Recycling

300Six,thank you,Sir,you'r Very kind!

...I've long considered running off to the YT,or NWT...I've driven the Alcan several times,and have picked up the local hitchhikers along the way,who told me about their lives there...It made me wistful,they've had so many more opportunities there,thanks to the Canadian gov't being so much more reasonable in their attitude towards those of us that would become Arctic Misfits.......All sorts of small mining contracts,and assorted permits for cabins,and other possibilities...
But,really,all my legal travails Are my own fault...It's true that a higher degree of "socialism",for a lack of a better term,would have made it easier for me,but that wouldn't be fair to Canada,either...Things like that are to be cherished,and it'd be a shame to simply take advantage of them,without a dire need...
Both Alaska and the parts of Canada adjoining are wonderful places,each in their own slightly different way(i've not been to more Easterly provinces,would love to,some day maybe).
My village,Galena,and Whitehorse,together help monitor that Salmon Treaty that US and Canada signed about 15 years ago.We travel there and back every other year,working on conservation issues(Kings,of course,being a very big part of it).It's always great to talk fish with folks from Whitehorse...People canoeing from clear up at the headwaters,Lake Bennet and Lebarge,often stop off at my place on their journey down...(I've been to Whitehorse by car,but never that far up the Yukon,Eagle,right at the border,is the furthest i've been by water,about 900 miles from here).
So,it's all a fairly closely knit community,and it's almost like i am some part of Canada!...I often look at the water and think of how it came from Way up in all those places,where Yukon is rocky,Clear,and transparent!!!
But again,thank you for such kind sentiment!

 

No,i don't know how to fish with rod and reel!...But-seems like a lot of people around here REALLY like doing just that.Sheefish are large,and i guess they "fight",and in the evenings folks head out to the mouth of some slough or tributary to catch them.(Yukon runs thick with glacial silt from some of the up-river tributaries,and you can't fish for critters that hunt visually in this water,thus need to find clear(-er) place),

They're a by-catch for me,and often it saddens me to catch them.But they don't live long in the net,and so i've learned to process them.They're tasty fish,many people actually prefer them to salmon,so i've been putting them up for some friends.
There're two different populations,one resident,and one that comes up river to spawn.They're not a commercial species,so the money for studying them are in short supply,and not too much is known about their biology.
Inconnu,the "unknown", is one of the old names for them....

https://imgur.com/a/YNbXF

 

And again some poorly-justified salvage.

This was a no-name,possibly China-made double-bit.It was so wore out as to be hardly usable(unearthed by a friend digging in his yard,certainly pitched out as junk).

A while back i needed some steel,and so cut off one of the bits to use to blade something or other.
That left a blade with cheeks attached to it on one end,and flapping on the breeze on the other.
In need to experiment with such things on day i welded in a poll between them.
It made for such an ill-balanced,ass-heavy tool that i pitched it in a pile of stock and forgot about it.
Now some weird impulse moved me to see what i could do with it.

That wore-out blade still had some thickness to it,and i wanted to see how far i can move it.(It moved surprisingly well.Nice steel).
(that thing will never be used for felling,so i'm not worried about thickness,just seeing if i can get some sort of carpentry hatchet out of this abortion).
But my efforts weren't enough,i still don't like the looks,or the feel of it.
Tomorrow i'll forge the transition of eye to blade thinner,and cut some more mass out of that central area.The cheeks were too thing for forging to shape to begin with,so removal will have to take place(a loss of face for any smith,but,whatever...).
With that mass hopefully moving into the blade,pushing it just a bit more out,and blade thinned maximally,it May yet make a light/thin-bladed,but heavy-polled hatchet,for hogging out or something.

https://imgur.com/igcNlCH

 

Ernest,that depends on which structure is in question:
The Micro-structure of steel is composed of "grains".Each a very regular crystall within itself,held together by molecular laws governing such;and where the two grains come together,the so-called Boundary,a number of very complex bonding principles is involved.
Boundary being an imperfection in a crystall stops energy from transferring as it would through the perfect structure.Such interruption of force can do a number of things,but generally can be viewed as Strenghening,("toughening"-as in resistance to Deformation).
A series of other imperfections of this structure,known as Dislocations,also act similarly,and unless taken too far act to help material to resist certain forces.
However!The grains of steel "dissolve"-decalesce-Each and every time material reaches the so-called Critical,or Austenitic temperature.Around 1450F or 870C ,and as the T then fall back down,they again re-form.
So the answer is No,for micro-structure.
But for let's call it Macro-structure things may well be different.
Lets say that the material is sufficiently old,and was made by piling("kneading",an attempt to homogenise iron by mixing the slag inclusions in into finer and finer layers,as you would cutting butter into pastry dough).
Then these slag-inclusions,being mineral,and Not a part of the metallic matrix,separate the iron layers/fibers,ruining the solid bond between them.
THEN one may start watching it closer.
Often in the past,working with very dirty iron,the smith relied on arranging these "fibers" in a knot-work(in a manner of speaking,but actually iron,like rope,Is strong in Tensile manner,and that principe Is used).
So then some unjudicious cutting,like cutting through any part of a knot in rope,May affect the integrity of the whole.

But for a 100-some years now we've been going over more and more to Homogenious alloys,and such things are in the past.
Cutting and grinding have long become a part of the process,it just depends on Efficiency.
(speaking Very generally,Forging is the most cost/energy efficient method,exceeding casting and machining something like 7-8 times...).
So today,unless working with some old steel,the issue is only one's own forge-welds.They,if contaminated,act as the fibrous stuff of old,but even if solid,can never achieve 100% strength,and are thus used strategically(they're strongest in Sheer,and are so positioned if possible).

Controlled hand-forging is very challenging,and in the past,a very skilled,and Very experienced smith could forge a tool practically to a finished shape.So it looms before one as a Zen ideal of sorts,but in practical sense it's the ultimate indicator of all the decisions you make in the process,have the mass gone to where you've planned on,and asked it to go?Are you worth a damn,as compared to the old guys?!

 

Miller'72,it is very kind of you to say this.I'm glad that you find it interesting,me too......It actually helps me a great deal,to try to account for some strange acts that i may've committed in the forge,in the heat of the moment...

But please take everything i say with a Large grain of salt.My logic,or explanation,can often be hare-brained.
If some detail interests you in particular i'd look it up,especially where metallurgy is concerned.
I've much practice in a lot of this,but my interpretation of the events is often Far from logical.....

 

Alas,Square_peg,such is industry,such is production,such is life....

Btw,while forging that double's bladei thought about your idea that by means of those indents(remind me the right term...) one can push more mass out towards the edge.
It's a sound idea,in principle.
Would require two corresponding mushroom-,or ball-swages,and quite a bit more power than i've got in my one arm...But a couple strikers,and Lots of skill,i can see it working.
Or a spring-swage under a good PH,of course.
(then the grinding to profile cannot be avoided,the material will move out as well(unless restrained by a closed-die...ah,Grant,whither art Thou?...i think of that man often.....

 

Pretty much,Ernest,at least for our purposes.
Like every material steel Does have a limit of purely physical resistance to forces.One Can ruin it in by say excessive deformation outside of a correct temperature range,et c.
But that range,of what one Can get away with,is Vast...One can see in many an industrial forging video on the internet what Obcene distortion range can be achieved...Here's a classic one...(speaking of Chinese......Lets not forget that they had All phases of black metallurgy for a Long time now....(they actually came to successfully casting iron about 1400 years before Europeans...:


(as crude as it may look it's actually a most artful demonstration of some very skilled forging principles,and the coordination of players with their tools and each-other is very fine...ballet-like......These guys are Seriously skilled).

 

P.S.

At first looking at something like that puts one in mind of mashing play dough,and it's so,but it's only a part of the whole.

Another very important principle to keep in mind is that it's a Crystalline substance.Like making a break on a pool-table,a force applied to any one particle reverberates throughout,and That's where the distortion comes from in large part(and larger-the Direction of distortion).

Another way of looking at it is the wave-pattern,or frequency...

 

Well,i lost that patient...After much working,and attempts at a fairly radical shape-change ,my weld-seams started coming apart...Inevitable,considering how much abuse and reheating/reshaping it sustained,i'm actually impressed!
But back into the scrap pile it goes.An episode typical for my forging education,just as was put so well by the inimitable Mr.S. Clemens:
"You can teach a pig anything,it just takes time.But what's time,to a pig?"....

https://imgur.com/a/nvUZC

So,Ernest,to continue trying to answer your important question:Here we have an example of how vulnerable any non-homogeneous,or composite,object is.
To too-low a heat(once the weld was made it must be worked at welding-heat from then on).
To too-high heat also:A composite may contain(often does)two components differing in Carbon content.Those with more C have a significantly lower melting point.By trying to stay at welding T often one can burn the steelier parts of a tool clean off.
But besides that,most composits really suffer from vibration.The inconsistency inside the steel tends to absorb vibration,becoming a stress-concentration point.

This is where the experience and the systematic approach are the saving graces.

That is exactly why so many regional styles of tools survived in their diversity:Once come upon a routine method that worked,any given forge/vicinity/region tended to stay within that rote,to minimize the risk of losses to the process.

So you find yourself in the Loire valley,where your ore is X,and charcoal-Y(and the amount of vino your employees drink on the weekend-Z),and you come up with a tool that works,and you stayz with it,don't tempt Fates.
And pretty soon-not two-three centuries later-et voila!A quaint,regional style of axe!

 

And a while back Agent_H had the decency to post for us this old deconstruction of an old Norsk axe,https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/finnish-earlier-scandi-axes-kirves.1428809/page-21

Just look at those lousy weld-seams!...But mainly,look at the etched cross-sectional views,the poll-in particular(the shades of grey correspond to C content,so you can see how different all that stuff was).

I'm just SO pleased to imagine that dude picking up all the scraps off of his dark,filthy forge floor!....

And in spite of it all,look how wore out the blade is....The tool lived long enough to get about totally used up.Impressive.Love it

 

Well,Ernest,i dunno...I walk into my HomeDepot the other day,and there sure enough,a perfectly serviceble doloir!True,it wasn't Quite the color i was looking for,their selection not that impressive....

https://imgur.com/a/fEZ5p

Reporter:"Mr Ghandi,what do you think of Western civilisation?"
Ghandi:"I think that it would be a Very good idea!".