Forge help

[Lbiggar92]

I am new to knife making and havent put the money into a forge. I need to harden some blades so I can turn them into Christmas gifts. I am looking for someone local (close to Fayetteville NC) and can pay per blade or batch etc. Also for the future, what is the best way to harden blades when living in an apartment? Send em into a company?

Thank you all

-Logan

[damon]

what steel are they made from?

[jimmontg]

I have lived in an apartment for quite a while. I was fortunate to have worked in a machine shop with heat treating facilities. I also have two grinders, a 2x48 Dayton and a 1x42 with an 8" disk Delta, sitting on a cart for taking outside to grind.
After I was laid off I lived about 300 yards away from a North Carolina community college that had blacksmithing and knife forge classes. I traded advanced TIG welding techniques lessons for forge and hammer time as they had two Little Giant 50 lb trip hammers.

You live in NC so first I suggest you check the local community colleges and see if there are blacksmithing classes available, if not then send your blades out for heat treating. I suggest Peters Heat Treating in Meadville Pennsylvania. Their prices are in line with others and they do an excellent job for most steels. Actually you'll find their prices such that you will want to make more knives to send them because they have a set price of $128 for 4 to 15 blades whereas a single up to three knives are $32 each. That price includes a cryo treatment for most stainless and some alloy steels. They have the liquid nitrogen, take advantage of it.

By the way l have since moved to the desert Southwest, I'm tired of cold and snow as l lived in the mountains in WNC. But no blacksmith classes here so I use Peters.

[epicfail48]

If you have a balcony and work with simple carbon steels (1084, O1), as well as do midsize knives in the 4 inch blade range, you might be able to get away with a coffee can forge powered by a propane torch for heat treatment. No more dangerous that having a small grill doing things that way, its how I heat treated my first few blades. You could also look into buying/building a small electric furnace, though that's both expensive and overkill for one or two blades.

Honestly though, if you're only making 1 or 2 blades at a time, sending them out for hardening is probably easiest. The cost is reasonable, I paid $30 for 2 AEB-L blades to be heat treated and cryod with Texas Knifemakers service, and turnaround time was about a week.

[Lbiggar92]

1095 and it's cold rolled

[Wrankin]

Which NC college were the classes at? I'm figuring that it's one of the schools up in the western part of the state b/c the only thing I've found in this area (Raleigh/Durham) are some private shops and makerspace-type groups.

Thanks,

-b

[jimmontg]

Mayfield community college in
Burnsville NC