Thread: Work hardening

I can't quite gather what is going on there, but I'm really tired right now, so...

Kaos are you talking about hammer forging a blade like they do some rifle barrels? My CZ's are hammer forged.

It can be compressive or tensile stress, doesn't matter. So yes, hammer forging counts. (what are CZ's btw?)

I was also talking about loading stock with tensile force prior to stock removal techniques though.

CZ-USA -> CZ 527 VARMINT The barrel starts out as a short billit and is hammered around a mandrill. The outside shape is formed and the barrel is rifled by the mandrill. I think the machine costs around $1/2 million

Honestly it sounds like overkill. Modern heat treat techniques (normalizing, etc.) pretty much relieve any stress that you need to in a straight razor. It's kind of like using a power hammer to peen a razor. It's just unnecessary and too complicated to validate the outcome (my opinion and all that).

Okay now I know where you're going. I agree with Philadelph. For the section thickness at the end of all that processing, the thermal cycling in preparation for heat treatment and the final hardening and tempering will reset to zero any gains made by attempts to work harden the material.

The choice is to work harden the material and risk it coming apart during the forging/peening, or to use the regular methods of heat treatment to achieve hardening. I haver the feeling that you would fracture your piece long before coming close to a razor thickness.

But, if you consistently anneal the material, and choose the right material in the first place, during the forging, you could theoretically do it. Each time you anneal the material you eliminate any hardness gained by forging. It would be an exercise in proof of concept and not very practical given the ease of doing things "normally."