[TheForge] to heat treat or not to heat treat... that is my question.

[Andrew Vida]

I may disagree here a bit.

First, going through the HT puts the metal into a more predictable 
condition, something I find desirable with a piece of steel that is to 
be hammered on.  Nothing worse than having tooling fail in that manner 
for all the obvious reasons.

At C35, 4140 is at its toughest.  As for altering the temper, that is 
not likely to be by much.  The bick will sink heat away pretty quickly 
and if you have a lot of hot work to do, you can periodically cool the 
bick with some water.  Unless you bring an area up over tempering 
temperature, yo will not appreciably later the metal's state.  If you 
rest a 5# chunk of welding-hot steel on the end of the bick, yeah, you 
will draw the temper out.  Some care is perhaps in order there.  But the 
small sorts of work for which one is likely be using the end of the bick 
are not going to be large enough to transfer that much heat.

Even if you draw the temper further on the end, you retain it at the 
heavier sections, which helps in terms of the strength of the tool and 
brings us back to condition of the metal, which should be optimal for 
tools that are to be stricken countless times.

It is a small amount of extra work that produces a more well known 
quantity, enhances tool life, and enhances safety.

My plugged kopek's worth.



Saint Phlip wrote:
> Why go to all the trouble? First time you wrap a piece of hot metal
> around it, you're going to change the temper of it anyway, unless it's
> an air-hardened alloy. Leave the one for your hot work alone, and if
> you do enough cold work to justify it, make yourself one that's
> hardened and tempered for that purpose.
> 
> On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Jason Nass <me at wargoth.com> wrote:
>> Just finished up an anvil bick of 4140. I'm not overly familiar with using
>> it for tools, so I am undecided whether to heat treat it and risk it being
>> to brittle to deal with impact, or just leave it normalized. I'd imagine
>> that being it is a high strength alloy, it should hold up to having hot
>> steel hammered around it, especially being as I ain't gonna be using no 12#
>> sledges on it. What thoughts might you metallurgist types have on the
>> matter?
>>
>> Jason Nass - MacTalis Ironworks
>> me at wargoth.com
>>
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