Constantly Humbled by Steel

Hi All,

I was in the shop tonight, just tidying up, and saw a damascus dagger blade that I had ruined on accident during the grinding phase.

It occurred to me that I hadn't ever done a real bend test. So . . .

The blade, so you know, was 64 layers of 15n20 and 1095. From the same billet as this blade.

The blade was normalized. I put it in the vice, grabbed it with a pair of plyers and, just like you would expect, it bent.

I heated it up, straightened it, heated it up again, quenched it then gave it the crudest of all possible tempering with a propane torch. I literally just locked the blade in the vice, propane torch in one hand, beer in the other and heated it until it turned purple. No soak. Totally uneven coloring. All in all, a piss poor job of tempering.

Lock in the vice again. Let's see how far I can bend this thing before it breaks. . . Hey wait, I have my new Iphone in my pocket. It takes video . . .

Check this out.



I did eventually break it, but only after three or four more bends like this and then bending it well past 90 degrees.

Wow.

Steel = magic.

Cheers,

--Dave