Tools for determining hardness

[ccubaka]

Hello!

First, I'm quite fascinated with the art.

Second, I have an idea that I need opinions on. So, I'd appreciate if someone could share your thoughts.

There is a Leeb hardness test, and i have an idea to make a tool for quick determination of hardness and thus identifying material if for some reason that is not known.

i would like to know if anyone can tell me if there are any streamline tools to determine hardness (apart from file or Rockwell test). And most important if that is something that smiths would be interested in that?

I know that the question is vague, but let's say one can determine hardness in few seconds with high enough precision to determine the material.

I'd appreciate any opinion.

Cheers!

[the iron dwarf]

many things affect the hardness, if you could guarantee an accurate identification of material no matter what the heat treat,work hardening, temperature, thickness, physical abuse the sample has suffered some may be interested.

for example could you positively identify samples of ansi 1016, 1018 and 1023 if one was normalized, one annealed and one hardened and one sample was 1mm thick, one was 10mm and the last was 100mm thick.

if you could prove you could get it right 99.9% of the time no matter how the above were mixed up I may be interested, if not it is of no interest to me and if I need to know an unknown sample more accurately than my own tests I would get an XRF done

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

1 hour ago, ccubaka said:

First, I'm quite fascinated with the art.

Welcome, I recommend this thread to get the best out of the forum.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

Hardness alone won't tell you what you want to know. A piece of 1095 annealed and fully hardened will give vastly different results, and will not give you any of the elements in it.

[lyuv]

I would be very interested both in hardness testing and in material identification, thou these are very different things.

As for hardness testing technology - there is a device that is based on measuring the bounce of a small steel ball off the sample. It's very fast and rasonably accurate. But very expensive.

For my needs, a deviation of +/-1 HRC unit is accurate anough.