To anneal or not?

L

Lawlzor96

Joined
May 23, 2017
Messages
13
Hello all, going to be trying to make my first knife handle soon for a Puronvarsi stick tang knife and I was planning on peening the tang to the butt of the handle.

I don't have a way to test hardness and I only have a butane torch from my kitchen to treat such a small spot. Never annealed any steel before either.

How do I know if the tang's tip requires annealing or not without screwing it up?

EDIT: I have a gas range with multiple burners. Would that work for annealing better than butane?
 
Last edited:
Lawlzor96 said:
Hello all, going to be trying to make my first knife handle soon for a Puronvarsi stick tang knife and I was planning on peening the tang to the butt of the handle.

I don't have a way to test hardness and I only have a butane torch from my kitchen to treat such a small spot. Never annealed any steel before either.

How do I know if the tang's tip requires annealing or not without screwing it up?
Click to expand...
Test a file against it, if it's easy to file it's soft enough.
 
Will a Nicholson Bastard file be an adequate test file? How much steel removal is easy?

Sorry, it's all new and exciting material for me
 
It's kind of hard to explain to someone who's never worked metal before, my advice would be to find a random piece of scrap steel that would of never been heat treated and file that then file the knife tang in question.

The file will "skate" over heat treated steel while biting into non heat-treated and/or annealed Steel
 
That makes sense to me. I was filing some red and blade oxide off of some older puukko tangs the other day and I was able to get an even finish by filing down the residual steel. The carbon steel blade was much easier to file than the stainless.
 
Lawlzor96 said:
Will a Nicholson Bastard file be an adequate test file? How much steel removal is easy?

Sorry, it's all new and exciting material for me
Click to expand...
Yes that's perfect.
What you can do is file on something like a nail which won't be very hard, then compare to filing the knife tang.
 
Your kitchen stove should easily get the end of sticktang redhot.
If it needs it or not can tell by testing its hardness as the other guys suggest, but it wont hurt annealing again anyway.
Mind you, Some steel wont anneal well. They will get softer, but because the small profile aircools quickly enough to harden some.
Also, when you peen, you probably find stainless work hardens quickly, you wont get many hits before that tang just does not want to deform.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top