Good evening 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