IF the tang is dead soft as it should be...
Then bending or hammering it into a curve shouldn't be a problem. Especially if you use a heat sink and heat the tang and bend it while it's hot.
How hot? Fair to middling. That is the honest to god truth.
It's the reason they had to replace low number Springfields. They were tempering them by color. That worked just fine while the old pro's were doing it.
But when they hired new people to increase production due to the First World War, the new people didn't pull the receivers as quickly as the old pros. They let it go to a different color ( didn't watch in dim enough light ), and that resulted in overhardening and embrittlement of the 1903's.
An experienced man at the forge could show you just which shade of red/orange was fair, or too cold, or middling, which was getting too blue/white and ready to sag or melt.
In other words, " fair to middling " means the proper color of heated steel just hot enough it's ready for hammering on to forge into shape.
Another phrase that's probably not what you thought it meant is " not worth a tinker's dam " ( proper spelling of the word too ).
The tinker used to be a man with a wagon that went around doing repairs on worn pots and pans plus other thing. Instead of teflon, the cooking surface was tinned. When pans got worn, the cooking surface had to be re-tinned.
But when a pan was so shot it had a hole in it, the tinker would take a small piece of clay, rub it until it formed a worm shaped length, then press the piece into a circle around the hole. He'd then pour tin into the circle, and it would harden and plug the hole. The piece of clay that had served as the tinker's dam to hold the tin in place, would be discarded. At least I always thought that was interesting.
And this really is on topic as the kamis in the villages really are somewhere between a tinker and a blacksmith.
Thanks.
