Finished size of forgings

B

bennett

Joined
Sep 22, 2005
Messages
212
I'm sure this question's been asked before, but I couldn't find a previous thread and thought I'd just ask it anyway... How much larger is a finished forging, that the billet is at the beginning? In other words - if you start out with 1 1/2" wide bar, or 5/8" or 3/4" round, how wide should the finished blade be? This is of course, bearing in mind that you'd want to leave enough material at the spine to minimize the chance of warpage during the quench. Any feedback is, as always, most appreciated fellas!
 
There is not a real question here?
You can forge a bar/rod of steel into any size you want - smaller or larger than the original. As a rough example, a 3/4" round bar will forge a good size bowie. 1" round will make a camp chopper.
Some guys work down 3" round stock to fillet knives.It all depends on what you want to end up with. The volume of steel remains nearly constant. A 12" camp knife ,with a 1.5X7" blade, 1/4" thick, has approx. 4 cubic inches of steel - about 6" of 1" round bar should forge out to that.
Stacy
 
I always allow .050" oversize whever I doing forgings. This is mostly just to clean up the scale and the heavyest of the hammer marks.
Thanks,
Del
 
Thanks for the feedback, fellas. This gives me something to go by. I asked the question because I hadn't forged in a few months, and the blade I forged out was thicker than I wanted it to be. However, I wanted to leave enough "meat" on it to sort of minimize the risk of warping in the quench. I've found that when I forge too thin, I get warped blades. Thanks again for the info!
 
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