Cappygold Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 My question is whether heat treating a blade that has been heat treated in order to give it a blue hue would change the overall temper of the blade. Mostly asking to see if I could blue a blade to a nice teal/ cobalt color and still get it to a good temper, because I know that trying to temper at the temperatures for this (550-600F) is pretty off for a strong blade. I was considering doing this to a 1095 steel so feel free to give me some input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLAG Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 You can put the sharp edge of the blade in water and heat the spine using a directed heat source (e.g. torch etc.) Check out one of the Ohman videos. I think it was the drawknife smithing one. SLAG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 YES, tempering the blade to blue is tempering it to blue. If you want blue you might consider gun bluing instead it won't effect the blade's edge holding or flexibility characteristics. You are asking about a using knife rather than a wall hanger. Right? If it's a wall hanger then the characteristics of the blade don't matter draw the temper to blue. Frosty The Lucky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Sells Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 Yes, If you retemper at higher temperature it retempers the blade. Are you really asking that or did I miss what you were wanting to know ? I will relocate this to the knife making section, perhaps if you take the time to read there, you will find your answer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WayneCoeArtistBlacksmith Posted May 1, 2017 Share Posted May 1, 2017 If you heat the blade to just hot enough to melt wax it will pick up straw to blue color, heat it to where the was smokes and you will get black. I use this when finishing blacksmithing projects. Wire brush to remove scale first, I usually do this immediately after forging a piece so it has residual heat to melt or burn the wax. If I want the forged look, or straw or blue and I start to apply wax and it smokes I wait a little bit for it to cool down some and check again. As Slag said you might want to put the edge in water to make sure that you do not effect the temper of the edge but these temps should be well below the temp to cause blue oxide color (500 degrees). Let me know if I can help you. Wayne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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