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Just realized I was hammering my steel way too cold for years
About six months ago I was working on a set of fireplace tongs and kept getting these weird cracks along the edges. I thought it was just bad steel or something, so I switched suppliers, paid more for a different grade, still had the same problem. Then an old timer named Pete watched me work for a few minutes at a hammer-in up in Vermont and pointed out I was striking way past the dull red phase. He said if the metal isn't at least a bright cherry when you hit it, you're just work-hardening it and asking for fractures. I felt like an idiot because I'd been so worried about burning the steel that I let it cool down too much instead. I went home, heated the next piece almost to orange, and the tongs came out clean with no cracks. Has anyone else found out they were misreading heats and it messed up their work?
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nathan_foster6019d ago
Read a piece by a metallurgist once who said most hobby smiths hammer thirty to fifty degrees too cold because they're scared of burning the steel, and it takes years to unlearn that habit. Pete's advice about the bright cherry color matches exactly what that article described as the minimum working temp for avoiding micro fractures in carbon steel. Seems like every smith I know has that same story about some old hand finally showing them what the right heat actually looks like.
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