What happens to steel left in forge for months?

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DaQo'tah Forge

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I have had my new gas forge for a few months now and I have a question about some steel that has been sitting in the forge all this time.

When I first got the forge I decided to fire it up right away and smack around some steel. I had a pre-cut section of 5160 that I heated up that first night and had fun with.

The steel was left in the forge, positioned in such a way as not very noticeable.

I forgot about that steel and moved on to working with load shafts like normal. I noticed one night that the piece of 5160 was still in the forge. It has been in there now while I have forged 12 different blades.

I have started to use this left over steel when I do a annealing. I set it with the real blade into the vermiculite to cool very slowly.

I always return the extra 5160 steel section to the forge later.

I was thinking, this one blade has had a long time at the critical temp, perhaps longer that most people have ever had a blade sit at. Would you think this Ultimate in heat treatments has ruined any chance for turning it into a workable blade?
 
I,m taking a basic metallurgy class at work, I'll see what our Metallurgists have to say about this. I'll re-reply in a day or two if findout anything useful.
 
You may be on to something. Try leaving two pieces in there. You may find they have created a bunch of neck knife sized pieces!:eek:
 
From what I have read the carbon content has been lowered. Wayne Goddard teaches to avoid long exposures to high heat. My advice is to not make a blade from it.
 
You will have lost much of the carbon and grown huge grains. Depending on the temps you may have done other damage. Make a good paper weight !
 
I talked to Bob Loveless for quite a while back in the 80s about overheating and burning up all the carbon in steel.....once the carbon is gone its toast.
The repeated heating of hardenable steel at high temps erodes the carbon content and is irreversable.
 
If I understand this "carbon' problem ...

The carbon is needed within the steel for the ability to get hard?

Also, from what you guys have said on other topics, the carbon sneaks out of the steel while its hot correct?

Lets say that I do make this 5160 section into a sharpen blade. it could just be a test...

How would a normal guy like myself, test this blade to see if it was true that the carbon was lost AND that the steel had grown huge grains?



(has anyone actually made a knife out of totally mis-treated steel like this?

Im not even sure how much time this steel has spent at a red hot temp. I have made perhaps over 12 forged knives, maybe more, each knife took 2 or 3 days to forge from the Load shaft,,then the Normalizing, the Annealing, the extra heating to make it straight, the heat-treatments...etc.etc.etc.

This poor blade has spent a LONG time at forgeing temp....would it not be cool to just check on and see if it is as bad as some say?)
 
like the others have stated...more than likely you have a paper weight,but for your own personal knowledge,make a test piece out of it...forge it to shape as you normaly would,grind it...(always good to practice) and test it to destruction... it would help if you made another blade similar to shape and such,to compare it to...im sure you'll see the difference how a properly forged and HT'd blade should perform...hope this helps:)
 
Next time it gets hot, quench it. Put it in a vice dead hard and bust off about an inch and look at the grain, and how huge it is, looking like a steel snowcone inside. Then, take it through several normalization cycles and bust off another piece. This may give you a good idea of just what normalizing does if there's enough carbon left.

Heat another piece to critical just once and break it to compare the effects of extended overheating on grain size.

Good home demo of things to avoid.
 
It'd be very interesting to see just what the cross section of that steel looks like....
 
fitzo...

I have printed out your instructions,,,,and this week I plan to carry them out.

If I end up with something interesting, then everyone will see another thread asking questions about what I saw in the grain.

ON THE OTHER HAND>..

If this clearly ends up with one crappy looking chunk of steel,,,there will be no new posting, and let us never speak of this again....LOL
 
Leaving a piece of steel in the forge isn't so very bad. I have a puddle in the bottom of my forge. Along with the flux there is a puddle of DC53 (modD2) from when I was trying to flatten a piece for a friend and it red shorted and crumbled from too many heats, along with two puddles of cable from my student when he ignored my instructions to re-weld the handle and they fell off.

The student got sent packing, but the puddle is there until I reline the forge. Had no idea it got so hot down there by the burner..... :)

We live and learn, DaQo'tah...... good luck with your experiment. If we hear no more on this, that's as it should be then...... :)
Take care.
 
just to add my 2 cents worth... in all likelyhood the steel is junk... BUT, you could try to pack carabrize it to reintroduce carbon back into the blade... depending how much work you want to go through...
 
"What happens to steel left in forge for months? "

Same thing that happens to a french fry that's been lying in the basket too long.

You can eat it - but you probably won't like it! :p
 
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