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Forged out a small blade in 8670, did the normalizing, thermocycling cycles before heat treating, quenched in parks AAA, tempered twice at 350 for 2 hours each time. Ground the blade out and got it sharpened for testing!

firged 8670 1.jpg

Sliced paper and whittled wood nice, good edge holding in those tests. Hit it against some mild steel with no edge damage and even shaved some mild steel from my platen, too!

shave.jpg

Threw it into a log and bent it out a few times and got the tip to bend slightly. Bent it back mostly straight, then hammered the blade into the log a bit over 1" deep and then hammered on the handle end with a 3# hammer several times. Flew out of the log when the tip bent a bit more. Put the blade on concrete with the handle elevated slightly and hammered it around 10-12 times with a 2.5# cross pein until it broke so I could check the grain structure. Pretty happy with the grain and performance!8670 broke.jpg

8670 grain.jpg
 
Made some Mokume last night for the first time! Stacked and Tig welded 17 quarters and forged it out. When I folded the billet for more layers, I didn't clean the surface and it wasn't not enough, so I have a seem going down the middle of the piece. Lots of fun to do, worked very easily under the hammer, too! Got it too hot a couple times, so some metal squirted out when I forged it, so I need to pay more attention to the heat!
 

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Taz575 said:
Made some Mokume last night for the first time! Stacked and Tig welded 17 quarters and forged it out. When I folded the billet for more layers, I didn't clean the surface and it wasn't not enough, so I have a seem going down the middle of the piece. Lots of fun to do, worked very easily under the hammer, too! Got it too hot a couple times, so some metal squirted out when I forged it, so I need to pay more attention to the heat!
Click to expand...
That looks pretty good, nice pattern in that.
 
I just hammered the heck out of it, used the cross pein to put random deeper divots in it, folded it and hammered it flat again. Was a lot easier than I thought!
 
8C1C9B7D-31CF-47E2-A5CD-BDED93EE255C.jpeg
I made a knife for myself I guess. I didn’t really feel like working today, but I figured I probably should. I was hollow grinding this one, and did that thing where you grind a hole in your blade. I didn’t really want to toss it, so I ground it narrower to get rid of the hole, and re shaped the handle so it would look better, stuck a couple pieces of black paper Micarta on it and dunked it in some ferric chloride. It will make a decent enough shop knife. I’m glad I didn’t wreck one of the nearly finished ones. Time to take some time off :)
 
Taz575 said:
Made some Mokume last night for the first time! Stacked and Tig welded 17 quarters and forged it out. When I folded the billet for more layers, I didn't clean the surface and it wasn't not enough, so I have a seem going down the middle of the piece. Lots of fun to do, worked very easily under the hammer, too! Got it too hot a couple times, so some metal squirted out when I forged it, so I need to pay more attention to the heat!
Click to expand...

Looks good! It's fun when the metal squirts out and heads towards your leg or some other undesired location!

The other downside to that is it can leave you with voids in the mokume, which lead to other bad things.
 
Taz575 said:
Forged out a small blade in 8670, did the normalizing, thermocycling cycles before heat treating, quenched in parks AAA, tempered twice at 350 for 2 hours each time. Ground the blade out and got it sharpened for testing!

View attachment 81180

Sliced paper and whittled wood nice, good edge holding in those tests. Hit it against some mild steel with no edge damage and even shaved some mild steel from my platen, too!

View attachment 81181

Threw it into a log and bent it out a few times and got the tip to bend slightly. Bent it back mostly straight, then hammered the blade into the log a bit over 1" deep and then hammered on the handle end with a 3# hammer several times. Flew out of the log when the tip bent a bit more. Put the blade on concrete with the handle elevated slightly and hammered it around 10-12 times with a 2.5# cross pein until it broke so I could check the grain structure. Pretty happy with the grain and performance!View attachment 81178

View attachment 81179
Click to expand...

Grain looks good and from those tests it looks like you had a great heat treat on it.

I torture a blade every now and then. Sometimes I break one, but I usually put a coupon in the oven with every batch of blades.

That way I can just break the coupon to check the heat treat.
 
I have been doing coupons, too of cut offs and scrap to tune my heat treat. I wanted to forge this one out and destroy it since it is my first time with that steel and heat treating in my forge, so it was a test piece for the whole process.
 
Taz575 said:
I have been doing coupons, too of cut offs and scrap to tune my heat treat. I wanted to forge this one out and destroy it since it is my first time with that steel and heat treating in my forge, so it was a test piece for the whole process.
Click to expand...

Great idea, it never hurts to sacrifice one to testing!
 
I want to do some simple forged/blacksmith type knives that are heavy duty that I can forge and HT consistently, so I am looking at 8670 and 80CRV2. Really like both, it's hard to decide!
 
That Mokume looks good - raindrop pattern. Looks in the bottom photos you drilled some holes, then forged flat, then cleaned up? Still the stacks of quarters? I just might have to try that soon.
 
Yeah! 20 quarters stacked (per stack), tig welded w/o filler rod, hammered into thick discs. The D shape ones went thinner, so I cut in half, drilled dimples in the outer surface, cleaned off the scale, stacked and re tig welded, then forge welded and forged back out, so around 40 layers. The round one was the same 20 quarters, forged down thicker, dimpled and then forged flat again. Got an inclusion on one side of the stack. I like the 20 layer look vs the 40 layer ones.
 
Taz575 said:
Yeah! 20 quarters stacked (per stack), tig welded w/o filler rod, hammered into thick discs. The D shape ones went thinner, so I cut in half, drilled dimples in the outer surface, cleaned off the scale, stacked and re tig welded, then forge welded and forged back out, so around 40 layers. The round one was the same 20 quarters, forged down thicker, dimpled and then forged flat again. Got an inclusion on one side of the stack. I like the 20 layer look vs the 40 layer ones.
Click to expand...
How thick are the final pieces? I've been wondering if they could be used for guards and spacers. Looks like a lot of fun to do.
 
The round piece was around 1/4" thick or thicker before I dimpled it. I went deep with the dimple, so it was a touch over 1/8" forged flat and is around 1/16" after grinding some inclusions out. If you forge to half inch thick, dimple and then flatten, you should be able to get 1/4" thick piece for a guard easily. The D shaped ones are around 3/32 or 1/8" thick roughly.
 
Taz575 said:
Yeah! 20 quarters stacked (per stack), tig welded w/o filler rod, hammered into thick discs. The D shape ones went thinner, so I cut in half, drilled dimples in the outer surface, cleaned off the scale, stacked and re tig welded, then forge welded and forged back out, so around 40 layers. The round one was the same 20 quarters, forged down thicker, dimpled and then forged flat again. Got an inclusion on one side of the stack. I like the 20 layer look vs the 40 layer ones.
Click to expand...

Mokume Gane is cool to make and easy with quarters. Those rain drops turned out great!

My next attempt I'm going to try and get some brass mixed in with the quarters. It's tricky though as the brass melts at a lower temp. Gotta get my thermocouple working today.
 
I've been practicing on my new sewing machine on all sorts of scrap leather glued up. I'm really liking this thing and learning all different ways it can be set up in regards to speed, stitch length and other stuff. I should be doing some sheaths next week.
I figured since the machine has a hour or so on it now I'd run this thru. it's seven layers of seven ounce leather, this machine went thru it like it was two layers, I couldn't tell any difference. it just stitched it like a hot needle thru butter. :D
wvv6wiH.jpg
 
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