straightening homogenous steel post quench

The issue in clamping steel to the blade during austenitization and quench is the effect on quench speed. It would be OK for a deep hardening steel like 5160 or O-1, but may cause under-hardening on 1084 and 1095.
 
There are stresses in blades in the annealed condition, the hardened condition, and the hardened and tempered condition. Through every step these change, you can not stop or control them, you can minimize them.

Especialy if you forge, you’ll spend your life straightening stuff.

The best way to straighten blades after HT is to clamp the tip in the vice, pull a bend in the opposite direction, spot heat the spine on the inside to ~600-650f and repeat as necessary until the blade is straight. The surface of the heated area shrinks, which is why you heat the inside.

This method has less stress than peening and is very fast. Be carefull with pattern welded material because it can affect etching at the heated area.

Hoss
 
You know I'd never considered the thermal expansion related to straightening. But what you just described is something we'll often do if a bored hole has gone slightly oversize. By heating it up it'll often cool to a smaller dimension than it was.

I always labored under the impression we were heating the spine just to relieve stress in the moment the counter bending was being done, but heat shrinking the inside of the counter bend (outside of the warp) really makes a lot more sense to me.

Thanks Devin.
 
D DevinT I just did this and it worked great and it was fast,
sure enough it got up to the required temp fast and was enough to move the bend

thanks
 
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