Aden Cassidy Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 what temper(heat) should I make a bowie style leaf spring blade. thick spined, finishing off the rough smoothing on the belt grinder tomorrow then will temper. Don't know if I will sell it or keep it as I have been asked to make some knives for people, blade is approximately 1400-1500mm long, haven't measured yet. Don't know what it will be used for. ps: will post pics tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loneforge Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 Hi Aden, I treat leaf springs as 5160. I triple temper at around 375-400 Fahrenheit in my oven....they all vary a bit.(ovens) I'm going for a bronze color when I temper. A bit of experimentation will get you there. Remember the hotter you temper the softer the blade will get. Finding the perfect hardness without knowing what steel you have will take some experimentation. I found this the best for the springs I'm using right now. Every time I use a new "mystery" steel I do the experiments all over again. Drop me a PM if you'd like to know how I do my tests for this...Cheers and I hope this helps you out a bit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 Knowing how it will be used and how the owner likes their blades helps a lot too---a knife used to split kindling for the cookfire needs a different temper than one just used to shave every now and then as a bragging piece. So it seems backwards but "heavy" knives I tend to temper softer than very light delicate ones as they tend to get heavy usage and the lighter ones tend to get lighter usage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Hale Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 You woiuld llikely benefit from reading all of the heat treatr information on this site, Including the Stickies. Not real sure wot you mean by temper as a lot of folks to to the craft refer to the whole heat treat process as temper. As you study you will see wot I mean by that. For a blade a steel has to be given the full heat treat process. Even if it is ground not forged it develops stresses that need to be relieved by normalizing.Then hardened then tempered. Put off the oven step until you are clear wot you need for this blade....It will pay off in the finished product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aden Cassidy Posted October 15, 2012 Author Share Posted October 15, 2012 Alright then, thanks for the help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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