April 17, 20179 yr Finally found somewhere that sells Borax, was trying to forge weld without flux....couldn't get it done. Today was the first day I used flux and it seems to have worked wonderfully, I used a Truck U-Bolt folded it over i think 4 times, and went through the process of forge welding each seam 3-5 times till I was confident, lost a TON of material in the process so ended up making a pretty straight forward blade. Ground it down, have yet to heat treat, or put a handle on it, not gonna be a heavy duty knife but something that'll look good in a sheathe and hopefully be a functioning knife for camping or maybe eating steak. Today started out as an experiment in my ability to forge weld, no deisgn in mind, this is what ended up coming out with the metal I had left. Bring on the critiques please! Its the first blade I've ever made so go easy haha.
April 17, 20179 yr Don't be surprised if it's hard to harden; truck U bolts are not that high of carbon and multiple welding cycles lowers the carbon in the billet as well.
April 17, 20179 yr Author Good to know, first knife i've ever made too. Guess I stick with my coil springs for blades.
April 17, 20179 yr Why I used to collect the old "Black Diamond" files from the era where they were 1.2% C and so great for juicing up a billet...Now getting coil spring to weld to itself can be difficult, much easier to get it to weld to plain steel so I'd stick a slip of pallet strapping in between the spring layers...
April 17, 20179 yr Author Ahh good advice my friend, what about old saw blade? I've got a bunch of old hand saws and can get band saw blades easy enough, pallet strapping easy too working at the auto shop we see plenty of all of the above
April 17, 20179 yr 18 minutes ago, ForgeNub said: Ahh good advice my friend, what about old saw blade? I've got a bunch of old hand saws and can get band saw blades easy enough, pallet strapping easy too working at the auto shop we see plenty of all of the above I believe a lot of saw blades are 15n20, which is good steel that will harden well and make great knives.. =] i may be slightly off base but this is what i've been told
April 17, 20179 yr If many of the saw blades are the same, quench and break test one to get a general idea of the carbon content. As has been stated here before though, never assume that a manufacturer uses only one alloy.
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