How hard to forge by hand H13 Hardie cutoff?

[ibs740]

Ok the vast about of info. is sending me in circles. My plan is to buy stock to make some spring swages and a cutoff hardie (one inch hole). H13 seemed to be a great choice (keeps form at heat, easy? to heat treat, tough). I was reading some of Brian Brazeal's comments about tools and he mentioned that it was very difficult to forge by hand H13. 4140 was available free to him and worked just fine. I see lots of commercially available spring swages and hardies made from 4140 so the metal is a good choice. My question is; What are peoples experience hand forging H13? I'm looking at 1 1/2" rd to work for both my tools. Also how does H13 and 4140 respond to welding (the spring part of swage)? I have access to stick, tig, torch. I can more easily/cheaply get 4140 in square solid bar which makes my life easier. Opinions please?

[brianbrazealblacksmith]

The H stands for heat resistant. It was not formulated to be forged.

Welding spring tools doesn't work too well either. It would be better to rivet your springs on spring tools. Think about suspension parts on cars, trucks, trains, ect..., they are not welded on.

[ibs740]

 

The H stands for heat resistant. It was not formulated to be forged.

Welding spring tools doesn't work too well either. It would be better to rivet your springs on spring tools. Think about suspension parts on cars, trucks, trains, ect..., they are not welded on.

 

Hi Brian, I see lots of commercially sold spring swages from 4140 (they claim) that have welded
springs. Is it just that they are heat treated by someone in the business?

Do you harden your cutoff hardies? I assume they are 4140?

[brianbrazealblacksmith]

I know the spring tools are commonly sold out there with welded on springs, and people that have made and used spring tools with welded on springs know they break right next to the weld. I saw it the first time I got around the power hammer spring tooling. The answer to the problem was not to forge a spring and tool from one piece because the same thing can happen. Any transition from the spring to the tool that can take on more stresses than any other part along its length will bear those stresses and weaken. With rivets the stresses are bore on the rivets which can be tightened or replaced when needed. The top rivet farthest from the tool takes most the stress and gives the play that prevents the spring from bearing the lode.

I don't harden my hot cut hardies unless I want to cut something cold.

[David Gaddis]

In industrial situation I have witnessed many welded springs..electric welding...but the attachment was made with a taper. Than made the transition of shock down an extended path instead of a shear straight cross-path. But there is little doubt that a welded structure in spring steel is lesser desired unless there is no other option.

 

The easiest example of welded springs is heavy truck with welded eyes on the ends of leafs that are interlaced with other eyes. That makes two or more layers in the eye position. Of course they were properly heat treated afterwards. Freightliner trucks used those for years when they used 9 leaf springs on the front suspension. THE RIDE WAS HORRIBLE TOO.

 

 

Carry on

[Ridgewayforge]

I would like to throw out a consideration: Why not make the hot cut out of a mild steel body and chisel a groove in the top before it is sharply pointed, and weld in a piece of leaf spring. Is this idea a doable one, or should it be rejected altogether in favor of a solid spring steel hardy? I would like to understand the reasons behind this.

[ibs740]

For me part of the reason I started playing with blacksmithing is to make tools and learn about the various methods required. I have worked with wood, metal, motorcycles, cars mechanical things most of my life so I can always figure out a way to accomplish a goal. I own lots of welding gear and electric welding a piece into another is something I consider cheating in regards to blacksmithing. I do cheat as I just did by making a hardie shank former from breaker plate, cut with a cold cut saw and welded together. The traditional way is drill a hole close to the hardie size and drive a square drift through it. I always work by myself so cheating (at least for now) made more sense.

[Stash]

Welding in a piece of HC stel into a mild base is certainly do-able and should work. As for me, I like to keep it simpler (the KISS method). Broken breaker bits (probably 4140 or so) are easy to forge down and work perfectly fine for hot work, without any heat treating. Like Brian said, for cold work you'll want to harden and temper. Spring steel, being 5160 or so is a little harder to work, but just normalized should work well too.

 

Steve

[ibs740]

Opps almost forgot, thanks all I have my answers.

[David Gaddis]

Seems to me that a properly welded 5160 piece should be about as good as anything...within reason. And preheating 5160 then welding with say 7018 in a good formation should be well in line. i have welded a fair amount of 5160 even without preheat but I know that is wrong. I have not had any 5160 welds "let go" since learning a bot more about welding. Most of the 5160 stuff I weld now is done TIG with ER70 gas rod filler. Then again I let the torch warm up the area generously prior to becomming molten, all under argon gas.

[metalmangeler]

You ask about hand forging H13, it can be done, I really like the tooling I have made using this steel. Especially for handled chisles and punches. I would think hand forging 1.5 dia. round will be more than you really want to do as well as not end up with a properly forged part. If you use modern welding to make this into a spring tool you need to consider that H13 is an air hardening steel and you will need to preheat and likely post heat your weld or it will likely fail very quickly. In forging tools from H13 you will need to be able to temper the struck end softer than the working end or your tool will not be all that it can be.
For a spring swedge I would not use this steel because I would not expect to get a spring swedge hot enough to get much bennefit from this expencive steel. The real place where this stuff shines is from tool abusers getting things to hot.

[JNewman]

I think it is going to be tough to forge 1.5" h13 with a striker.   By yourself I think it will be a real struggle.  I have welded handles and or mild steel springs onto both 4140 and H13.  I preheat the tool and then weld.  If the tool is used a lot the spring often breaks but almost always the weld is not what fails.   The handle or spring is usually what breaks beside the weld.  I am talking about power hammer tooling though which sees thousands of blows.  You would have to use a tool an awful lot by hand to get the same problems

[David Gaddis]

I have some H13 that I think forging, then welding to a stem or handle may be an advantage. Mostly I have used 5160 type stuff for hot and cold work but now I want something for extended hot work under a hydraulic press. Your idea of welding the H13 to another stem  brings this picture into focus. So I will be planning on a generous pre-heat and post-heat. May be very interesting....stay tuned.

 

 

Carry on

[Frank Turley]

Many a horseshoer has forged pritchels and forepunches out of H13, usually of 5/8" round. Because of the high alloying,* you would be hitting H13 a few more licks than if it were mild steel of the same shape. H13 is delivered annealed, so on an end-to-end tool, I would leave the struck end in the annealed state and just forge, harden, and temper the business end. 1 1/2" round would be a booger-bear to forge by hand; not recommended.

 

H13 is a hot work steel, meaning that it can withstand being used on or immersed in forging-hot steel, and it will last longer than a cold work steel. It has a quality called "red hardness" meaning that If the tool turns a faint red or dark red in use, the tool will tend to maintain its shape. It is that good!

 

In a small shop situation, some other hot work steels that are sometimes used are H21; S1; S7. H stands for "hot work" and S stands for "shock resistant." The two "S" steels are versitile, because they can be tempered for cold work or hot work. Not all tools that make contact with hot steel need to be hot work steels. I have made some slit chisels and hot punches of H13, S1, and S7, but if the tool is a big, blocky tool like spring swages or fullers, you can get by with mild steel, spring steel, or 4140.

 

Here's some information I gleaned about H13 from an old Bethlehem catalog and the Rural Industries Bureau, London, England, temperature chart.

 

Forging 2050 - 2150F (bright lemon); stop at 1650F(bright red). After forging is completed, cool slowly in dry ashes, lime, or vermiculite.

Annealing 1600F (bright red). It is best to furnace cool if you have the equipment. I cool in dry ashes, lime, or vermiculite, not according to Hoyle, but it has worked for me.

Harden heat slowly to 1850F (bright orange). Hold one hour per inch of greatest thickness [On small tools, I have done all right  by not holding, but simply taking a slow rising heat]. Quench in still air and temper immediately.

Temper 1150F (dark red)

 

*Typical Analysis in percentages;

Carbon 0.40; Chromium 5.25; Silicon 1.00; Molybdenum 1.25; Vanadium 1.05

[Patrick Nowak]

H13 can be forged just like most other steels. The challenge is in getting it to move. Becuase of its composition it takes a great deal more power to work than a grade like 4140 or 5160. It is a superperb material for an anvil cut off hardy. I've made a few of them but I've alway used a power hammer for this work. In smaller sections like 5/8 and 3/4 you can hand forge it. You can even do it with one inch but you'd better have a pretty big hammer. The reason for using H13 in this application is because you can make the cross section thinner than you can with other materials which means you can more easily cut your work pieces, especially thicker cross sections. Also, because it is a heat resisting alloy, it will maintain its hardness at much higher temperautres than 4140 or 5160. I have found that even with thin section tooling I can cold cut stock on my H13 cut off.

 

As a side note, tomorrow we will be forging some large diameter bar (27" OD) from ingots that start off in the 40,000# range.

 

Patrick

[ThomasPowers]

I love H13 for slitters and thin punches; however my hardy is the broken off end of a jackhammer bit with the broken shaft forged down to fit the hardy hole and the blade end "sharpened" in the forge.  Now this is a much plainer and lower carbon alloy and has worked fine these last 25 years or so.  Any time it gets accidentally struck (like *EVERY* time I teach a class!) I just zip it along the grinder and touch up the edge---I like it softer than the hammers as it's a lot easier to dress the hardy than to deal with a slice in the hammer face!

[David Gaddis]

Patrick would you please post some pics of the very large forgings. Many of us have only seen such in youtube archives

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Carry on

[forgemaster]

Patrick will you be forging that 27"dia with one sledge hammer, 2 sledge hammers or maybe one of those bench top Anyangs?  Is that H13 that is to be forged, or something else?

 

Phil

[eric sprado]

Frank: You say quench in air and temper immediately? What is the quenchant you temper in??? Sorry. You lost me. Eric Sprado

[Frank Turley]

Eric,

 

The book says to quench in still air to harden. I place my work pieces on a block of graphite (non reactive) to cool. You could also use a fire brick or a pile of coke.  Immediately following that, when the steel is at ambient  temperature, you reheat to dark red to temper and again place on a non reactive material to air cool.

 

There may be an exception, but all of my tool steel specs say to temper immediately after hardening.

[ibs740]

Hello All,

 

As I started this H13 thing I should tell people what I ended up doing. I bought some 4140, 1 1/2" round stock for my hot cut hardie.

 

Am I glad I listened to John Newman, Brian B. etc. and not spring for the pricey special order H13. The 4140 was an absolute pig to shape by myself. My forge has zero problems heating but shaping one handed with a 2.5lb hammer was hard. The cutoff works fine but she ain't pretty. Use of an 8lb sledge driven by 2 hands would have been perfect but I love my wife and she's not getting anywhere near 2000ºF steel.

 

Chisels from coil spring are relatively easy to shape at least as far as deforming when hit.

 

There is theory then reality and with this blacksmith stuff I am constantly amazed at how little I know.

 

thanks again

[Francis Trez Cole]

this may help you

 

http://www.diehlsteel.com/products/h-13.html?gclid=CIGu4s-ijrYCFQ-znQodMxEAfQ

[kokomo]

I was a diemaker and we used h13 only for our dies. It is very heat resistant but even worse is the shock resistance. We made transmission cases among other items and would shoot a 50 pound aluminum pour at about 1500 feet peer second at 1296 degrees. the h13 would literally take thousands of shots before showing wear or washout. What you end up using is a metal that needs high temps to make it workable and then it is still really tough. The good part of that is once made into a tool it will last forever, the bad part is it is a pain to work. I use it for punchs, sliting chisels and cutting tools