems like it's really tough, I've never had this much trouble with a piece of steel.
The piece I cut is about five inches long and probably 1/8" thick. I finally got the blade end shaped but I'm trying to draw out the handle end and I'm having trouble. Any advice would be great.

[ThomasPowers]

I forge farrier's rasps quite often and do not seem to have this problem; are you heating it to an appropriate temp? How large a hammer are you using?

[walkerironworks84]

Well I'm heating to a bright orange and I'm using a three pound cross pien

[pkrankow]

I was having a similar problem with a bit of a leaf spring. I was not heating nearly hot enough.

I looked up 1095 and it works between 2050F and 1700F. "bright orange" is almost the temp it goes back into the fire to reheat.

[walkerironworks84]

Cool, well this weekend I'll really try to throw the heat to it and see if it gets any easier. Thanks guys

[matto]

take the hole file or the part you are going to use heat it to a dull to bright orange and stick it into a bucket of
wood ash or vermiculite till it cools (may be a day or two) so if you have a couple do them all at once. the wood ash and vermiculite slow down
the cooling more than normalizing it by heating and setting aside the forge, makes it soft.

[walkerironworks84]

Cool thanks Matto. I'll give it a shot.

[Frosty]

Annealing won't have any effect on it's forging characteristics.

Try gradually working at higher temps till you find the one that's right. Another thing you might try is using something like a straight pein to directionally draw the tang. A fuller or drawing across the horn will serve the same purpose of directing the force of the blows where you want it.

Frosty the Lucky.

[finn;-)]

And unless it is an old farries rasp it actually isn't great steel. A freind of mine was talking to a Simonds rep and he rattled off the steels that the modern manufactures are using and they vary from Bellota at the high end 1035, and I think the bottom end is around 1018-1010. Too high a carbon content and the rasp will snap when you wack a horse on the butt;-) And it is often a good idea to grind off some of the teeth near the edge (before forging ;-)to be sure there are no coldshuts, and water quench the steel. They do make nice farm knives, very durable, and easy to sharpen... ;-)

[walkerironworks84]

I wasn't getting it hot enough. When I really got it "hot" the metal moved easily. Thanks guys