Hey all

I did an oil hardening on some blades yesterday, and as I expected, they warped a little bit.

I knew that the blades would be brittle before tempering, but silly me I tried to correct a little bit of the warp-age on a Scottish dirk....the first little tweek in my vise got a lot of the warping out, but the second......*SNAP*

Broke the tip right off! Yes I know.....I have already given myself the appropriate amount of scolding and the 'You knew better, but did it anyway' speech.

I've already kinda-sorta made up my mind to forge another blade....but I would like to salvage this one if at all possible since I have so much work invested into it already.

I'm wondering if forge welding it back together is feasible, using a scarf weld and then draw it back out?

I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any.





thanks for taking a look

Iain

You can try it, but I would probably just reshape what is left.

I HATE IT when that happens :angry:

I would re weld it and just draw it back out. Years ago I made a recreation of the Wallace sword as it stands in Sterling. It had been broken and repaired 3 times. So. I broke the one I made and re did it three times and it came out well :)

ahhhh :/ did the same thing with a 'rifleman's' knife... same consquence too I was able to draw my tip back out, but I'm not sure if you'll be able to do it with your dirk (can't tell how thick it is

my vote is grind it to a new profile you didnt loose a lot of leingth it will still look ok...

I don't think I would sell a repaired blade the same as an un-repaired blade; but you might find a buyer going for an authentic style repair for greater accuracy.

Make sure you normalize well as the welding heat will promote grain growth!

I'd go ahead and make a new on for that project and then do the repair for a using knife for yourself and *see* how it works after the repair!

I own none of my good blades but every one of my mistakes!

Hey all, thanks for taking a look.

I'm not looking to sell this blade, it's one of my first, and (especially now!) there's a few too many mistakes with the blade and handle for me to try to sell it for what time I have into it.





I would prefer to simply weld the tip back on, instead of reshaping/re grinding. The blade is a shade under 1/4" on the spine so it does have a decent amount of thickness.
It's also an older dirk blade pattern which is a steep triangle. With a more modern 'bayonet' style military dirk blade I could probably make it work, but with this style, grinding the tip down would look odd to me...I'm guessing you more experienced guys would do a good job of it, but I would likely just make it look worse.

Obviously I have a lot more to learn about making blades, because I have yet to know exactly what normalizing is.
Maybe I've been doing it all along and just don't know it. :-)

So, what's a good way of correcting warpage at or after this stage of the process? I was told that a rawhide mallet on a block of wood was a good safe way.


Thanks again

Iain