anealing at magnetic north?/katana help too

jhiggins said:
Hey Kevin... what scotch are you drinking these days whilst you are rubbing out your blades? Think the peatiness may have some affect on the final blade? I find that a 25 year old sherry oak Macallan makes my blades look much better after several liberal doses :p ;)
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Bowmore is still my shop whisky; I keep the more complex stuff for my after hours drinks. A belt of Bowmore legend is inexpensive and will keep you going while rubbing out a 3 foot L6 blade, but after a long day a glass of Lagavulin helps you not want to do a thing but sit and savor pure ecstasy.

However even my cask strength bottles gotta be pretty weak compared to the substances some smiths must be using. The above line of B.S. was the best I could come up with, and I had to work at it. Too many out here have this stuff naturally flow across their tongue like a river, and even more that are eager to believe. I was honestly quite careful to put signs in my post that it was indeed B.S., for experience has shown me that there are too many who will want to take it seriously. :( If had had kept a straight face I fear there would have been folks out there holding blades over violins. I am getting older and even more cynical, there was a time I would have done all in my power to set them straight, now I just may be tired enough to shutup and enjoy the show ;)
 
The collander is the problem. The holes in it allow space men to see right into your puny human skull. Duh!
 
Iron minerals, Magnetite, Hematite and Ilmenite form a solid solution series of Fe,Ti,O that will (re)crystallize through the Curie points/precipitate from solution with the crystallographic C axes aligned with the Earth's magnetic field (this is over geologic time, not human intervals). Pure iron or steel, is too reactive to exist in most natural systems, so I can't speak to that.

I suppose if you held steel just above the Curie point and then cooled it at a slow enough rate, you could achieve magnetic alignment, but you would not get Martensite.
 
Dang, Steve, that was GOOD! I had to read it three times!
 
Some one has GOT to get Tai Goo in on this thread. This is right up his alley. I got on him once about chicken feet and all that and he came back and said, yeah but it's fun though.
 
mete said:
Fitzo's right. If clay harden you'll get martensite edge , pearlite spine. If you full harden you will get martensite ,then you can torch the spine and get a spine softer than the edge.It's a little more difficult to control but you'll get a stronger blade.
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water tube the edge to keep it cool then draw the spine down :)

Roger doesn't tell, that he does the FTL dance too. :D

the colander should have wet greens in it also so your hair doesn't catch on fire
in the heat treat, because you need you get close to smell the steel to see if you got it to the right temp. it should smell like beet greens, of course it's your hair on fire because you are now close enough to the heat source,
for the colander to work, by now the blade has soaked long enough because you were distracted by the fire in your hair
and you weren't tempted to take it out too soon, hence the 5 min soak time for O1 steel, now you know the secret,,, :D
 
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