Do you harden guards? Has anyone kept tarnish off of polished brass with clear laquer

G

Grizzly Bear

Well-Known Member
How's it going knife dogs? I have a couple of questions that you could help me with concerning guards.

1. I have always used Brass to make my guards, pommels and bolsters with. I am thinking of using stainless steel to make an open slot guard with the open part of the guard extending above the spine and bending the two "forks" forward to make two serpent heads. My question is, after I shape the guard, do I have to have it hardened? I am afraid that if I have it hardened it will become warped from the heat treatment and no longer fit as closely to the blade as I had originally made it.
Please let me know if I need to heat treat this guard.

2. I have found that after I polished all of the brass parts on my baby grand piano, and then sprayed them with a clear lacquer(sp?) coating, they did not tarnish with age. I polished the brass parts before and didn't spray them and they soon tarnished. Does anyone out there spray clear lacquer on their brass knife guards? I've used Renaissance Wax before but the results don't last that long.

Now a question for the Master Smiths out there, was the steel of medieval suits of armor hardened? If yes, how did they keep them from warping during quenching and thus not fitting properly on the knight that the armor was tailor made for? I know this isn't directly knife related but I have been wondering about this and know that some of you Master Smiths have made suits of armor.

Thanks a lot for the help.

Grizzly Bear
 
In my opinion, 416 SS used as a guard does not need to be hardened. I have used hardened 416 SS and in use could not tell it apart from unhardened 416 SS.
 
I know the 416 gets hard right out of the forge because the engravers have to use carbide tools to engrave it. A simple annealing cycle before sending it to them is appreciated. I forge my 416 and never really noticed it being hard when drilling and milling but I did test it a couple times and it was about 40 RC hardness. After annealing was about 25 RC. I see no reason to harden it really. Ive heard it is more rust prone but Ive never seen rust on 416. I don't use any stainless for guards other than 416.

Coat of armor? I wish I knew how to make one.
 
Last edited:
Bruce Bump said:
I know the 416 gets hard right out of the forge because the engravers have to use carbide tools to engrave it. A simple annealing cycle before sending it to them is appreciated. I forge my 416 and never really noticed it being hard when drilling and milling but I did test it a couple times and it was about 40 RC hardness. After annealing was about 25 RC. I see no reason to harden it really. Ive heard it is more rust prone but Ive never seen rust on 416. I don't use any stainless for guards other than 416.

Coat of armor? I wish I knew how to make one.
Click to expand...

Bruce,
1) You are awesome.
2) I have been working on a guard/bolster and it's made out of 304 SS. I find it wayyyyyy harder to grind than the pre HT D2 that I always for blades. Is this normal? Since it was "just a bolster" I didn't worry about heating during grinding... did it maybe air harden??? Not possible, right? Anyway, I thought I would post this here since you guys were talking about hardening guards/bolsters. If this is considered hijacking, I apologize in advance.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
My question is, after I shape the guard, do I have to have it hardened?
Click to expand...

It's a matter of pro versus con. What do you gain by heat treating SS guard material? MAYBE a slight increase in corrosion resistance, and a SLIGHT increase in hardness (annealed 416 is generally in the mid 20s Rc, and the max hardness of 416 is approx, Rc46)
What's the down side to a heat treat SS guard? a LOT of additional time and effort in clean up and finish work. And of course there may be other pros/cons based on what you do to that guard, and how you do it. Personally, for me, there are not enough gained "pros" to entice me to heat treat SS guards.

Does anyone out there spray clear lacquer on their brass knife guards?
Click to expand...

Again, you have to look at the pros/cons, and decide for yourself. For me the cons far out weight the pros. The main consideration for me would be chipping and scratching of the coating. It would be a royal pain in the butt to repair a scratch or a chip in a coating applied to knife guard materials. It's not uncommon for buyers/clients to want a maker to "fix" a scratch, ding, or whatever on a knife. With that idea in mind, I try to envision what instances might occur, should I use a given method or process, and avoid using those if I foresee any possible problems. Ideally, when I send a knife out the shop door, I don't ever want to see it again for maintenance. :) So for me, unless the coating is something super durable like Gun-Kote, and I can live with the requirements necessary to use it (in the case of a polish guard material it wouldn't work well..having adhesion problems), I personally would not apply any type of coating to guards/buttcaps.

The following is not meant to be any kind of a put down, but it's a fact within the world of serious custom knife buyers.... "Brass has no class." I don't know where it came from, but it's a stigma that got a foot hold, and has been prevalent for over a decade now. I have to believe that brass is viewed as a "beginner's" material because it's the least expensive, and likely the most easy to work of the common fittings materials. It also requires the most maintenance on a buyer's/Client's behalf. Nickel Silver, and the stainless guard materials are all readily accepted. I choose to use a lot of Nickel Silver, mainly because the ease of working it is much better then the stainless materials. If I do use stainless fittings material, it tends to be 416 SS. Many use the 300 series stainless, but they require far more work and effort to produce "clean" fittings.

was the steel of medieval suits of armor hardened?
Click to expand...

Generally not in the sense of modern thinking. While many like to think that armor was "hot forged", the majority of it's creation was done cold. You have to realize that at that point in time, there wasn't any "steel store" were steel could be purchased. The Smiths of that era first had to "make" the steel they needed by either smelting, or by "building" the piece of steel they needed by combining "scraps", until they had a large enough piece to produce the item(s) they desired. In that sense, there was "hot" forging that took place, in order to gain the size, and thickness a given piece of material needed to be, but since it was produced from smelted iron or scraps (or the combination of both), the material wasn't any particular steel type. Most of what could be called "hardening" was accomplished through the "work hardening" that took place during the cold forming of what we today would call "sheet metal", when it was shaped into armor. Armor did crack, and it did break, so there certainly was a given level of hardening occurring, but the actual hardening was more of a random/chance result of circumstance, then an intentional goal. I'm sure that there were particular Smiths of that era who were far more knowledgeable and well versed in particular aspects of working "steel" then others, and likely those Smiths saw the advantage(s) in the added strength/durability of "heat treated" material, but there is no historic records of armor being intentionally "hardened"...only records that armor or weapons from some individual Smiths were "better" then from others. "Better" being a relative term, that could mean many different things.
 
Justin Presson said:
Should you heat treat a damscus guard?

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

In my opinion...yes. You will notice a pretty big difference in the looks of a hardened and etched damascus guard and an etched damascus guard that was not hardened. Not hardened, damascus when etched looks a lot like two tones of gray. It's hardened AND tempered martensite that etches nice revealing that dark black/gray contrasted with the bright nickel/silver.

So I harden and temper all my damascus fittings.
 
J. Doyle said:
In my opinion...yes. You will notice a pretty big difference in the looks of a hardened and etched damascus guard and an etched damascus guard that was not hardened. Not hardened, damascus when etched looks a lot like two tones of gray. It's hardened AND tempered martensite that etches nice revealing that dark black/gray contrasted with the bright nickel/silver.

So I harden and temper all my damascus fittings.
Click to expand...
That makes sense John, reason I ask is I plan to do it soon. So do you get it to final fitting then heat treat it before glue up I didnt know if you had to account for anything post heat treat that might compromise how it fits on the tang and shoulders.

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
 
Yeah, hardening is the last thing I do. Get it sanded nice, fit tight, then harden, temper and clean off the HT oxides and etch and install.
 
ED, thanks again for coming through for me. I'm making an original wall hanger Bowie knife design for my brother with stainless guard and bolsters (full tang) with a lot of fancy file work on it and didn't want to screw it up by hardening it unless I had to. My brother really liked the file work I did around the full tang of my dagger and I wanted to incorporate it with a Bowie blade style.

I was going to spray the guard, bolsters and pommel of a Bowie and an original dagger which I made for myself with brass (I just think Brass is pretty when polished to a fine bright finish) with lacquer since they are only to be wall hangers. I agree that I wouldn't spray the guard if they were to actually be used because of the reasons you stated. I like using Brass because it is easy to work with but I also like the golden contrast with the mirror finished stainless blade.

I find your armor answer very informative. I always wondered if the armor was hardened so that it could better withstand the bodkin arrow points used on it.

Thanks again for you detailed answers.

From a day dreamer of days gone past,
Grizzly Bear


Kwzito, I consider your input an enhancement to the guard question not in any way a hijacking. Keep up the good work.
 
Grizzly Bear said:
ED, thanks again for coming through for me. I'm making an original wall hanger Bowie knife design for my brother with stainless guard and bolsters (full tang) with a lot of fancy file work on it and didn't want to screw it up by hardening it unless I had to. My brother really liked the file work I did around the full tang of my dagger and I wanted to incorporate it with a Bowie blade style.

I was going to spray the guard, bolsters and pommel of a Bowie and an original dagger which I made for myself with brass (I just think Brass is pretty when polished to a fine bright finish) with lacquer since they are only to be wall hangers. I agree that I wouldn't spray the guard if they were to actually be used because of the reasons you stated. I like using Brass because it is easy to work with but I also like the golden contrast with the mirror finished stainless blade.

I find your armor answer very informative. I always wondered if the armor was hardened so that it could better withstand the bodkin arrow points used on it.

Thanks again for you detailed answers.

From a day dreamer of days gone past,
Grizzly Bear


Kwzito, I consider your input an enhancement to the guard question not in any way a hijacking. Keep up the good work.
Click to expand...

Thanks! When will we get to see pictures of this bad boy Bowie?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top