[TheForge] Re: Bricks- Light vs heavy

[Jerry Frost]

Thanks all.

Thin stock is harder to anneal and I've used one version or another of most 
methods mentioned so far.

Steel, hacksaw blade thin, gets sandwiched between heated thicker and wider 
bar stock and buried in an insulating media. I used to use lime most of the 
time and found preheating it made a big difference. Perlite is good but 
you'll get better results if it's in a sealed container as air can move 
through it.

Wrapping a piece in Kaowool and fiberglass insulation has worked fine too, 
especially in an air tight container. This is a technique I only use when 
somebody wants me to anneal a piece but doesn't want to come back the next 
day which is perfectly reasonable.

This came about a few summers ago when Deb and I stopped in at a 
decorator's(?) store. The place carries a mix of antiques and cheap 
knockoffs. The owner's father was carving the main entry doors but couldn't 
find chisels he liked.

Deb had been pointing at bent iron (knock off "wrought") so I could make 
"real" versions for her. Anyway, the owner's father who is also a hobbiest 
smith and I got together to do a few chisels for the project. We were 
basically reshaping a couple gouges and made one large 3" wide one for his 
air chisel.

We reshaped them in short order but he wanted to take them back with him to 
do the grinding and polishing prior to final heat treating so when I 
annealed them I wrapped them in Kaowool and packed them in a steel 5 gl. 
bucket.

He brought them back a week later and we did the final hardening and 
tempering. Seems word got around and I get calls for this kind of thing 
every so often.

For a lot of stuff I just block the openings of my little forge with wads of 
kaowool at the end of the day. Imprecise but . . . Easy. <grin>

Frosty
-------------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.

http://www.artmetalradio.com/


From: "Chuck Robinson" <robi5515 at bellsouth.net>


> Your right Jerry, but I ues a metal drum filled with vermiculite. Large 
> stock is burried in it, by itself.
> Small billets like blades are burried flanked with large slabs of scrap 
> stock and left to annealed over night. i. e. 10-12 hours.
> Works for me
> Chuck