Guidance please

D

Dr.O

Joined
Nov 13, 2008
Messages
69
This is knife making, kind of.

I forged out my first piece of damascus (given to me by a friend) into a blade, but the kicker is that I'm making a spatula for counting pills. I'm a pharmacist if this concerns anyone, lol.

So here is what has happened. I have a crack in the blade, (I'm pretty sure is was my forging technique that caused it) and if I were to try to heat treat like I would a blade for cutting, I'm sure it would run.

However, being that this blade will need zero edge retention, what should I do for the heat treat? Or should I? In my mind I was thinking of a normal heat treat, then a way higher temper, perhaps to make it springy....OH, it is 1084/15n20, but the crack has me concerned now. The blank is in a normalized state, and is .1" thick, so I have some options as far as grinding it out and making a hidden tang.

But, I wanted to check here to see if there was another option for heat treat, or leave it normalized, and go to work.

Now I'm starting to ramble. What say you oh wise ones?
 
I was thinking in case it was dropped, or something fell on it. Instead of taking a bend, it would recover. I've never heat treated for springiness, but I know it is possible, and I was thinking that may be a good idea for this project.
 
It needs to be heat treated to properly show the pattern as well.
If you forged at too low heat you can cause the welds to separate, which is likely what happened. Harden it and hopefully it survives without further damage. Tempering at 450*-500* should render it pretty tough in case of rough treatment.
Can you work around the flaw?
Darcy:)
 
If you can do so, post a pic. Location and size of the offending crack play a big part in a repair or work-around. As this is probably going to be a high temper/low RC application there may be some options typically out of the possibility for an edged instrument. (I would think you'd want it to be hard to deform but not brittle with enough spring to return to straight. Of course springiness is more a function of shape and thickness than of HT.)

It is true that simple carbon steel must be HT to achieve the nice dark black we want with a high contrast damascus. However final tempering is carte blanche and doesn't effect the contrast of the etch.

-Eric
 
If it were me, since performance is not a real concern, I'd proceed as planned attempting to minimize the flaw as much as possible when shaping the spatula. Harden, temper and etch deep and you might not even be able to see that flaw without close scrutiny.
Best of luck.
Darcy:)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top