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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
my first attempt at forging
- Thread starter XxBOSSMANxX
- Start date
dahong_palay
BANNED
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2002
- Messages
- 73
great site, MikeS!
just some comments:
the smith's method is the traditional one (down to the type of forge and bellows used). the resulting mass is a mixture of slag, matte, pure iron and various grades of steel. as you can imagine, getting good steel is a hit-and-miss proposition. but then, what can one do given the conditions available? so the resulting lump is hammered and chiseled to remove the slag and then ground to test carbon content.
the orange-yellow sparks indicate good steel, right (i want to be sure on this)?
re: carburization. this process is not steel-making. it's steel hardening. in making steel, you simply heat iron (or iron ore) to at least 1,100 degrees centigrade with carbon in order to mix some microscopic carbon crystals into the matrix of iron crystals --that is steel. in a 500x reflecting microscope, you can see the carbon crystals distributed among the iron crystals.
carburization entails heating the steel to at least 600 degrees with charcoal for a prolonged period to make INDIVIDUAL CARBON ATOMS enter the individual iron crystals (in chemistry, the atoms enter the molecules "interstitially" or within the "lattice imperfections").
carburization is one of the hardest and most time-consuming industrial processes known to man. in the sheffield method of carburizing an already forged sword, you have to keep the sword heated red-hot in a charcoal forge for at least a week to allow a 1.0mm penetration by the individual carbon atoms. the result is a sword whose surface is as hard as glass. the armor in tanks and battleships in world war 1&2 were made the same way.
just some comments:
the smith's method is the traditional one (down to the type of forge and bellows used). the resulting mass is a mixture of slag, matte, pure iron and various grades of steel. as you can imagine, getting good steel is a hit-and-miss proposition. but then, what can one do given the conditions available? so the resulting lump is hammered and chiseled to remove the slag and then ground to test carbon content.
the orange-yellow sparks indicate good steel, right (i want to be sure on this)?
re: carburization. this process is not steel-making. it's steel hardening. in making steel, you simply heat iron (or iron ore) to at least 1,100 degrees centigrade with carbon in order to mix some microscopic carbon crystals into the matrix of iron crystals --that is steel. in a 500x reflecting microscope, you can see the carbon crystals distributed among the iron crystals.
carburization entails heating the steel to at least 600 degrees with charcoal for a prolonged period to make INDIVIDUAL CARBON ATOMS enter the individual iron crystals (in chemistry, the atoms enter the molecules "interstitially" or within the "lattice imperfections").
carburization is one of the hardest and most time-consuming industrial processes known to man. in the sheffield method of carburizing an already forged sword, you have to keep the sword heated red-hot in a charcoal forge for at least a week to allow a 1.0mm penetration by the individual carbon atoms. the result is a sword whose surface is as hard as glass. the armor in tanks and battleships in world war 1&2 were made the same way.