- Joined
- Feb 4, 1999
- Messages
- 5,786
While I should have been working on another project this piece of titanium I had lying around since 1999 kept calling out to me, so I made a weird, bizarre little knife out of it. I'll post some pics this weekend, but my observations and questions:
1) Question: Does 6Al/4V titanium need a heat treatment? If so, is it something done in shop or do you need an HT over for it?
2) Q: What would happen if one were to clay coat a titanium blade, heat to red and quench it?
3) Q: Can you grind Ti too hot? I went nuts on it because the sparks were so pretty.
4) Observations: Ti is a lot easier to work than I thought. Granted, I was using a thin piece, but I hacksawed it handily, it grinds super easily and it totally yields to hand filing. It's almost annoying soft because I was trying to work it with a Dremel and sanding attachment and it just sort of yielded rather than ground like I'm used to with steel. I ended up having better success doing everthing with hand tools. It was more like carving than grinding.
Anyway, it was fun. The knife is terrible, though. I did serrations for the first time, that round machining texturing for the first time (tooling?) and heat coloring for the first time, so you can imagine how it looks!
1) Question: Does 6Al/4V titanium need a heat treatment? If so, is it something done in shop or do you need an HT over for it?
2) Q: What would happen if one were to clay coat a titanium blade, heat to red and quench it?
3) Q: Can you grind Ti too hot? I went nuts on it because the sparks were so pretty.
4) Observations: Ti is a lot easier to work than I thought. Granted, I was using a thin piece, but I hacksawed it handily, it grinds super easily and it totally yields to hand filing. It's almost annoying soft because I was trying to work it with a Dremel and sanding attachment and it just sort of yielded rather than ground like I'm used to with steel. I ended up having better success doing everthing with hand tools. It was more like carving than grinding.
Anyway, it was fun. The knife is terrible, though. I did serrations for the first time, that round machining texturing for the first time (tooling?) and heat coloring for the first time, so you can imagine how it looks!
