The Armour Archive

So, my wonderful father got me an 18"x48" piece of 1075 18ga spring steel for my birthday and I've committed to making a pair of SCA legal finger gauntlets from it. The steel is already annealed which is good because I don't have the abilities to anneal a whole sheet like that just yet. After cutting out the pieces, my friend and I took some scrap and threw them in the forge to see what would happen after quenching them and/or letting them air dry. Man, this is going to be fun stuff.

We've found that after putting the pieces in the propane forge until they're orange and then quenching them in water, they become extremely brittle and will shatter like glass if thrown to the ground. Pretty cool to witness, but not a good idea for armour. Letting the stuff air cool didn't really improve the strength of the steel and only seemed to make it softer. The really good results came from getting the steel orange hot and then quenching it, then putting it back in the forge, heating it up again, and then letting it air cool on its own. I was pretty impressed with how strong even the small slivers of spring steel become and I'm hooked on spring steel now.

This is perfect timing for me now since our commissions are nearly over and we won't be taking many (if any) new ones in the near future, leaving me lots of time to play with spring steel and get really good at improving the quality of my work to eventually wear and sell spring steel armour.

Spring steel rocks.

If you want to sell a lot,you should consider buying a kiln and then be able to have a perfect temper

unfortunatly i dont know how much cost a good kiln that will work for all piece of armour(we have few 24*24*24 at school that would do a perfect job)

Ya, i was reading in brians book that quanching whould make steel harder than heck but realy brittle(which he also say would stop a arrow or bolt and not shatter!). So i was wondering if you could plate the inside of armour with the extrely hard steel so you could get hit with a mace and not shatter, but yet get shot in the chest with a bolt and not become "holy". Will that work?

It is called "case-hardening" and you want the outside hard, and the inside soft.

The effects of the temper depends of how fast is the cooling, the steel while cools assume different crystalline configuration, each one with it's own properties. If you can't control the process in a kiln, you can quench it in water for a short time (i think that you can try sprinkling water over the surface with a garden hose) and then reheat the metal to "relax" internal tension (not too much or you will anneal it again!)

Yes I second the kiln idea. If you know the exact kind of steel you have, there are specific standard temperatures for heat treatment.

Steve

------------------
Forth Armoury
Highly authentic, affordable riveted maille.

Seco-Warwick was giving away little heat treating books. They had a form you filled out, and then they sent you a book. The price is $2 each, but the first one was free. This was a while ago so it may not be valid. The book is pretty cool, even at $2. Lists most of the more common steels, their composition (eg carbon content, chromium in stainless... etc by percentage). It also listed forging temperatures, anealing temperatures, hardening and tempering temperatures, AND what sort of quenchant to use.

I beleive 1075 was a water or oil quenchant, with a tendancy to crack when overheated (working off memory and likely wrong as right).

I've also heard from a few sources, that you can reduce the severity of your quenchant by a step when working with thinner profiles (like 18 guage sheet). One gentleman that posts on another board I frequent makes tiny little carving knives out of an oil quenching steel, but uses a blast of air from his compressor to quench them.

My suggestion would be to find a book on bladesmithing. Back in the day when I was new to this stuff, there was a gentleman by the name of Jim Hrisoulas who wrote a series of books, the first of which was <u>The Complete Bladesmith</u>. I have it somewhere, and I know that there are tables with the temperatures you're looking for.

Of course, a bladesmithing book is going to offer a lot more information about what is actually happening when you heat treat steel. As was hinted above, the more exacting you are about this sort of thing, the better results you're likely to get.

I've heard that you can draw tempers in a conventional oven, but that was primarily for blades. I don't think that you can get the temps high enough to put a true spring temper in steel, but I could be mistaken.

HELMUT

For tempering (releasing some of the hardness so the steel isn't as brittle), you can certainly do that in a regular oven. I don't remember the specific temperature that I preferred when I heat treated some spring armour, but it was somewhere between 450 - 575.

Now, for hardening the metal to start with, you certainly can't do that in your kitchen oven!

--James--

For armours i think that the best temper is the same of saw blades (i can think wrong, i've never crushed steel armours!) that combine great flexibility and sufficent hardness to mantain sharp theet, old blades, not maded with special steels are usually deep blue,a colour that talk about the tempering conditions.
There is somewhere another post with reference to steels colours, but something around 300^C should work.
But i underline again, theory and practice are not the same.

POD:

If your interested in a kiln the dealer I tried to organize the group order with is still willing to give us a 25% discount off of the retail price. His web site is http://www.kilndr.com/kilns.htm . If you talk to him just tell him your with Craig Nadler's group. In case your wondering I don't get any kind of commission from these orders.



------------------
Craig Nadler
cwn@nh.ultranet.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~cwn/

I make knives and swords and and have been told i do it the hard way but it requires no fancy equipment. I use spring steel (recycled train suspension coil springs and 1095+ sheet nickle for damascus. Heat the steel till a magnet will no longer stick. I don't know how hot that is but the magnet does. I use recycled motor oil in a 6" pvc pipe 4 feet long caped at bottom and bolted to the wall up right. For sheet stuff you will need a pan (DUH) and some long tongs. Splattering hot oil sucks to get on you! Afeter a few in the oil, dunk into water for final quench. CAREFULLY (so as not to shatter) grind a shiney side on the blade (Plate or whatever) so its clean and you can see temps in the blade. Put it in the vise with the lights down low and heat with a torch. Propane plumbers type takes longer but less chance to screw up, oxy-acd. faster but be carful! You are looking for a pretty blue purple colour. If ti turns brown you got too hot and need to start over getting hot and quenching again. a handy spry bottle w/ water hepls for large surfaces and out of control heat spread. If making knives quench often during clean up grind and don't wear gloves. Burning your self will help keep the temper in the blade.

If you want to, shoot me an email and I've got a zip file from the Machinist Handbook from like 1924. It goes into detail on how to harden, anneal, temper, case harden, etc with steel. It's a fairly small file and best of all it's free.

Heat to just above critical temp. For 1070 this is probably around 1475*F. You can put a small magnet on the steel and when it falls off, you're at critical temp. Quench in heated oil. I use a 50/50 mix of 30wt oil and transmission fluid. Heat up a bar of something and quench first to heat up your oil to about 120-150*F. Leave armour in oil until it quits smoking. Wipe off the oil and such and heat back up to 475-500*F and hold for a few minutes. Let cool and repeat the tempering holding for another 10 minutes or so. Now take your metal out and test it. If it's too brittle, up your tempering temp. If it's too soft, lower the temp. If it's still too soft, change to mineral oil. Still too soft...use water. Still too soft, use brine.

Get a copy of the tables from the machinery's handbook.

make copy of said tables

mail copies to krag

------------------
Krag von Berghen
KragAxe Armoury

Member's Pics

I'll go over to the engineering library and find out about tempering temperatures for you.

Siggy

Well, Here's what I found. 1075 steel should be hardened by heating into the range between 1450 and 1550 degrees F, and then quenched in water or a 10% solution of water and any inorganic salt (table salt will work). The steel should then be heated to 400 degrees F for 1 hour and allowed to cool slowly. This will yeild a steel between 4 and 7 times harder than cold rolled steel.

Siggy

[This message has been edited by Siggy (edited 09-18-2002).]

Most, if not all of that are in the zip file. It’s a copy from the Machinist Handbook.

I wouldn't suggest starting with a brine solution for sheet metal. The heat comes out of 18-12 ga metal awfully fast! Like wise, a soak time of an hour is not usually need with thinner metal. Heta treating tables are like off the shelf sizes for helms...made to fit all applications, but perfect for no applications. Experiment with a few pieces and see what works best. I've had good results with 1095 and 1050, but each had to be tweaked. I'll be doing a how-to page this Fall of my results with a variety of heat treatings and steels.

------------------
Krag von Berghen
KragAxe Armoury

Member's Pics

Where did you get your steel from? Go to these guys and get a spec sheet for exactly this steel. If they don't have it, get the name of the place they got it from.

The spec sheet should have all basic heat treat information, and a contact address for more advanced questions.

If you can't get this information and got your steel from a junkyard or so, you should definitely read a couple of books and websites on metallurgy, and play with a lot of scrap pieces before you try that final piece which has dozens of hours of work in it.

Hardening steel is a bit like baking cookies: one recipe will not necessarily work for a different type of cookie.

All that said, it's great fun playing with spring steel, I can recommend it!!!