Resist the erge to tweak....

B

brian923

Joined
Jul 20, 2015
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Resist the erge to tweak your blade. My impatience got the best of me today. Instead of fixing the issue with my grinder, which nobody would have even noticed, I tried to tweak a small minute little curve from my otherwise perfect blade and it got the best of me. Blade is 1/8" O1 tool steel. Hardened in my forge to non magnetic and quenched in oil. Unfortunately I also made the mistake of jumping ahead of myself and making some purple heart scales for it as well... I'm going to make another and use this as a template for the handle so the scales won't go to waste. At least that's the plan anyways...

 
I have found the easiest way of straightening a blade is to bead blast the concave side where you need to straighten it out. I have done this on 10 or so blades and it has worked every time.
 
Thanks guys... It snapped before tempering. I know I should have just left but my "urge" just got he best of me. Learned a valuable lesson the hard way this time. Luckily I made two and the first one turned out great.

Pertaining to bead blasting bends out of blades... does that induce stress or relieve stress in the bad that would make it more prone to breaking? Do you do it before or after tempering?

I knew erge just didn't look right....but that's why I'm not an English major.
 
I try and straighten all my blades right out of the quench. The blade is still butter soft right after quenching and I straighten by hand wearing gloves as the knife is still smoking hot.
 
One of my favorite demos is Kevin Cashen's HT demo and lecture. He does the quench, takes the blade out, sights up and down it to check if it is straight ... ans then bends it into a banana over his knee. He talks about how it is still soft austenite and how the cooling down to 400F and the Ms will take a while. He leisurely straightens it with his gloved hands and continues his talk.
 
brian923 said:
Thanks guys... It snapped before tempering. I know I should have just left but my "urge" just got he best of me. Learned a valuable lesson the hard way this time. Luckily I made two and the first one turned out great.

Pertaining to bead blasting bends out of blades... does that induce stress or relieve stress in the bad that would make it more prone to breaking? Do you do it before or after tempering?

I knew erge just didn't look right....but that's why I'm not an English major.
Click to expand...

Do it after tempering. Go slow and keep checking your progress. It doesn't take much. As far as causing stress I don't know. I've not encountered any problems so far.
 
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