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Tomahawk Failure

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mmutarelli

32 Cal.
Joined
Mar 16, 2016
Messages
34
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Location
NC
Matt from NC here. I make this Hawk and everything was cool till I hardened it. I fed it in to the forge eye first and got it hot. Before that I annealed it three times at progressively lower temps. I think I got it too hot. I didn't see sparks but it may have been close to welding temp. I dunked it in quenching oil and it looked good initially. However, when I got home, it was splayed open. Any thoughts?
 

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Matt from NC here. I make this Hawk and everything was cool till I hardened it. I fed it in to the forge eye first and got it hot. Before that I annealed it three times at progressively lower temps. I think I got it too hot. I didn't see sparks but it may have been close to welding temp. I dunked it in quenching oil and it looked good initially. However, when I got home, it was splayed open. Any thoughts?
It doesn't look like your weld was good. Also, you are missing the steel bit insert. You want to temper the blade harder than the eye, so I am confused why your heated from the eye? Did you temper the head after quenching? Your description is a little confusing, so perhaps a bulleted list would be easier for us to follow...

A typical procedure would include the following steps in roughly this order:
Form the eye and rough shape the blade sides
Insert bit and forge-weld the entire blade
Finish shaping the blade (Forge & file work), taking care not to overheat and burn your bit
Drift the eye to final size & shape
Quench the blade
Temper the blade
 
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i had a similar experience with a knife blade, i hardened it then went to bed without tempering. in the morning the blade was in three pieces. it also had cracks straight down the blade from the spine to the edge like it was delaminating. except it wasn't laminated.

i`d have to agree with Black Hand on his points as well. unless you used High carbon steel for the whole thing. some of that stuff does not like to forge weld to itself occasionally. in which case I`d agree with Black Hand.
 

The body can be made from mild steel, but a high-carbon bit needs to be inserted (the blade ends up being 3 layers for some or all of its length. Getting the body to proper heat and achieving a forge-weld is essential. Use your flux!
 
A magnet gets you close, may not be an accurate indicator.

For cabon contents around .7%, it is fairly accurate. As carbon goes higher and lower, the % austenite varies and that affects the magnetic properties. It is still a more accurate method than guessing the temperature. If you have enough austenite to keep the magnet from sticking to the iron, you can get a decent % martensite in the quench.
 
For cabon contents around .7%, it is fairly accurate. As carbon goes higher and lower, the % austenite varies and that affects the magnetic properties. It is still a more accurate method than guessing the temperature. If you have enough austenite to keep the magnet from sticking to the iron, you can get a decent % martensite in the quench.
I've gone by color.
 
It doesn't look like your weld was good. Also, you are missing the steel bit insert. You want to temper the blade harder than the eye, so I am confused why your heated from the eye? Did you temper the head after quenching? Your description is a little confusing, so perhaps a bulleted list would be easier for us to follow...

A typical procedure would include the following steps in roughly this order:
Form the eye and rough shape the blade sides
Insert bit and forge-weld the entire blade
Finish shaping the blade (Forge & file work), taking care not to overheat and burn your bit
Drift the eye to final size & shape
Quench the blade
Temper the blade


Black Hand,

Thanks. I followed the sequence of events as you described. There is a bit of high carbon steel in the middle of the wrapped low carbon steel. I wanted to clean it up again then temper it to get that nice bronze color. However, you see the results. Our instructor had us feed the hawk head in eye first to get it hot first because it had the most mass. Seemed reasonable. My other two hawks came out OK. Could over heating done this you suppose or just a good old fashioned weld failure? Pic of one of my good ones.
 

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Black Hand,

Thanks. I followed the sequence of events as you described. There is a bit of high carbon steel in the middle of the wrapped low carbon steel. I wanted to clean it up again then temper it to get that nice bronze color. However, you see the results. Our instructor had us feed the hawk head in eye first to get it hot first because it had the most mass. Seemed reasonable. My other two hawks came out OK. Could over heating done this you suppose or just a good old fashioned weld failure? Pic of one of my good ones.
The weld didn't really take, so I'd suspect oxidation which created scale (not enough flux) or the metal temperature was not quite at forge-welding heat. Either would result in a weaker bond and potential failure. Things can be too hot, but at that point you burn your steel (or iron) and have sparklers. If the weld had taken and a proper quench achieved, overheating during your temper would just have softened the steel to where it wouldn't hold an edge very well/at all, but temper heats aren't that hot compared to forging heats (300-500F vs 1500-2000+F).
 
Thanks everyone. Our instructor John Hege from VA is coming to Montgomery Community College, Troy NC Feb 15-17th 2019 for another hawk class. If anyone is interested we also have knife and other continuing education classes. ( crass plug, no charge )

MM
 
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