Annealing Question

E

ernieb

Joined
Aug 7, 2005
Messages
2
Hey Everyone,

Or should I say "forgot to anneal" question. As I posted earlier this week, I finally got the nerve up to forge my first knife out of 5160. Everything seemed to go pretty good, I got it formed out to pretty much like I wanted - a 5 1/2" blade w/forged stick tang. Due to my hands being in bad shape, it took me 3 or 4 hammerings to get it hammered out. I made sure at the end of every session the part (blade or tang) that I was working on was heated back up to just past critical and I put it to bed in room temp. / still air, etc...

Now for the problem, I finished hammering it out yesterday, gave it a real good normalizing (I know I should do 5160 three times, but this is my first knife...), got it back out this morning, headed for the Grizzly, got it all looking nice, etc. and THEN, I realized I forgot to anneal it! My question is do I even have a problem? What should I do at this point? The steel worked as if it were annealed, which is why I guess I never thought about the annealing. I would really appreciate your input on this...

Thanks,
Ernie B from MD

P.S. This wouldn't be so bad for a rookie, except I have a complete print-out of Ed Caffrey's "How to Make a Knife to Pass the JS Test" right there on my workbench. The mind IS a terrible thing to loose!
 
Not necessary to anneal 5160.And it might even work with one normalizing !!!
 
Thanks Mete,
That's so good to here. I hope, especially since I've already normalized it every time I worked on it, you're right about the normalizing too.

Ernie
 
Any carbon steel is easier on the belts if it is annealed. Normalizing is accomplished in one step. Steel does not count the number of times its temp has been raised or lowered. It only matters how much energy is applied , in the form of heat, and for how long. Hardening, annealing, normalizing or tempering should not have to be done more than once if it is done at the proper heat and for the right amount of time. jmo Fred :D
 
A lot of steels work fine in the normallized state. I will do a flash anneal in my Paragon oven by heating to 1250 and letting soak 10 minutes and remove from oven and let cool. I consistantly get about RC 20 with this quick anneal method. A longer soak and slower cool in the oven gives me RC 8-13. One method takes 20 minutes, the more traditional method take hours. This process was given to me by Devin Thomas. The rockwells I took verify and quantify this process...Take Care...Ed
 
Ernie as the others said the belt sander will go through hard or soft. If you want to file a blade that is a dirrerent story hard steel will blunt your files way too quick.

My method for annealing is to get my forge hot after a session put the blades and billets in try to get the heat in them evenly as they warm up. after they are up to the critical heat i soak a few minutes Then last I close the opening 90 to 95% with a fire brick to hold the heat in and throtle down the gas slowly. Then shut it down and come back tommorrow. Sometime just an hour or 2 later I pull them out if I am in a rush.

I have been told cooling down slowly through the critical temperatures is the important bit once it is not red anymore no big difference.

Ask 10 blokes and they will all do something slightly different and it will work.
I also dip the hot blades and billets in a tub of lime to cool when I want to keep the forge running. If the lime is cold sometimes it is not as soft as done in the forge.
 
Normalizing was fine.Be sure to normalize again befor HT to remove any stress created in grinding.Welcome to metal pounding.
Stacy
 
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