Yesterday in class i decided to experiment with forging a old ball pein head into a tomahawk. 

 

I got the metal to a white heat and started shaping the hammer portion. I kept getting cracks along the the edge of the blade portion making it unusable i tried forge welding then got another crack. 

 

I have ran into this before with rasp metal making knifes out of it sometimes when i hit this type of metal it explodes. 

 

Thanks for the input guys, I'm guessing the bullpien is made out of some type of carbon steel. I don't run into this problem with car springs.

 

This is my first post on IFI 

white is WAAAAY to hot for hamer steels, and all steel is carbon steel, because  the defination of Steel = Iron + Carbon.  Try lower temps for forging.

Welcome to IFI.

 

If you're getting it to white, you're burning it which is one thing causing those cracks.  They are, or should be, high carbon steel and so need to be forged within a proper temperature range.

the last ball pien hammer i forged down moved like hot butter at an orange heat. surprised me,easiest tomahawk to date, but was hard to get the temper right. when i did, it held the edge thru a lot of abuse.

The best I've found for forging in the cheap harbor freight ball peens. I dont know what they are exactly but they are stamped alloy steel. They forge and heat treat nicely.

J

What color should I forge these to avoid cracks?

Only harbor freight ball pien I tried to forge crumbled like a week old biscuit. I have suscussfully forged several old ball piens from the flea market into handled punches. I forge them at an orange, never getting to yellow.

Orange to dark yellow for me, usually. Red's too cold but for cleanup with light blows, and white's too melty, plus you burn out your carbon.

 

So many options for cracks, hitting too cold, getting too hot, quenching unnecessarily, cold shuts from moving the outside metal more than the inside........stress fractures, are you annealing or at least normalizing? Got any pics of the work?

The only ones I have forged are the 32oz hammers marked "alloy steel" which I think are sold under the Pittsburg brand.. and I've taken them up to welding temps with no issue even under my 130lb air hammer. I cut the handles off first and run them through an annealing cycle in vermiculite prior to hammering but that's just old superstition for me after my first ball peen hammer fiasco 20 years ago which wasn't even from harbor freight.. I know it does nothing but I still allow them to "soak" until all the excess wood is burnt out and then just drop them in my annealing box - I often find these hammers for $5 or $6 on sale and they make decent hawks, enough so that I've been kicking around the idea of sending a sample to a lab here in town that will analyze the alloy to the tune of $140.

 

-J

 

Only harbor freight ball pien I tried to forge crumbled like a week old biscuit. I have suscussfully forged several old ball piens from the flea market into handled punches. I forge them at an orange, never getting to yellow.

Welcome aboard Dan17, glad to have you. If you put your general location in the header you might be surprised how many of the IFI gang live within visiting distance.

 

High orange is plenty hot to forge hammer steel, low yellow is pushing it. Wrought iron is the only thing I know that forges well in the melting range some folk call "white" heat. 3,000f is well above melting temp for most iron alloys you'll likely try forging and that's just incandescent yellow heat. Think light bulb filament hot.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

Welcome, DAN17, I hope you find all of the good stuff on here as helpful as I have! Enjoy this place and don't take it for granted, some really great people have posted on here (and still are doing so)! 

I don't have nearly the forging experience as some of these folks, but I agree with Mr. Frosty up there... high orange should work just fine! 

ill try and figure out the picture thing, I did not quench or heat treat it. My thinking was wow this stuff is hard to work on hotter the better was my logic. I have access to a power hammer. I can't run it because i don't know what kind of oil it takes in the oiler. 

 

Thanks for welcoming me to the forum to,