Stainless smithing

Has anyone tried to smith stanless steels? They should be harder at higher temperatures, but does that make smithing more difficult ? What is the correct way of tempering, if I want to keep it stainless?

Reply to
Uljas Vauhti
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Also, I'm going to be getting back to my forge during a three-week Xmas break from work and school. I plan to make a bunch of tools and practice forge welding, which I'm utterly terrible at (and being a newb doesn't help). I know the theory but I've only been able to do it once, and it wasn't pretty. Any suggestions for exercises? I know making chain is good practice but I'm wondering if there's something easier I can start with to practice timing and shaping and such.

Reply to
Tozetre

If you're terrible at forge welding with gas, don't beat yourself up, it's not as easy with gas as it is with coke an coal.

I was not aware of toxic nature of forging stainless :-O

I've got a huge stainless bolt that I've made a start forging with, although I still have to wrap my head around a sub-zero quench.

Regards Charles

Reply to
Chilla

"Stainless steel" covers a lot (A LOT!!) of ground.

In order to get useful information, you are going to have to know the alloy, and find out how the alloy must be treated.

I've only had stainless in the fire more or less by accident. Forging stuff that was "off the pile" as it were.

Some of it is hot short (it crumbles when hit hot) some can and some cannot be heat treated at all. Some alloys harden by being held at a steady high heat, others don't.

All the pieces that I had, turned to s**te on the surface, being heated up in the fire. About half fell apart, either on heating to forging temps, or when worked.

To be very clear, I am not saying that there are not "stainless steels" out there that can be worked in the forge, I just had experiences with stuff off the junk pile, and they were not favorable.

You really don't need to be reathing the smoke from burnt nickel or chrome anyway. :)

Cheers Trev

Reply to
Trevor Jones

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