Helle Temagami overheated by drilling?

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Spela

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Hello everyone,
As you can already see, I am very new to this forum and because of that I would like to kindly as you to overlook my possible mistakes when it comes to putting a question into a ''right'' and ''appropriate'' thread. The thing is that I only need help, but don't know who would be the right to answer my question and help me.
So after, I have read many posts and spent quite a fair amount of time on this forum, I have decided that there are many members on this forum, with amazing amounts of experience and amazing amount of knowledge, so I decided to join and ask you all a question.
A while ago I bought a Helle Temagami blank blade. When I got it, I decided to widden the center hole on the tang (the middle hole) from 5mm to 6mm. I also bought drills for INOX and stainless steel, but when I started the process of drilling, I soon found out that those drills are certainly not ment to be drilled into inox or stainless. The tip of the drill got all warped, kind of almost melted, grinded off....in shock and panicking, I thought to myself(I don't know why) that additional pressure will do the job....well, it didn't.... When I started to press the drill harder, the tip of the drill got red hot and also the area around the tang hole(about 2 or 3mm diameter around the hole got dark red) got dark red. After a couple of tries and after a couple of ''heatings'' from the drilling, I stopped.
The question that is bugging me ever since is: is it possible that the heat provided by the unsuccessfull drilling process ruined the famous laminated stainless steel? Is it possible that the heat spreaded from the center hole of the tang all the way up to the blade and ruined it?
When I touched the blade, after heating the area around the hole that much, it was still ''touch-possible'' hot and not so hot that I couldn't have touched it. But anyway, have I ruined the characteristics of the laminated stainless steel? What is the aftermath of that ''thoughtless'' deed?

Thank you so much for answering. I hope that my blade's steel is not ruined.

Best, Vito
 
It is not very likely that you will destroy temper in the edge by drilling hole.
BUT you could create tensions around the hole, by heating it to high temp.

One more thing - trying to enlarge hole from 5 to 6mm is prone to destroying drills.
There should be bigger difference between current and new diameter to drill safely.
 
If it was safe to touch, the temper should be fine. the section that was red hot may have been affected, but the rest should be fine, and it's not like you were going to cut with the tang so I wouldn't worry about it.

Good luck with your project.
 
Thank you very much. I appreciate both of your's opinion big time.
What would be the aftermath of this type of overheating? Brittle steel, soft steel? maybe anything else?
Thanks
 
You can get a lot of help for this issue over on the knifemakers subforum.
 
Sounds like you were drilling a hardened steel blade with a hardened steel drill. You probably need a Tungsten carbide drill to sucessfully accomplish this operation.
 
tiguy7 said:
Sounds like you were drilling a hardened steel blade with a hardened steel drill. You probably need a Tungsten carbide drill to sucessfully accomplish this operation.
Click to expand...
+1

You can drill annealed steel quite easily. This is most definitely hardened steel.
 
shane, which means..? If the tang is hardened steel as well, with my overheating, derived from drilling I did what? Harden it even more? Make it brittle?
Thank you
 
Well, without seeing the knife its hard to say, but I don't think it will be brittle or delaminated around the holes. It will definitely have softened the steel around the holes. This will not affect your pins or the handle staying on the knife. Depending how close the pins are to the knife edge, it most likely didn't affect the heat treat on the edge.

Did you touch the edge at all when you were drilling? Did it feel too hot to touch?
 
Closing this one as there is a duplicate thread in Shop Talk.
 
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