Thread: Re-using Sheffield Steel?

I like this idea. And for ideas to smelt a bloom, I will point you to a documentary I watched on either History channel or Discovery Network or Science channel. It was about the "Ulfberht", a Viking sword, and a master swordsmith that recreated an Ulfberht using almost entirely "period accurate" techniques & such. He built his own crucible & smelting kiln/furnace/pit thingy. It was quite enjoyable!

And forgive my layman's understanding, but isn't carbon steel properly heat treated when a magnet won't stick to it while the steel is red-hot??

Originally Posted by Crawler

I like this idea. And for ideas to smelt a bloom, I will point you to a documentary I watched on either History channel or Discovery Network or Science channel. It was about the "Ulfberht", a Viking sword, and a master swordsmith that recreated an Ulfberht using almost entirely "period accurate" techniques & such. He built his own crucible & smelting kiln/furnace/pit thingy. It was quite enjoyable!

And forgive my layman's understanding, but isn't carbon steel properly heat treated when a magnet won't stick to it while the steel is red-hot??

I have done very little forge work. However when I was in high school the metal shop students made the chisels for the wood shop. I made a set of lathe chisels. It seems to me that when we did the heat tempered the chisels we heated the steel until the magnet would not stick and then quenched it in oil. It seems to me that we did that twice though. I have no idea what we were using for steel though.
Someone that actually knows what they are talking about will likely set us straight on this.

Originally Posted by RezDog

I have done very little forge work. However when I was in high school the metal shop students made the chisels for the wood shop. I made a set of lathe chisels. It seems to me that when we did the heat tempered the chisels we heated the steel until the magnet would not stick and then quenched it in oil. It seems to me that we did that twice though. I have no idea what we were using for steel though.
Someone that actually knows what they are talking about will likely set us straight on this.

Different steels have different hardening properties. The non-magnetic point (aka critical temp) is the point at which the steel is quenched either in oil, water, in air, or in some other magic goop. The difference is the speed at which the heat is drawn from the steel. Too fast and you risk cracking/shattering the steel. Too slow, and it won't harden. My hunch is that most of the blades I'd weld into a billet would be oil-quenching, but I would do some testing first. Better to ruin a small sample than a finished blade.

As for making a bloom, I'll leave that to others to experiment with. I'm already worried enough about burning the place down without involving molten metals. As an aside, look up Tim Zowada. He's a knifemaker who smelts his own steel, I think from sand found on Lake Michigan's shore. Or something like that... Fascinating stuff, but way hotter than anything I'm used to dealing with!

You all are working out the thought problem nicely. Non-magnetic is a cheap and easy way to test the steel's readiness for the quench. Cangooner's summaries are good, and his point about testing is what drives us all. Mystery steels are the worst to work with because of their unknowns.

I suspect that a collection of bits from old Sheffield will be a high carbon low hardenability steel that is very clean (without a lot of minor alloys) crucible steel, aka Huntsman stylee. Using a crucible to recycle the steel is a good way to solve the problem. It's time consuming and needs the right equipment. Re-forging into a billet using pattern welding techniques will work but there may be a little percentage of steel lost to the process depending on techniques used.

Non-magnetic and quench in oil would be a good first step. If it was hard enough to hone, you're done. If not hard enough, then the next step is to quench in water. Either way whoever does this will be learning something.

Originally Posted by RezDog

I have done very little forge work. However when I was in high school the metal shop students made the chisels for the wood shop. I made a set of lathe chisels. It seems to me that when we did the heat tempered the chisels we heated the steel until the magnet would not stick and then quenched it in oil. It seems to me that we did that twice though. I have no idea what we were using for steel though.
Someone that actually knows what they are talking about will likely set us straight on this.

Standard wood chisels are usually made out of O1 or A2 steel. Personally, I prefer the O1.

I was going through my accumulated junk here yesterday when I came across a good sized bundle of blades that are beyond repair, so the thought of trying to forge them into a billet returned. Just thought I'd check to see if any of you played around with this at all over the last year?

I remember watching a video posted on SRP about rusty steel wire rope being turned into beautiful pattern-welded steel. I'm sure something similar can be done with a few antique blades. Please post your pix as soon as you're done.

I think if I needed to make a new razor out of a bunch of old razors, id do a canned sanmai construction. with as thin as the ground portion of the old razors are, I think you would lose that steel almost immediately if you were to try to a forge weld them to scale. then there is not knowing what the old razors were and how to heat treat steel from them.

so I would make a can, then pack as many old razors as I had in that can, and then fill it with 1084 powder, weld a lid on, and then forge weld the can. then peel the can off, and forge the billet into a bar, and then forge weld that bar onto each side of a piece of known, clean 1095, and then make the razor from that. that way you would have the coolness of the old razor steel, with a known clean edge steel that you know how to heat treat.

I have not played with smelting steel so couldn't tell you how to do that. closest ive come to playing with that is melting iron and casting it.

I have played with forge welded cable. and while it is cool to be able to take a piece of junk wire rope and turn it into a knife, I'm not all that fond of it. the pattern to me is sort of plain, and at the end of the day you spent all that time prepping the rope, welding it, forging it out, grinding, heat treating, finishing, ect..... and what you end up with is a chunk of steel that you don't know what it has in it. when you could have started the day with good, clean, known materials and have gotten known repeatable results.

I think the issue with melting down high carbon steel is that you'll lose the carbon unless you have a way of keeping oxygen away from the steel. It ain't cast iron but you might turn it into that! So the forge-welding ideas are better but even then you have to worry about keeping scale off the steel when you heat it or it won't fuse. And if you put fully hollow-ground razors into a forge that's hot enough for forge-welding I suspect the thin parts will mostly just turn into scale or disappear at high heat; you'll just have the spine and tang. Wedges would be your best bet and you would probably need to worry a little about keeping the mating surfaces nearly flat and unoxidized (like with flux).

But, what the heck do I know, I never tried it and IANABOAM (I am not a blacksmith or a metallurgist).