woooohoo first blade heattreated

M

M Wadel

Joined
Sep 11, 2005
Messages
801
so i got this blade from a teacher at my school, supposedly its made from "bog iron",(or quite possibly steel made from bog iron) the only info i could find about bog iron is that it may contain up to 10% manganese. i did a sparktest on it and i guesstimate it contains between .3-.4C. the blade has a classic scandi grind and its atleast 20 years old. last week i polished it and today i drilled some holes in the tang, the outer layer was very soft. when i drilled it the first few mm was like butter but the middle part was rock hard, could be some laminate who knows.

Edit: sorry my mistake, it says it often contains more than 10% manganese, sometimes it contains more manganese than iron.

my teacher told me it will become very very sharp and that i could heat treat it with a torch. so i did. first i tried to "reharden" a 1095 mora blade just to see what colour i was aiming for, failed once succeded once. the 1095 went up to aus-temperature quite fast.
but the bog iron blade was very slow, the 1095 took maybe 1minute or so to heat but i was struggling with the bog iron for atleast 5 minutes (yeah i know i fu..ed up the grain size) it seemed impossible to austenise it, it just refused to go the same bright color as the 1095 no matter what. but in the end i got it. it got quite hard. maybe 55hrc-ish. tomorrow i will do the handle, i was inspired b the "damascus micarta thread" so i made my own "pimp micarta" :D all the colours i could find pink red white green you name it. anyway just wanted to share. i love this forum
 
What you are describing is a classic Scandinavian style laminated blade.The outer part is anything from bog iron to 55 gallon drums.The core is a high carbon steel (often refereed to as Swedish steel).They are traditionally ground in a scandi grind as a puukko or similar knife.Brusletto and other companies sell them pre-made.
 
all i could see is that it was stamped, i saw marks in the tang. it looks that it was hand ground (rough) because the edge was not 100% aligned. i have a few eriksson blades (standard mora) about 10years old and theyre all machine made even the 20 year olds are machinemade so i wonder how old this blade is. yeah by the way that morablade i rehardened snapped today while working on a pair of speakers :D (yes i used it as a prybar..) so now i have first hand experience on brittle steel... heheh

ive been thinking about making a mora linerlocking folder, could be nice
 
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