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Please critique my process.


LeftHandedForge

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I am working on my first knife making project using a railroad spike and would like some suggestions for improvements on my current/planned process.  Below I'll detail what I've done so far as well as what I'm planning for the rest of this and future projects.  I welcome any constructive critiques!

Thus far I have the railroad spike knife shape forged out and the blade ground down to a very rough edge (around a 40 grit bevel).  After watching a few videos I have decided to go ahead and perform an oil quench on the blade followed by a heat treat for an hour at 400 F.  

After these steps I plan to add the fine edge to the blade through progressively higher grit sandpaper.

Once I'm happy with the edge I need to protect the blade from further rust.  I have chosen to coat the blade in gun bluing.  As best as I can tell, this means giving the blade a good coat and wiping off any excess.

A question I have is: do I need to do anything else, such as a coat of oil, to protect the blade and edge from rust?  Or did the gun blue take care of that?

Thanks!

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Welcome to the forum. 

A lot of what you seek has been covered many times on the forum.  However, the search function for the forum is less than stellar, so if you use your favorite web search provider and include "iforgeiron" in your search terms you can usually find what you need.

I'll start by saying that the steel which RR spikes are made of do not have enough carbon to harden much, if at all.  It certainly isn't what you want for a knife that will hold a good edge.  There are some RR spikes with "HC" stamped on them which are slightly better in that area, but still don't have enough carbon to harden enough for a good knife edge.  What that means is that heat treating will have little to no effect.

Gun bluing creates a specific iron oxide coating on the steel, which is more resistant to rust than bare steel.  However, this is a quite thin layer (especially if it's cold bluing) which will wear through quickly in use.  A quick wipe with oil, or some types of wax, can provide decent protection against rust, but again these will wear off and have to be applied again after use.

Look at the pinned/stickies in the knife making and heat treating sections of the forum.  Most of your questions will probably be answered there.  If not, come back with the specific issues you have questions about and we can help more.

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19 minutes ago, LeftHandedForge said:

perform an oil quench on the blade followed by a heat treat for an hour at 400 F

Not worth the trouble to try to harden a RR spike knife with an oil quench (not high enough carbon content), unless you are just doing it to practice quenching.  You may get a small amount of hardening with a water solution quench (see Super Quench), but you would be better served for you future projects using a high carbon steel that will harden properly.

Videos are not the best source of learning about bladesmithing.  There is a nice section on this site with introduction to bladesmithing info: Knife Making class forum.  Suggest you do some reading there and come back with questions.

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58 minutes ago, Latticino said:

perform an oil quench on the blade followed by a heat treat for an hour at 400 F

Heat treating is a broad term, it does not describe one single action. Normalizing, annealing, quenching, soaking, and tempering are all heat treatment processes. Everybody else pretty much covered everything else.

 

1 hour ago, Buzzkill said:

Gun bluing creates a specific iron oxide coating on the steel, which is more resistant to rust than bare steel. 

Black iron oxide, also known as magnetite, chemical formula Fe3O4. It passivates the surface so rust has nowhere to get a foothold. 

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Thanks everyone for the helpful tips!  I plan to do a lot more research within this site to get some more specific and accurate information, I was hoping to quickly address some specific issues I had.  I realize that making knives from RR spikes is horribly inefficient as far as good quality goes, but I'm mostly focusing on gaining experience on the different aspects of the whole process and less on the final quality of the knife dependent on the material used.  

Thanks again

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