A couple of days ago, I had a discussion about how dangerous a cheap sword is for training. One of the arguments of the owner of the sword was that the steel was thick and solid, and he didn't believe it would break. I explained that regardless of the steel, heat treatment for a sword is a very important issue because it has to withstand impact. The chances that on a mass produced piece of cheap steel it would be done right, is nil.

A couple of days ago I was working in my forge, and I remembered that I had some tool steel files laying around that I was going to make a couple of working knives out of. I have many old files lying around, and I thought that it would be more fun to show just how weak a thick piece of steel can be if it was heat treated incorrectly. After all, a picture says more than a thousand words. Best watch full screen if you want to read the text.

I've posted it in the MA forum already and on my facebook, and I thought that people here might like it too. I didn't post this in the forge ecause it has no added value there. The people who post there already know this, and this also doesn't have any relevant information. This was just a bit of 'fun with steel and fire'. It's fun because the video contains fire, steel, and breaking things

This is the first thing I ever uploaded to youtube.
Next time I have to remember to keep my phone sideways.

The razors you see underneath the fire were just heat treated, and the pipes you see in the fire had just been forged and put into the fire for annealing. Since the fire was going anyway, I decided to put the files in there on a whim.