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Blacksmith Basics: Armor Edition; Thursday, Second Period [07/28].
Thursday, July 28th, 2022 05:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
special_rabbit"Morning, everyone," Amaya greeted the class with the usual nod, and a small smirk, because she knew this particular lesson they were about to go into was always a big hit--even if last time, the whole experience had been a bit...well...she was trying not to think on that too much. "We've been working our way through the various techniques needed to be employed in making a piece of armor, and today's going to be no different, as we move onto what I've noticed has been almost as popular as the hammering itself, and that's a step that's crucial if you want your armor pieces to be sturdy and strong as armor should be, and that means heat treatments, especially tempering and quenching.
"Ideally, at this part of the process, you'll have hammered out your metal, shaped it, and cut it to form. We're doing things a little more piecemeal in this class, so with a few exceptions, I doubt we've really got anything ready to go for tempering, and we mostly want you to get used to the process, anyway. So I've got some ingots heating up in the forge for you all; when you're up, grab some tongs, pull 'em out, flatten 'em up a bit, and then what you're going to do is plunge the piece into those buckets of oil we've got there beside the anvil. That's what we're using to quench the metal, and you'll have a much better time if you quench with warmed oil than cold. If you cool your metal...especially if you're working with thinner pieces, as you usually are with armor...too fast, you're more likely to crack it, and that's no good. Anyway..."
So she had them heat their oil, and get started on the first step: normalizing. Resetting and redistributing the steel to a more normalized state and relieving stresses. Heating it and then letting it cool in still air, repeating it about two or three times, and she showed them how to use a magnet to help determine if you're doing it properly, because heating it properly will cause the metal to become nonmagnetic, which was just neat, when you got right down to it. She explained how color could also be taken into consideration, but that's something that'll develop with experience, since there's a fine art to just telling it's ready by looking at it.
Next step: the quench! Amaya explained that quenching is basically what's going to harden your steel, and oil is generally better than water, and they were basically rapidly cooling the steel, changing the makeup of the steel to strengthen it. Heat it up, quench it to cool it, then heat it back up again. Heat and quench, heat and quench. You want to be quick about it; the steel cools pretty quickly even just in the air, and then get it in the oil with a slight back and forth or slicing movement. Be careful of flare ups, and submerge the piece for about ten to fifteen seconds.
Do a file test on it, to see if the file bites into the steel. If it does, the metal's not hard enough, time to go for another round. If it doesn't bite into the steel, your metal is hard enough, and you've got to finish it up with some tempering that wasn't too dissimilar to baking.
"I usually just pop these guys up on top of the forge for that step," she explained, doing just that and showing off a few other things that were already up there. "And that's probably where we'll leave them until next week, when we'll touch on the final steps. Keep in mind, the larger the piece, the harder it is to really harden it with a quenching treatment, and you're left with just tempering. But when you're working with smaller pieces, or pieces that'll be joined together later for one larger set, you might as well take advantage of the quenching if you can. Any questions before you all get started?"
"Ideally, at this part of the process, you'll have hammered out your metal, shaped it, and cut it to form. We're doing things a little more piecemeal in this class, so with a few exceptions, I doubt we've really got anything ready to go for tempering, and we mostly want you to get used to the process, anyway. So I've got some ingots heating up in the forge for you all; when you're up, grab some tongs, pull 'em out, flatten 'em up a bit, and then what you're going to do is plunge the piece into those buckets of oil we've got there beside the anvil. That's what we're using to quench the metal, and you'll have a much better time if you quench with warmed oil than cold. If you cool your metal...especially if you're working with thinner pieces, as you usually are with armor...too fast, you're more likely to crack it, and that's no good. Anyway..."
So she had them heat their oil, and get started on the first step: normalizing. Resetting and redistributing the steel to a more normalized state and relieving stresses. Heating it and then letting it cool in still air, repeating it about two or three times, and she showed them how to use a magnet to help determine if you're doing it properly, because heating it properly will cause the metal to become nonmagnetic, which was just neat, when you got right down to it. She explained how color could also be taken into consideration, but that's something that'll develop with experience, since there's a fine art to just telling it's ready by looking at it.
Next step: the quench! Amaya explained that quenching is basically what's going to harden your steel, and oil is generally better than water, and they were basically rapidly cooling the steel, changing the makeup of the steel to strengthen it. Heat it up, quench it to cool it, then heat it back up again. Heat and quench, heat and quench. You want to be quick about it; the steel cools pretty quickly even just in the air, and then get it in the oil with a slight back and forth or slicing movement. Be careful of flare ups, and submerge the piece for about ten to fifteen seconds.
Do a file test on it, to see if the file bites into the steel. If it does, the metal's not hard enough, time to go for another round. If it doesn't bite into the steel, your metal is hard enough, and you've got to finish it up with some tempering that wasn't too dissimilar to baking.
"I usually just pop these guys up on top of the forge for that step," she explained, doing just that and showing off a few other things that were already up there. "And that's probably where we'll leave them until next week, when we'll touch on the final steps. Keep in mind, the larger the piece, the harder it is to really harden it with a quenching treatment, and you're left with just tempering. But when you're working with smaller pieces, or pieces that'll be joined together later for one larger set, you might as well take advantage of the quenching if you can. Any questions before you all get started?"
