scale

[Trey Walker]

I forge with hammer and anvil ( no power hammer)--and I try to get the edge and the outline as close to finished shape as I can. I do decrease heats as I finish up. Somewhere along the line I am banging scale into the steel even though I wire brush and even scrape right out of the forge. When I grind I find pits of scale in the blades. Not terribly deep but a quarter inch spine becomes 3/16th working one little pit out evenly.

The other night I tried something and it worked very well--I lightly sprinkled some borax on the blade before each heat. Just a sprinkle on each side doesn't even fall into the forge. Pull it out,one swipe with the wire brush, hammer away. Annealed --then ground it tonight, no more pits. Seems to work.

[Ed Caffrey]

Good deal! Another thing you might want to investigate is your forge, if your getting pitting on your blades, that would lead me to believe that there is an oxygen rich environment in your forge, and/or the forging temp is a bit too high. Some scaling is always going to happen, but the pitting thing is what has me concerned.

[michael vagnino]

Trey, you might try forging with a wet anvil and hammer. Just sprinkle water on your anvil and dip your hammer in the bucket of water. The water vaporizes and blows off the scale. You end up with a clean blade.

Michael

[Jason Cutter]

I will second Michael's recommendation of the wet hammering technique. With my relative inexperience at the forge, it has been a real saving grace. I wet my hammer and lay it on the anvil face to wet it and the scale explodes off the blade surface. I do this every alternate heat. I must also add that I tend to use lower heats compared to many other smiths (blacksmiths, not bladesmiths) I've seen at work. With this, I can forge out 1/8th inch thick stock and still end up with a knife a little over 3/32inch thick at the spine after all the grinding. No problems with scale being pounded in. Jason.

[sjaqua]

I tried that wet forging once, but I had a slight problem with it. That pop it makes can sound just like a gun or a firecracker going off. And you see, my home is also my wifes place of business, a full service kennel. We have over 25 sporting dogs on the property at any time. So you can imagine the scene. BANG!, "No Bird!", BANG!, "No Bird!"..........

[Jason Cutter]

[McAhron]

I too use water on the anvil and hammer and it works well for me .i also toss in a piece of wood into the forge while heat treating and it greatly reduces the scale because the burning wood removes most of the oxygen from the forge,i would give credit to whom i got the idea from if i could remember(Tai maybe)so thanx to whomever,
p.s. the forge will spit out some sparks as the wood burns

[rhrocker]

Anybody put water on hydraulic press dies? That ought to be interesting and probably not the safest procedure in the shop8o

[whv]

BANG!, "No Bird!", BANG!, "No Bird!"

i can picture that scott - but my springers wouldn't believe me. the youngest always assumes that the gun is good enough to bring down a bird with every shot! (what a dreamer )