alboz Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Hi guys iam 15 old and i just started blacksmithing iam new here .iam a hacker from albania andi love blacksmithing. i have saw different metods to temper the steel so which is better? using hot steel and parafine or used oil? post your oppinion and your way to temper please thanks . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Sells Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Before you ask a lot of questions, look around the site and read things. How to temper is based on why you need to temper. If you read a bit here, you would have noticed we have Heat Treating sections in the forum, as well as a separate section for it in blade work. Welcome to the Site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 I'm assuming you are referring to hardening of steel which is one of several different processes involved in heat treating. [normalization, hardening, drawing temper, (and there also can be other processes involved to and some processes can be repeated several times!)] It depends on the steel alloy---what is best for one alloy may destroy a different alloy it depends on the use---how you heat treat a hammer head made from an alloy may differ from how you heat treat a knife blade. It depends on your personal preference too; I like my knife blades to be quite tough and easy to sharpen in the field so I sometimes will quench in oil where others will use water. My heat treat for knives from the alloys I typically use: (often automotive coil and leaf springs): Forging: then after forging anneal---heat to nonmagnetic and allow to cool in dry wood ashes---should still be warm to the touch hours later. In cold weather I heat a helper bar up hot and stuff both of them into the ashes together. Annealing leave the blade soft for filing, drilling, etc Normalization: Heat to non-magnetic and allow to cool in still air 3 times. This refines the grain size for many modern alloys, Finer make a blade tougher! Hardening: Heat to non-magnetic and quench in warm oil. I prefer to used warm vegetable oil---cooking oil--- to quench in. It can be "used"; as I often do a base temper in our kitchen stove ---I don't want my wife to slay me in my sleep from putting cruddy used motor oil in our kitchen oven. Remember that oil will flare up---burn---no problem because it's in a metal container out in the forge. I have a lid I can place over the container to kill the fire. Then IMMEDIATELY draw temper! Tempering: I will usually use the kitchen oven to draw a base temper on the entire blade. After I have drawn the base temper several times on the entire blade I will use a small torch or tempering tongs to draw temper further on areas of a blade that do not need to be so hard---like the back of a single edged blade or the tang, again I do this several times. Then I am DONE with heat treat and can go back to finishing the blade being careful that it never gets hotter than the base tempering temperature. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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