Amaya Blackstone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
special_rabbit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2023-05-29 04:52 am
special_rabbit) wrote in fandomhigh2023-05-29 04:52 am
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Blacksmithing Basics; Monday, Second Period [05/29].
"At this point," Amaya started began class with a nod, and delving right into things; no need to waste any time when there was work to be done, right? Besides, it was hard not to get excited about quenching day and to want to get right to it, "after the initial shaping and some fine-tuning with the filing, your swordsshould start looking more like swords, and if they don't, well....we might need to go back to the drawing board or perhaps work a little bit more on filing, but I think you've all got it close enough. If you think otherwise, don't worry about going back a few steps if you have to, it's important that you feel good about what you've got before progressing forward. But today, we are going to be going over some of the more basic finishing techniques, or, at least, finishing when it comes to the blade itself, and those techniques involve heat treatments, especially tempering and quenching.
"First things first: I've had some steel heating up in the forge for a bit now, so I'd like each of you to grab one of these rods with your tongs and put those in the buckets of oil you've got at your station. That's what we're using to quench the blades, and you'll have a much better time if you quench with warmed oil than cold. If you cool your blade...especially if you've been working with a thinner blade...too quickly, you're more likely to crack it, and that's no good. No one wants that."
So she had them heat their oil, then check their blades, and get started on the first step: normalizing. Reseting 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 they were 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 determining that easily was something that would 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 metal, changing the makeup of it 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 blade 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 blade's not hard enough, time to go for another round. If it doesn't bite into the steel, your blade 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 see how they turned out and finish up on making 'em a little prettier. Any questions before you all get started?"
"First things first: I've had some steel heating up in the forge for a bit now, so I'd like each of you to grab one of these rods with your tongs and put those in the buckets of oil you've got at your station. That's what we're using to quench the blades, and you'll have a much better time if you quench with warmed oil than cold. If you cool your blade...especially if you've been working with a thinner blade...too quickly, you're more likely to crack it, and that's no good. No one wants that."
So she had them heat their oil, then check their blades, and get started on the first step: normalizing. Reseting 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 they were 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 determining that easily was something that would 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 metal, changing the makeup of it 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 blade 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 blade's not hard enough, time to go for another round. If it doesn't bite into the steel, your blade 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 see how they turned out and finish up on making 'em a little prettier. Any questions before you all get started?"
Re: Class Activity: Heat Treatments and Quenching - Blacksmithing Basics, 05/29.
And if he fell into the bucket of oil two, three, six times, well. Amaya wasn't surprised, right?