First blade is broken

M

Mr.Wrong

Joined
Aug 5, 2004
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I was almost finished with my very first forged blade and then it broke while I was quenching it :mad: :mad: . First off the material was an old file (W-2) I anneled it twice before I had forged it; After each time working with it hot I normalized which was aprox. 3 times and one additional time before quenching. Since the steel was w-2...... I was to use boiling water right? Well needless to say When I quenched only what I wanted to be hard; I saw that my blade was cracked in two places :mad: :mad: . My question is What did I do wrong? And when I finished the crack the cross section of the metal " the grain looks almost like cast Iorn" is this the problem? If it is what caused this? Well this post is lengthy and I sorry.
brokenblade2.jpg
brokenblade001.jpg
brokenblade2003.jpg

Laters
PJ

Oh yeah this whole knife was shiney and sanded down to 320 grit :mad: but when I got through normalizing it was BLACK :mad:
 
Sometimes they just go ping. I must say I'm a bit surprised though. It's usually more common in longer, thinner blades. Was it just water or brine?
 
I've never had a blade break completely on me, but I've had some crack pretty bad. That's how I learned that even though they're called "water hardening" steels, you should never harden them in water. Especially for such a high carbon steel like W-2, quenching it in oil will be just fine. It's quite a shame about the knife, too. It looks like it would have been a beaut. You win some and you lose some. Its the times that you lose that you learn the most. Everyone here's probably lost their share of blades through some mishap or another. For example, I once gave a really great knife I had made to this girl I was dating. Never going to see that knife again.....
But seriously, quench the next one in oil and let's see it when you're done.

- Chris
 
never quench in water? I always quench in water, and have never had a problem with cracking. my blades are of simple shape so maybe that’s why, but that’s still odd, isn’t it? and it cant be that they are too thick either, because most of my knives start from 1/8" sheet of a very high carbon steel “OF" usually. think I should start using oil?
Mr. wrong, I’m thinking you might have forged at too low of a temp. and it formed a micro-crack. this I have had problems with, but I either scrap the blade or make a smaller knife from it, you cant do that in this circumstance. explain your normalizing and HT temps to us so we can figure out the problem with your grain structure.
 
elvenbladesmith07 said:
never quench in water? I always quench in water, and have never had a problem with cracking. my blades are of simple shape so maybe that’s why, but that’s still odd, isn’t it? and it cant be that they are too thick either, because most of my knives start from 1/8" sheet of a very high carbon steel “OF" usually. think I should start using oil?
Mr. wrong, I’m thinking you might have forged at too low of a temp. and it formed a micro-crack. this I have had problems with, but I either scrap the blade or make a smaller knife from it, you cant do that in this circumstance. explain your normalizing and HT temps to us so we can figure out the problem with your grain structure.
Click to expand...

Well to start things off I finished the crack so that I could see the grain :( . When I normalized I heated to nonmagnetic "I checked with a magnet"
and sat it in an air still place. But the heat treating I dident get to do because I broke on the quinch :mad: . Like every thing else I have to use this as a learning tool. When I was forging the knife I was doing it in the dark with little light I had the metal close to yellow and stopped at red. If anyone see's something that im doing wrong please tell me :(

Thanks,
PJ
 
Hey I did the same thing the other day but it was on the heat treat. I never quench the blade during forging I dont think you are supposed to because the quench is what hardens the blade. I tried to quench in brine that was about 40 degrees--hey it was hot when I brought it out there but I guess Im a little slow at forging because it was just as cold as it was outside. But I also broke it in half to look at the grain and it looked like cast iron too. I tried to test it to see how hard it was but it was way harder than my hc 65 file. Next one I did I quenched in oil and no problems. It hardened to about hc 58-60 according to my file tester.

I am a newbie too. All you can do is curse, roll up your sleeves, and start again. Good luck on your next blade!
 
Mr. Wrong, I honestly have no idea why it did that, that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. maybe you just had a touchy piece of steel. like the story, about the artist carving a stone and people saying he created a masterpiece, and the artist says "I didn’t create anything the statue was always there, I just chipped away the small pieces". maybe that piece of steel should have been a bowie or tanto? maybe not even a knife. I try to apply this to knife making by looking at the current shape of the steel, and determining what type of knife it should be. and keep the grain flowing with the knife, from the end on the tang to the very tip. but its not like I "burn socks" before HT, or cool at magnetic north. it just something I’ve always done.
 
If I get time tonight Ill be back in the game to start another one.... But this time I will use oil for the quenchant. Thanks for all the info :D

Laters,

PJ
 
I don't know much about metals, but doesn't steel becomes cast iron due to too much carbon, and weren't you using a high carbon steel. Cast iron cracks when attempting to forge it. Could you have managed to add enough carbon during the process to have caused it to end up as cast iron, or really close?
Just a thought, and I'm not sure that I got everything right.
 
Two things here.
First ,you are assuming that the steel is W-2 because it is an old file.The file may not be that old,and it may not be W-2.
Second,you may have under-heated it while forging -BAD!,or over-heated it at quench-BAD!You hopefully will learn from this-GOOD! As stated earlier, you can quench almost all steels in oil,but you can't quench some in water.Oil is safer when learning.
SA
 
bladsmth said:
Two things here.
First ,you are assuming that the steel is W-2 because it is an old file.The file may not be that old,and it may not be W-2.
Second,you may have under-heated it while forging -BAD!,or over-heated it at quench-BAD!You hopefully will learn from this-GOOD! As stated earlier, you can quench almost all steels in oil,but you can't quench some in water.Oil is safer when learning.
SA
Click to expand...

My pops told me the same thing. How If the steel is hot enough to forge, and too hot to quinch? But this time I will use oil I appreciate all the replies.

Thanks,

PJ :D
 
May be just a red herring. I have a couple of mates that told me files are not good for forgingbecause of there hard steel.

However many do forge them with success. I was trying to think of reasons.
If you forge in the dark the metal looks hotter than it is . Try a simple test.
Forge in the sunlight and when the steel looks cold cast a shaddow over the bdlade and it looks red again. Try to get into the habit of forging in a constant light and get used to what you are looking at.

If you let the steel get too cold a few good hits may have put stress cracks in the blade. Never hit black steel. Well that is all I can think of except to say try some car leaf or coil spring just rough forge to finished. Quench and heat treat for practice. Even a rough forged knife can be usefull for cutting the weeds out of the lawn.

Good luck let us know if you find the answer. I was shown how to forge in a few lessons and have been very lucky not to have problems. When you are teaching yourself some thing a more likely to go wrong.

Stick with it that little knife looked like a fine effort. I am also impressed with the fine focus on the crack pic.
 
I will surely follow your advice on the forgeing in the dark. I wish there is someone in south texas who could give me some lessons. But anywho thank for the reply maybe I.G. would jump in.........;)
 
Without knowing for certain what steel was used to make the file or whether some micro-cracks were caused by forging at too low a temperature the only thing I can pick up on is the grain. The coarse grain that looks like "cast iron" is, in my mind, an almost 100 percent indication of overheating prior to the quench. Do this soon, take a good quality worn out file, one you know to be quality steel and isn't a cheap case-hardened file, and break it to observe the grain. It will be silky smooth and grey with grains too fine to be observed easily with the naked eye. This is the grain we all want in our knives, knives with this fine silky structure will have the best qualities of edge retention and strength.

The non-magnetic indicator is good only to a point since an overheated piece of steel is still non-magnetic. Working with a magnet check while the blade is heating and it will gradually go non-magnetic, the point where it finally goes fully non-magnetic and maybe 50 degrees over or so is where you want to be. It's real easy to overshoot this point and gain a few hundred degrees without realizing it. Grain will grow quickly at this point and the overheating will certainly cause the cracking upon quenching particularly when using a violent quench medium like water. Randall Graham likes to point out that it's almost always the makers fault when a blade cracks when quenching in water, his favorite quench medium. Careful attention to austenitizing temperatures is the key and you want to be in the lower range of austenitizing temps. for water quenching. And it has already been mentioned that blade thin sections of water hardening steels generally harden fine in oils as well.
 
Mr. Wrong, "the grain looks almost like cast Iorn' is this the problem? "

That leads me to believe you had it way too hot before quenching.

So, what was the color of the blade when you drove it into the water and how close to 'magnetic' was it. In other words, were you testing with a magnet frequently? It should go, heat a while. Then test - magnetic. Heat more, still magnetic, heat more non-magnetic, back in the heat for a sec to bring it back, then quench.

The color of the steel when forging is very different than the color of the steel when heat treating. Forging is well over non-magnetic, to harden is just above.

Personally, I still don't have forge hardening process dialed in - I've ruined my share. So, I went to using an electric furnace. But even that is teaching me better how to read colors.

Steve
 
hahahaha, I just read guy's post. Yeah what he said. Much explaination than mine.

Steve
 
By reading the post I see that my problem was in the lack of frequent testing with the magnet. When I had checked the magnet I had the metal dam near a yellow white, then I quenched it

"The color of the steel when forging is very different than the color of the steel when heat treating. Forging is well over non-magnetic, to harden is just above."
(Quote by; Sando)
What is the correct color to forge at; because I had hit the knife at least four times while it was a bright orange?? Could this have made micro cracks?

Thanks again guys for all the posts

PJ
 
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