[TheForge] Fwd: bog iron/pig iron to wrought iron

[Andrew Vida]

Daniel Kretchmar wrote:
> Andy and Bruce,
> 
> Both were very helpful! Thank you!

	You are most welcome.  I'm glad you found things useful.
> 
> Now another few questions:  I would like to make a knife for my wife.
> My wife is in the SCA (like me) and protrays the part of a woman
> living in Viking Dublin (890 AD).  I know she should be carrying a
> wrought iron knife.   I know how to make steel knives and carving
> tools and have made a few in medium and high carbon steel as well as
> with pattern welding, but I have never made one from wrought
> iron....How do you harden and temper it? 

	You don't.  Wrought iron has virtually no carbon in it.  Therefore you 
have to carburize it, which will produce blister steel.  Placing your 
billet into a sealed retort with carbonaceous materials is one of the 
traditional methods and works well.  I do not recall offhand how long, 
though.  I am sure there are others here who will be able to say.  I 
remember that Kase-n-ite would penetrate to about 1/16 inch per hour. 
It has been a LONG time since I have carburized anything, so check for 
good information sources before starting.

 > Does normalizing work on
> wrought iron in the same way as steel? 

	I doubt it, though I don't know for certain.  I've never thought about 
it, actually - interesting question.

 > Should I quench in water or
> oil? or wax?  Should I do a full straight down quench (like I do for
> my pattern welded blades) or do an edge quench like I do for my
> carving tools..

	If you carburize the wrought, you will then have steel.  I would HT the 
way you do any knife.