Forging a tang

[ThomasPowers]

(and the pieces that were once a blade...)

[JHCC]

There was someone at Quad-State a few years back with a blade-straightening gizmo that looked interesting. It was a metal bar (to clamp in one's vise) with two bits of square tube welded to it, in line with each other and about an inch or two apart. The user would insert blocks of wood into the tube with a half-inch or so gap in between (was there a screw to hold them in place? I can't remember). The idea was that if your blade was warped when you took it out of the quench, you would stick it into the gap and use it like a bending fork while making the counter-bend -- that is, bend it in the opposite direction and hold it for a few minutes as it finished cooling down. They had a sample blade that *had* been straight when quenched, which they'd bent about 15° out of straight to show the concept.

What struck me about this was their contention that the wooden blocks provided a softer radius to bend around (thus reducing the chances focusing too much stress on one spot and thus causing a break), and also that the blocks were less likely to create issues with a contact spot-quench than a steel straightening jig.

Full disclosure: I haven't actually tried this myself, especially since I don't make a lot of blades. If anyone does give it a try, let me know how it works!

[SinDoc]

I thought about throwing it back in the fire to straighten it back out and try re-quenching it, but that warp isn't bad enough to risk that I believe. It is only ever so slight, so I think I can live with it. This knife is mine and ain't goin anywhere anyways lol.

[ThomasPowers]

Some alloys take a short time to reach full hardness/brittleness.  Those alloys are possible to straighten on the anvil IMMEDIATELY after quenching.  Unfortunately a lot of alloys reach full hardness in quench and tears lie in the road of trying to straighten them when hard! 

Normalizing before hardening helps as does not having too thin an edge when heat treating; as does even heating in heat treating.  Some smiths even count their hammer blows to make sure both sides get even numbers.

[SinDoc]

I was being very careful to keep everything relatively thick for the quench. I ended up leaving the tang too thick and had to grind a decent bit off to make it reasonable. I'm curious how hard I actually got it but will probably never really know.

[Donal Harris]

On 5/28/2021 at 3:32 PM, SinDoc said:

FYI I like to watch Black Bear Forge for a lot of my "learning how to do something" videos. I was told he (John?) was a very good person to watch.

JLP makes very good instructional videos as well. She doesn’t speak in most of them, which is regrettable, but she has written comments on all of them explaining what she is doing. This is Part 1 of a video of her making “preforms”.  She also has a short version for people with short attention spans.