- Joined
- Sep 27, 2004
- Messages
- 3,041
Whew....
Began this morning with a day off. Decided to finally grind out a bar of damascus. I designed a big chopper looking knife and have some gorgeous ironwood for scales. I grind the blade, and then realized i did things a bit backwards. No holes yet. So i go to drill the holes not putting two and two together when i noticed grinding was tough and sparks looked different. I attributed it to the damascus. I go to drill a hole....SCREEEECH....bit dead. Two bits follow that one. This stuff isnt annealed enough! It was almost reverse case hardened....my bits got half way through and died. I finally got some holes drilled using an old carbide bit that was 1/4" so this will now have 1/4" pins, haha!
I then heat treated it....not an easy thing. This was thicker steel and a longer blade than I had ever done, and stretched the abilites of my one brick forge. I had the tip hanging out the front with a propane torch keeping it at critical and a mapp blowing in my forge hole. I finally got the whole thing to critical, got some nice oil flare, and its now in the oven.
I go to clean up, pick up my quench tank and spill some awful hot oil on myself. Amazing how oil goes from 140 degrees to scalding when a 1600 degree piece of metal has been sunk into it.
So here I am, waiting for this blade to cook....its pretty nice if I do say so myself, but with the way this day has been going, im assuming ill take it out to find a number of cracks, haha!
Began this morning with a day off. Decided to finally grind out a bar of damascus. I designed a big chopper looking knife and have some gorgeous ironwood for scales. I grind the blade, and then realized i did things a bit backwards. No holes yet. So i go to drill the holes not putting two and two together when i noticed grinding was tough and sparks looked different. I attributed it to the damascus. I go to drill a hole....SCREEEECH....bit dead. Two bits follow that one. This stuff isnt annealed enough! It was almost reverse case hardened....my bits got half way through and died. I finally got some holes drilled using an old carbide bit that was 1/4" so this will now have 1/4" pins, haha!
I then heat treated it....not an easy thing. This was thicker steel and a longer blade than I had ever done, and stretched the abilites of my one brick forge. I had the tip hanging out the front with a propane torch keeping it at critical and a mapp blowing in my forge hole. I finally got the whole thing to critical, got some nice oil flare, and its now in the oven.
I go to clean up, pick up my quench tank and spill some awful hot oil on myself. Amazing how oil goes from 140 degrees to scalding when a 1600 degree piece of metal has been sunk into it.
So here I am, waiting for this blade to cook....its pretty nice if I do say so myself, but with the way this day has been going, im assuming ill take it out to find a number of cracks, haha!
