HELP NEEDED!!! How do I properly heat treat this sword??

Started by David D. , Jun 25 2007 04:29 PM Please log in to reply 13 replies to this topic

#1

David D.
Forum Board Super Administrators 717 posts Gender:Male Location:Muncie Indiana USA

Posted 25 June 2007 - 04:29 PM Hey guys I have been hard at work for the past few months on a leaf blade sword made from old 1075. So far its turning out great and I am loving the way its looking, but I dont want to screw it up. here's some pics of it thus far:

it measures 30 inches from tip to end of the tang. So the next step in making this is heat treating. I have a basic understanding of what needs to be done in a seccesful HT. But so far my experiencing with heat treating swords has been poor. The last sword I made looks great, but is made from poorly chosen steel and was not heat treated correctly. i dont want to make the same mistake again. So with this one I want to do it right

ANY help or advice would be extremely appreciated!

I really want to make this sword the best possible quality I can achieve

Thanks guys!
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend" J.R.R. Tolkien

www.CedarloreForge.com

#2

jake cleland
Supporting Member 1,895 posts Gender:Male Location:Isle of Skye

Posted 25 June 2007 - 06:25 PM nice blade. "orange-ish" heat isnt very specific, depends on the light and how your eyes see colours etc. best thing is to keep testing the blade with a magnet, and when the magnet stops sticking bring it up a wee bit hotter and get the heat/colour completely even. its best to soak at temp for a few minutes, but you're better off quenching immediately than you are trying to soak it and raising the temp too much. quench in oil - unless you hit your temps perfectly and get lucky, it'll crack in water. heat your oil first by heating and quenching a bar of scrap steel. red heat is far too hot for tempering, you'll draw almost all the hardness out that way. for that blade i'd guess about 475f - 500f would be about right. you should clean the scale off after h-t, get it back to bright metal, and heat it until it turns a kinda bronze/purple colour. one way to heat a blade for tempering is to get your coals nice and hot, cut off the airflow,spread your coals out until you have a large enough area to heat the whole blade, and cover them with a couple of inches of ash. lay your cleaned blade on top of the ashes, and carefully watch the oxide colours. once you get it up to the right colour, lift the blade off the ashes but keep it in the heat so you hold the tempering temperature as long as possible. to prevent warpage, the round stock in the fullers could help, but the main thing is proper normalising - heat to non magnetic, and let it cool to black, and repeat a couple of times. you may have to straighten the blad e on the first couple of normalisations - i keep a flat block of wood and a rawhide mallet handy in case it starts to warp. if you do this right before you harden the blade, it will help you get your eye in with regards to the correct colour for quenching. i would also recommend that you make a small test blade of the same steel and practice hardening and tempering before you try this blade - it'd be a shame to spoil so much work, and h-t on a long blade can always go wrong. check the hardness with a good file after the quench - the file should just slide off the edge - and then after tempering - the file should cut, but not much.

this is a very basic guide - there is plenty more detailed info on this site and others. this isn't necessarily the best way of going about this, but it is about the simplest. good luck Jake Cleland - Skye Knives www.knifemaker.co.uk "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." Albert Einstein

#3

David D.
Forum Board Super Administrators 717 posts Gender:Male Location:Muncie Indiana USA

Posted 25 June 2007 - 08:27 PM jake cleland, on Jun 25 2007, 05:25 PM, said: nice blade. "orange-ish" heat isnt very specific, depends on the light and how your eyes see colours etc. best thing is to keep testing the blade with a magnet, and when the magnet stops sticking bring it up a wee bit hotter and get the heat/colour completely even. its best to soak at temp for a few minutes, but you're better off quenching immediately than you are trying to soak it and raising the temp too much. quench in oil - unless you hit your temps perfectly and get lucky, it'll crack in water. heat your oil first by heating and quenching a bar of scrap steel. red heat is far too hot for tempering, you'll draw almost all the hardness out that way. for that blade i'd guess about 475f - 500f would be about right. you should clean the scale off after h-t, get it back to bright metal, and heat it until it turns a kinda bronze/purple colour. one way to heat a blade for tempering is to get your coals nice and hot, cut off the airflow,spread your coals out until you have a large enough area to heat the whole blade, and cover them with a couple of inches of ash. lay your cleaned blade on top of the ashes, and carefully watch the oxide colours. once you get it up to the right colour, lift the blade off the ashes but keep it in the heat so you hold the tempering temperature as long as possible. to prevent warpage, the round stock in the fullers could help, but the main thing is proper normalising - heat to non magnetic, and let it cool to black, and repeat a couple of times. you may have to straighten the blad e on the first couple of normalisations - i keep a flat block of wood and a rawhide mallet handy in case it starts to warp. if you do this right before you harden the blade, it will help you get your eye in with regards to the correct colour for quenching. i would also recommend that you make a small test blade of the same steel and practice

hardening and tempering before you try this blade - it'd be a shame to spoil so much work, and h-t on a long blade can always go wrong. check the hardness with a good file after the quench - the file should just slide off the edge - and then after tempering - the file should cut, but not much. this is a very basic guide - there is plenty more detailed info on this site and others. this isn't necessarily the best way of going about this, but it is about the simplest. good luck

Hey thank you soo much!!! that is some great help for me!! and makes MUCH more sense than most stuff I have read about heat treating on other bladesmithing websites!!... lol
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend" J.R.R. Tolkien

www.CedarloreForge.com

#4

Geoff Keyes
Supporting Member 2,406 posts Gender:Male Location:Duvall Wa

Posted 26 June 2007 - 12:12 AM Although I don't (or haven't yet) make big pieces like this, one thing I picked up from several sources is this. A big blade can warp under it's own weight when it's heated to HT temps. You need to keep the edge up as it comes out of the fire. I know a few makers who have built a vertical forge so that they can lower a sword straight down into the forge, take it straight up and straight down into a quench tank. I'd like to see that sometime, must be impressive. Just my .02 Geoff "The worst day smithing is better than the best day working for someone else." I said that. If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. - - -G. K. Chesterton So, just for the record: the fact that it does work still should not be taken as definitive proof that you are not crazy.

Grant Sarver

#5

Sam Salvati
Fourm Board Super Administrators 4,695 posts Gender:Male Location:Yulan NY, 12792

Posted 27 June 2007 - 08:49 AM Vertical oil quench with the oil HOT, around 300 to 500 degrees. Let not the swords of good and free men be reforged into plowshares, but may they rest in a place of honor; ready, well oiled and God willing unused. For if the price of peace becomes licking the boots of tyrants, then "To Arms!" I say, and may the fortunes of war smile upon patriots

#6

Dee
Members 877 posts Gender:Female Location:Australia

Posted 28 June 2007 - 02:29 AM the first thing that i would suggest is to stop falling in love with this sword!..

heat treating your first sword is a wonderful experience .. but you basically have to keep in mind that your forge and oil setup is trying to do nasty things to this wonderful creation of yours.. so its best not to get too attached to it just yet. if you havent ever heat treated any large blades .. then i would suggest trying out on some heat treating on some scrap metal thats is sort of the same size, shape and the like. it lets you get the feel of what you are about to go through .. as someone has just said, the weight of the blade itself will bend the metal if you arent careful how you take it out of the fire .. its also a good thing to go through the process with the actual sword you want to heat treat .. but without actually starting the fire ... so that you get to know the feelings ... get to know what tools you will need ... what tongs will work best to hold the sword .. and where you want to have them placed etc ... cause i find that once everything is started .. i lose my brain and end up wishing i had one thing or another but not wanting to stop what im doing. heat treating swords is not the easiest thing i have ever done .. and it helps if you have a good setup

for doing this process. i use a vertical gas forge for a lot of my longer heat treatings simply to try to avoid as much warp as possible. still happens every now and again though. but, even though i have temperature gauges and these fancy things around the place .. i still have about 12 magnets planted around each of my forging areas (cause you never can find them when you want them) so that i can make sure that things are truly working ok ... and i have a nice fresh clean file that sits there and only gets to test the edge to make sure that things have worked out ok. so, though fancy setups can be helpful .. they truly arent needed and the basics work great. anyhow .. you've got some good advice here already. as for the strapping of rods to your blade, personally i would advise against it ... but thats just my thoughts. i tried it a little while back and thought it was the solution to life, the universe and everything ... but then i had spent a long time on this one particular sword and i attached the rods ... heat treated ... and then found that i had an awful warp happen ... and it was basically where the rod had gotten too much heat and had warped and pulled the sword out of shape. so, i was better off without the rods in the end. so thats why Personally i dont use them or recommend them to people anymore. some warping can be dealt with straight from the quench, some warping will require some dealings with during tempering .. and some warping can be dealt with after everything is said and done with heat treating ... but one thing is to make sure you dont see warpage as a huge failure ... swords warp ... its what they like to do. they have real fun doing it .. and i remember being really disappointed in the warpages that i got to start with ... and wanting to just abandon the projects ... but now i just accept that sometimes you will get a naughty little sword that just want to warp one time in its life ... and who am i to stop him from doing that? normalise well and good and dont skimp on the time it takes either ... dont take your eye off of it and let it get too hot in the fire .. or get tired of waiting for it to cool down and stick it back into the fire too early .. cause these are all things that will cause you problems later on .. ok, ive noticed now that im rambling terribly .. but im going to blame the fact that i have two swords waiting for heat treating in my workshop that i cant heat treat cause im still recovering ... ack. good luck and have some extreme fun.

#7

MDF
Supporting Member 392 posts

 Gender:Male Location:Rome Posted 28 June 2007 - 09:03 AM Hello david, i am constructing in these days one short sword similar to your: length of the blade, spring steel and fullered blade. I have harden it in vertical oil quench and the blade is not warpage. Hardening approximately 830C and 2 tempering to 260C for an hour everyone. the result is good. Marco CIAO FROM ITALY
Marco Di Francesco

#8

Sam Salvati
Fourm Board Super Administrators 4,695 posts Gender:Male Location:Yulan NY, 12792

Posted 28 June 2007 - 06:27 PM Looks liek this sword kind of. Just heat treated this one on Monday. 5160 blade. Attached Images Let not the swords of good and free men be reforged into plowshares, but may they rest in a place of honor; ready, well oiled and God willing unused. For if the price of peace becomes licking the boots of tyrants, then "To Arms!" I say, and may the fortunes of war smile upon patriots

#9

aaron schroeder
Members 21 posts

Posted 13 August 2007 - 11:46 PM

Head on over to sword forum international and spend some time reading what those guys have to say. Use the search function they have. Go the extra mile and sign up.........ask them what you asked us here. They have a section for beginners and the moderators seem patient and willing to help. This is a great forum but Sword Forum International is all about swords which are alot different than knives, they address all the issues in greater detail. Good luck.

#10

David D.
Forum Board Super Administrators 717 posts Gender:Male Location:Muncie Indiana USA

Posted 14 August 2007 - 12:48 AM aaron schroeder, on Aug 13 2007, 10:46 PM, said: Head on over to sword forum international and spend some time reading what those guys have to say. Use the search function they have. Go the extra mile and sign up.........ask them what you asked us here. They have a section for beginners and the moderators seem patient and willing to help. This is a great forum but Sword Forum International is all about swords which are alot different than knives, they address all the issues in greater detail. Good luck.

Hey thanks so much for the head up on Sword Forum! Ive actually already been joined there for a few years now and probobly should have thought to post this over there first!.. oh well.. And plus I actually already have done the heat treating on this sword since I posted this, and it turne out great!! so I will upload pics of the finished sword as soon as I can.
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend" J.R.R. Tolkien

www.CedarloreForge.com

#11

David D.
Forum Board

 Super Administrators 717 posts Gender:Male Location:Muncie Indiana USA Posted 16 September 2007 - 05:06 PM

All finished!

Thanks so much for the help guys!! Jake, your advice worked out great! I took it step by step and it was flawless!! thanks so much !!
I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend" J.R.R. Tolkien

www.CedarloreForge.com

#12
Members 974 posts

Mike Sheffield

Gender:Male Location:Rosewood Heights Illinois USA Interests:Bladesmithing, knives, swords, martial arts, and my family Posted 24 September 2007 - 07:43 PM Very very nice! My life is like shaving with a razor sharp machete. It's a bit awkward. I feel a sting every now and then, but in the end I'm happy with the results.

#13

Ben Potter
Full time Bladesmith Supporting Member 1,314 posts

 Gender:Male Location:Altadena, CA, USA. Interests:Spending time with loved ones, Celto-Norse lore, Sailing, Shroud-sticking, traditional arts and crafts, woodcraft, sustainable living, reading. Posted 15 October 2007 - 09:05 PM Got a question for you guy's, What do you use to hold the oil in? and how do you heat it up. I'm used to knives, but have a couple of short swords comming up and do not have a container big enough. thanks Ben Ben Potter Bladesmith It's not that I would trade my lot Or any other man's, Nor that I will be ashamed Of my work torn handsFor I have chosen the path I tread Knowing it would be steep, And I will take the joys thereof And the consequences reap.

#14

EdgarFigaro
Supporting Member 4,223 posts Gender:Male Location:Tuttle, Oklahoma

Posted 15 October 2007 - 10:13 PM Bowie had a piece of 2 foot pipe of about 4 inch diameter or so welded to a square plate, water tight welds, that held his oil. I've seen others do the same. Could vary the length of pipe for what you need. Maybe others have other ideas.