Cold work vs forging

[Gordon Thompson]

A while ago I came up with a guy and we talked about my gothic gauntlets. He claimed he have academical knowledge about metalwork, and he said some things:

-cold working should be done with pre-heat treatment of a kind(he refused to elaborate or even name that treatment) because without mentioned pre heat its not a valid way to form metal, as metal formed that way is far more inferior than hot forged and has little to no protective properties. He even used term "bending" for it. He said after hit with "real" sword hand with that gauntlet would be "luncheon meat", he ignored my argument how that idea of total destruction of a hand is exaggerated for impact partly absorbed by inertia alone, not to mention thickness and fluting of metal shell. Its just highly unlikely to me.

-1.5mm thickness is far too thin for gauntlets (!) and it is not protective. Argument that extant ones have thickness below 1mm so 1/3 thicker modern "pure" steel just cant be so unprotective was answered by tantrum that he is sick of people who compare modern work with extant ones. My answer "how do you even know what kind of steel I used and how you can judge resistancy without knowing it" left unanswered.

I hate to bother you guys with appearently blabbering of that guy (he basically refuses to be specific so its a nice clue), but it bothers me a little and Im not ashamed to admit I have zero metallurgy education. And I know many of you did armour cold and it was fully functional. So I have a question - was his statements true in any way?

[Indianer]

All this came up before. I feel like once in a decade those questions have to be answered again. Blasphemers are just too certain of themselves, making reasonable folk doubt their good senses. What an Ahole.. A little tidbit out of my scribblings.

[Matthew Amt]

I wouldn't sweat it. Sure, it's very frustrating to know that such people are out there, and spouting nonsense, but it looks to me like you know more about armor and metallurgy than he does!

Reminds me of the "expert" who proclaimed that a great helm (repro, perhaps?) would "explode" when struck by a battle axe. Gosh, who would have known armor was so dangerous??

Matthew

[Mac]

Unfortunately, there are guys like that out there. I'm not sure if they really believe that they know something, or if they know they are full of shit and just want to be be toxic. Either way, they can be depressing and disheartening to deal with.

From your description, I can not imagine what process he was trying to suggest. I am not a metallurgist, but I probably know more about the subject than most people, and have a body or work to back that up.

Mac

[Indianer]

I was thinking about normalizing. There's a marked difference between hot- rolled and cold rolled steel. A 4x12" wide, ~1/8" (4mm) thick plate of hot rolled construction steel is flexible. Might be able to bend it with your fingers. Cold- rolled with the pretty, shiny surface is rigid. So much so it makes you think you'd have a different thickness altogether.

When making gauntlets, I guess other than the knuckle rider all can be done cold in cold-rolled. From those who have hands on experience: you start with shiny sheets, so I guess they are all cold rolled in such low thickness. Do you normalize before working on 1050 or 4130? Or in-between?

[Mac]

I was thinking about normalizing. There's a marked difference between hot- rolled and cold rolled steel. A 4x12" wide, ~1/8" (4mm) thick plate of hot rolled construction steel is flexible. Might be able to bend it with your fingers. Cold- rolled with the pretty, shiny surface is rigid. So much so it makes you think you'd have a different thickness altogether.

When making gauntlets, I guess other than the knuckle rider all can be done cold in cold-rolled. From those who have hands on experience: you start with shiny sheets, so I guess they are all cold rolled in such low thickness. Do you normalize before working on 1050 or 4130? Or in-between?

Cold rolled mild steel is certainly a bit harder than hot rolled mild steel, but the difference is not that great. I could cold-raise an elbow out of either one without noticing much difference. If you needed the cold rolled to be softer, it would take a full anneal, rather than a normalization to do it.

Sheets of 1050 are generally in a "spheroidized annealed" condition. All the carbon ends up in tiny spheres in a matrix of more or less pure iron. This is as soft as the material can be made to be. The reason it's shiny and not blue/grey like hot rolled is that they do the annealing with the steel coiled up tightly. The edges of the coil become oxidized, but they are trimmed off. This is why the sheets are frequently a nominal width. Sometimes they have to trim off more and sometimes less.

Mac

[Gordon Thompson]

Thanks, guys.