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I Forge Iron

Rebar Knives


AndrewB

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17 hours ago, Edward Kocsis said:

How is that not a good practice technique?

It's not good practice if the characteristics of the material you're practicing on aren't a good match to the material you need to make a good product. If your intended product are wall hangers then it makes no difference at all.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Yeah, that's good and burning paper in a fireplace or wood stove isn't recommended procedure. 

I had a friend who had a pretty good technique for reducing his junk mail load. Any junk mail with a postage paid return envelope got stuffed with other junk mail and dropped in the mail box. I don't think it works with bills, I DO know if you mail a check to the wrong utility they happily apply it to your account no matter who it's made out to. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Knife grade steels are harder under the hammer and have a much narrower forging range.  Forge them outside of that range and they burn, crumble, crack or otherwise disappoint you.  Practicing on material that can be forged outside those ranges tend to put their forging ranges in your "muscle memory" too.  As you can probably source knife grade steels for free or scrap rate; why not practice the whole process instead of just part of it?  Wouldn't it be better to practice keeping in forging ranges and heat treat and have samples you can break and see how changes in HT makes a difference? And if you have a spot of beginner's luck you have a *knife* and not a practice piece.

So isn't any practice better than none? Yes

OTOH isn't practicing the entire process better than just practicing a tiny bit of it?

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1 hour ago, Frosty said:

It's not good practice if the characteristics of the material you're practicing on aren't a good match to the material you need to make a good product. If your intended product are wall hangers then it makes no difference at all.

Thank you I can understand that. They are to dismaler to be good practice.

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If you really, really want/need to use salvaged steel, talk to your mechanic about getting a coil spring, preferably as new as possible (to avoid the microcracks that come from wear and that can cause a blade to shatter in heat treatment or -- which is worse -- in use). If you have decent tongs, cut the spring into appropriately sized chunks; if you don't, straighten out a 24"-36" section to hold by hand.

45 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Forge them outside of that range and they burn, crumble, crack or otherwise disappoint you.  Practicing on material that can be forged outside those ranges tend to put their forging ranges in your "muscle memory" too.

This I can affirm, to my lasting regret.

40 minutes ago, Edward Kocsis said:

They are to dismaler to be good practice.

Exactly.

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On 2/16/2018 at 12:26 PM, Buzzkill said:

I appreciate the answers.  I think it's good to add those things to the oft-repeated mantra "rebar doesn't make good knives." 

That's not exactly true. It should be: 

"Rebar might make a good knife...or it might not...or it might make a knife that's good in spots and bad in others..."

 

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