I bought some Saben silver steel from Bohler steels. 8mm round bar, 2m long to forge into small tapered tagane blanks. After a chat with Tiaan Burger, and a chance to handle his tagane, I realised mine are way too big and need refinement.
My knife maker friend has a forge and anvil and a whole workshop setup so I went there to do the forging.
After forging and cutting off the blanks, the steel needs to be normalised, which means heating to critical temperature and allowing it to air cool. This settles any internal stress the steel may have from the forging. On the last normalising cycle, the tool get put into vermiculite to cool over a much longer period of time. This is annealing, it softens the steel so I can shape it with a file.
Next step is shaping by grinding and filling, then hardening and tempering, then sharpening. By the end of the week I should have a batch of new tagane and punches.
My knife maker friend has a forge and anvil and a whole workshop setup so I went there to do the forging.
After forging and cutting off the blanks, the steel needs to be normalised, which means heating to critical temperature and allowing it to air cool. This settles any internal stress the steel may have from the forging. On the last normalising cycle, the tool get put into vermiculite to cool over a much longer period of time. This is annealing, it softens the steel so I can shape it with a file.
Next step is shaping by grinding and filling, then hardening and tempering, then sharpening. By the end of the week I should have a batch of new tagane and punches.
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