Vermiculite Source

B

B.V.

Joined
Dec 27, 2007
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194
Does anyone have a good source for vermiculite? Does it come in a bag, if so....how big? Would enough to fill a 5 gal. bucket work for annealing blades?

Brad
 
You can get it at a nursery. Green thumbs mix it with potting soil. Last time I bought it, it came in 1lb bags. But 1lb of vermiculite is more than you might think...

good luck.
 
Garden center at Wal Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. Might have to get two or three bags, but it is cheap.

Hope this helps.
 
I use cat litter for my bottom of my forge. Some are vermiculite I guess but most of them are calcined-bentonite not vermiculite. Even though it is not vermiculite it does the job. You should check if the litter granules sticks each other when you pour some water on it. If they don't stick each other it is most likely a silica gel type litter or something else and it wont do the job...
 
Thanks, I'm actually wanting to bury the blades in the bucket of vermiculite to cool slowly. I will check some of those locations. Thanks again for the direction!!

Brad
 
Be aware Brad, that it expands with heat. If you are doing 4 or 5 pieces at a time, too much in your bucket will make the last 2 pieces hard to bury. It will help soften the metal, but still cools too rapidly for a proper anneal. After a few times, I gave up and just started buying properly annealed steel from Aldo.
 
Thanks Cliff, when the stuff heats up...is it not any good after that? Is there a better way to anneal a forged blade.

I spoke to Aldo a while back (great guy by the way) and he thought that for a beginner like me the sizes he had probably would not be ideal.
 
No, it's still good. I just used too much my first time. Sorry, but I can't answer the better way question. I'm sure someone will have an answer for you though.

I'm a little confused about the beginner and size thing. The annealed 1084 he has/had is really good stuff to work with.
 
Yes....I hear that from alot of guys. We spoke for about an hour one night and that was his recommendation so I passed. I must say I was bummed though because of all the good things I had heard about it. Besides.....I don't have alot of equipment to work with so it would make things easier for me. I have some steel to work with that will give me an idea of what I need in terms of sizes......and I will call him back again.
 
I found vermiculite and perlite in 4 cubic foot bags in a local 'non big box' building supply firm. Both are used as 'masonry loose/pourable insulation'. One must be careful as there is a cellulose product that also fits that description. The guy I got it from said that when the inventory was sold out they were not going to replenish the inventory. The price is minimum, $10 a bag, the space it takes in the warehouse is quite large, the bags are prone to puncture and when punctured, the stuff will run out of the bag like sand in an hour glass and blows all over the warehouse. He gave me a bag free because it had a puncture in it and he was tired of the mess and it got rid of another bag of the stuff.
 
You should avoid breathing the dust that is created when handling vermiculite. Vermiculite is often naturally occurring in the same deposits as asbestos. Vermiculite is often poorly regulated and could contain asbestos. Knife makers breathe in enough garbage as it is, so there's no need to add the risk of getting mesothelioma to the list of possible knife making related illnesses.

-- Brook
 
Cliff Davis said:
Be aware Brad, that it expands with heat. If you are doing 4 or 5 pieces at a time, too much in your bucket will make the last 2 pieces hard to bury. It will help soften the metal, but still cools too rapidly for a proper anneal. After a few times, I gave up and just started buying properly annealed steel from Aldo.
Click to expand...

As stated, burying your blades in vermiculite doesn't give a true anneal, however, I've found that if I heat some large billets of mild steel to about 1500 degrees F. and bury them in the vermiculite, closely packed together and then put the hot blade in the center of them, the blade will cool much more slowly and give me a pretty good anneal. I have about 6 bars of 1-1/2" keystock that I use to preheat my vermiculite with. The preheating bars seem to have made a world of difference. I've found that my steel grinds and drills much easier when using the preheat bars in my vermiculite, because the large cross section of those preheat bars tends to hold the higher temperatures for a much longer period of time than just sticking one skinny (by comparison) blade down into the vermiculite.
 
I have gotten W2 soft enough in vermiculite where it could be bent by hand pressure to all kinds of strange angles. As for the asbestos, I am pretty sure that they shut down the mines that had that problem. You can buy the large bags of vermiculite at Lowes. I use an old fashioned galvanized garbage can to hold it. You do have to replace it every so often because it does start caking up after a while.
 
Yes, they did shut down those mines. But breathing vermiculite particulates still isn't good for you. That was my point.
 
On this subject, does vermiculite have superior insulating properties over perlite? I was under the impression that vermiculate is substantially more hygroscopic than perlite, which, all else being equal, would seem to make perlite the way to go since it should last longer. Also, Scott, I've seen that kind of idea bandied about but you just nailed it down for me. That seems like it would really work.
 
scottickes said:
As stated, burying your blades in vermiculite doesn't give a true anneal, however, I've found that if I heat some large billets of mild steel to about 1500 degrees F. and bury them in the vermiculite, closely packed together and then put the hot blade in the center of them, the blade will cool much more slowly and give me a pretty good anneal. I have about 6 bars of 1-1/2" keystock that I use to preheat my vermiculite with. The preheating bars seem to have made a world of difference. I've found that my steel grinds and drills much easier when using the preheat bars in my vermiculite, because the large cross section of those preheat bars tends to hold the higher temperatures for a much longer period of time than just sticking one skinny (by comparison) blade down into the vermiculite.
Click to expand...

I also found it necessary to preheat mild steel and pack the mild steel along with the blade into the vermiculite with similar results.

On this subject, does vermiculite have superior insulating properties over perlite?.
Click to expand...

My research indicated that perlite is actually a better insulator... but not by much.. maybe a point or two.. so in practice they are about the same.
 
Perlite was much easier to find around here - you can get it at the wal-mart garden center. Two bags was quite a bit of volume for little money.
 
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