/diy/ - Do It Yourself

You know, it _just_ occurred to me that Anon might have thought I was suggesting the upended rail was much superior to other methods. I didn't mean to say that, only that it was perfectly adequate for OP's needs and imnsho has an edge over striking on the face. A superior solution is an honest-to-god anvil. I don't think the sideways rail is superior either, but if OP's got a chunk of rail he's good to go no matter how he uses it. Sorry if anybody got their knickers twisted 'cause I wasn't clear on that.

>>190532
Correct. I will note, however, that I got 3' of rail for free by walking into the local rail yard and asking. I don't know what a scrapyard would cost, though I presume not much.

OP didn't mention any other tools he'd need, btw. Perhaps we should mention easy/cheapish ways to heat the steel? Pic related; fire a tiger torch into a 10" stovepipe with a hole cut in the side. Line with kaowool and a firebrick. Gets up around 1000C, faster and hotter if you plug one end of the stovepipe with more kaowool.

>>126666
Thanks! I used a regular old pair of needlenose for the rose petals, held it with... pic related, middle section, middle tongs (with the pointy jaws).

The best thing about organizing a smithy is that you don't care about making holes in the rough wood, and you can forge your own staples for hanging hammers and nails for hanging tongs.

Pic related. I'm replacing the setup you see at bottom with cast fireclay in the next couple of weeks, and I've got an unpictured coal forge right next to it that I use for welding and tradition's sake. Ironically the stand it's on is a nail forge.

>>104661
All that said, yes, you can stamp out a knife blank , shape it, and heat treat it. Plenty of smiths I know cut knife blanks out of leaf spring. This assumes you know what steel it is, though. Most of the sheet metal and rod stock I've seen in hardware stores is mild, which is to say low-carbon, steel. Without carbon, you can't jam the austenite open when you're cooling it. Steel supply stores usually have "W1" (water-cooling 1) or "1095" (10: plain iron-carbon and maybe molybdenum, 95: 0.95% carbon, anything over about .06 or .77 is hardenable) or "drill rod," it's all the same stuff and you can harden that just fine.

tl;dr: Yes, but it's unlikely you'll find the right kind of steel to do that with in a hardware store.

Also, after heat treating, you need to temper (heat it up around 250-400C to convert some of the martensite into ferrite, so the knife gets a _little_ softer and won't shatter like glass when you tap it).

Pic unrelated; the always-in-progress setup I work with. Note the tiger torch in the bottom section, which is a silly and hopefully short-term kludge while I get my venturi blower finished and the nozzle threads adapted. Note also the teeny-tiny forge with firebrick base, which is perfect for small items and a total pisser for most of the stuff I've been working on this weekend. I'm pouring myself a larger forge in the next couple of months.