Tool steel

[charangohabsburg]

Some weeks ago I bought a heap of tool steel (my lifetime supply I guess) for 35 Swiss pesos.

Yesterday I transformed the first piece to a usable chisel using the technique Jim described a few days ago here.

2011_D70_3062-59.jpg (53.17 KiB) Viewed 23737 times

Shaping the chisel on a grinding wheel was done in a minute or two, no science or sophisticated geometry applied.
I quenched the shaped chisel in water, cleaned it and annealed it getting it to a yellowish color.

I gave it a mottled figure surface instead of an overall mirror sheen and sharpened it.

2011_D70_3049-50-51-57.jpg (73 KiB) Viewed 23737 times

It works as it is supposed to. Seems that I had luck with hardening and annealing. Everything was just eyeballed.

[woodrat]

Well Done Markus, I like resurrecting old tools too.

John

[Allen]

Those 2 look great Markus. You've got a bit of work on all the rest of the pile. Looking forward to seeing what you do with some of the others.

[kiwigeo]

Markus, whereabouts in Switzerland are you? I ask because my Swiss/Kiwi niece is heading over your way for a years break from her university studies in New Zealand. Her Dad is from Winistorf and I think that's where she's heading to work on her uncles farm there.

Cheers Martin

[Puff]

Martin if it is http://en.db-city.com/Switzerland/Aargau/Brugg/Habsburg that would explain why a Swiss chap would have a name like churangohabsburg
Looks like a slice of paradise.

[DarwinStrings]

Markus you bugga, now you have me wading through Ebay looking for cheap piles of tool steel I like the way you left the front of the chisel with just that light pitting and bit of black rust. Some of my old tools are quite clean but maybe I should let them go like that.

Jim

[charangohabsburg]

Thanks for all your kind comments.

Martin, Puff found the place where I used to live (Habsburg, here some photos) when I started forum life. But in 2005 I moved about 30 kilometers West to Schupfart, another small village (twice as "big" as Habsburg, but not that tiny as Winistorf). Edit: For those who are interested: here are some of my photos I made in and near Schupfart.

Markus you bugga, now you have me wading through Ebay looking for cheap piles of tool steel

I like the way you left the front of the chisel with just that light pitting and bit of black rust.

Rust?
No, there's no rust left. But it's hard to photograph "figured steel". The reflections appear 100% white and the shades 100% black, with not too many nuances in between.
I removed the paint, putty and rust on the blade with one of those tiny Dreml sanding drums, letting chatter it all over the blade. I decided I liked how it was left and not invest more time in polishing (lapping and polishing blades is my least favourite instrument building - related job.)

[DarwinStrings]

Ahh ok I see, I thought I could see what antique tool dealer call "patina" left in the pits. The black rust is really quite beneficial for preserving the steel anyway as it can hold oil very well, I have been considering bluing the fronts of all my chisels but have not made up my mind yet. I have a cabinet on the drawing board to house most of my tools that I have rust troubles with. I am tossing up between three methods, one is a hot cabinet like my de-humidification cabinet that uses a light bulb, the second is a sealed cabinet using VCI emitters and the third is what the gun dudes up here use, it is a sealed cabinet with a dehumidifier that you remove from the cabinet every now and then and plug it in the 240v which "re-charges" it and put it back in the cabinet to suck out the moisture. All this will be combined with wipe on coatings that contain VCI's. Rust sucks in the tropics.

Jim

"Rust never sleeps".......Neil Young

[Lillian]

Markus, how many languages do you speak? I was kicking around your blog for a bit and realized that I was reading Spanish, not German. That was a bit of a mind twist there.

Might I ask why that sweet swivel clamp isn't in the jig section? And please tell me you are a mechanical engineer or machinist by day.

[charangohabsburg]

Right, the black oxide is much more stable than red rust.
With bluing you mean heat treating perfectly good chisels? I wouldn't do that.

Just some thoughts of a non-expert:

I don't have any experience with severe high humidity problems but I think I would go with a cabinet with any heat source in it (maybe a more energy efficient one than light bulbs), controlled by a hygrostat so that when humidity rises above a certain level the heat source will turn on. The only issue with this design, in my opinion is that you really must know what you are doing in order to not run the risk to burn down the shed (don't get the heat badly trapped somewhere). I think an additional thermostat which would turn off the whole thing if getting too hot maybe would be a recommendable option, just some safety redundancy.

This heat source / hygrostat solution would have the advantage that you simply can forget thinking about the RH in the cabinet.

With the drying elements the gun guys use you still will run the risk to forget to dry those elements when they are filled with moisture respectively when the RH inside the cabinet goes up, but there is the advantage that no heat source will turn on when nobody is at home. But hey, the fridges and freezers are also heat sources that turn on when the have to...

VCI emitters might be a good thing for the plane bodies, but I don't know how long it takes until they start to protect a recently sharpened blade edge. Maybe this is really not an issue (if it is significantly faster than rust buildup). Probably it's the easiest solution, but until having tried it out one will not know if it really works in the environment of one's own shop. Also, how to know when to replace the VCI emitters?

[charangohabsburg]

Markus, how many languages do you speak? I was kicking around your blog for a bit and realized that I was reading Spanish, not German. That was a bit of a mind twist there.

What do you mean with "speak"?
Once when I was in Spain someone said to me "oh, so you speak Spanish?" - and a friend of mine responded quickly "yes he does, but he writes better than he speaks".

My mother language is a Swiss dialect of German. At school we have to learn German, and people from middle to northern Germany wouldn't understand when we talked to them in dialect. Still, you simply can consider "Swiss-German" and German as one language.

At school, French is compulsory for pupils of the German speaking part of Switzerland, and German is compulsory for pupils of the French and Italian speaking parts of Switzerland. So I understand French and also write and speak it a bit when necessary. But as I don't use it a lot I'm not very good at it.

Before starting to speak Spanish when travelling for the first time to Peru and Bolivia I spoke and wrote also Italian (just as I do now in Spanish), but now I have to "acclimatise" a few days to Italian when I am in Italy.

So, back to your question: how many languages do I speak? I don't know...

Might I ask why that sweet swivel clamp isn't in the jig section? And please tell me you are a mechanical engineer or machinist by day.

I have no idea why that swivel clamp is not in the jig section of the ANZLF. If you think it should be there I can make an effort.

And I have to disappoint you, I'm neither a mechanical engineer nor a machinist, not by day and not by night. I earn my money with software programming, image processing, graphics design and occasionally photographing company events.

[Lillian]

I pose the question to the masses. Should Markus put his clamp in the Jig section or not?

The swivel clamp in question.

Markus' swivel clamp 1.JPG (72.61 KiB) Viewed 23556 times

I vote dah, of course.

What do you mean with "speak"?
Once when I was in Spain someone said to me "oh, so you speak Spanish?" - and a friend of mine responded quickly "yes he does, but he writes better then he speaks".

I graduated from high school reading college level Spanish. I couldn't speak a word of it if I had to. There were only two of us in the class and the teacher didn't like talking so we read. I've pretty much back to a 3rd grade level. Definitely a case of use it or lose it.

My mother language is a Swiss dialect of German. At school we have to learn German, and people from middle to northern Germany wouldn't understand when we talked to them in dialect. Still, you simply can consider "Swiss-German" and German as one language.

My exposure to German is limited to three and a half years in Munchen twenty years ago. I remember being told that between my American accent and learning Southern German, my annunciation was deplorable. I just smiled. I grew up in what we call the South in the US with parents from the North. The two dialects were using the same language, but were worlds apart. My extended family used to tease me without mercy for the way I talked. I realized it was the same in Germany. Bairisch is looked on the same as Southern English.

I miss Munchen. It is the only metropolitan city I have lived in that I felt safe walking alone at night.

And I have to disappoint you, I'm neither a mechanical engineer nor a machinist, not by day and not by night. I earn my money with software programming, image processing, graphics design and occasionally photographing company events.

And I'm sure you are very accomplished in all that, but I think you might have missed your calling in life if the clamp is any indication of your design skills.

[Paul B]

Put it in the jigs section.

Oh, and I can swear a little in German, but not very well - does that mean I speak two lingos?

[Allen]

It only counts if you can order a beer and find a toilet Paul.

[Clancy]

Having lived in Germany twice (Koln & Erlangen) and having married 2 german women (at seperate times) I can tell you that my German is deplorable - but it's not my fault
Once you get a german pissed they all speak english, and the more pissed I am the better their english is

It only counts if you can order a beer and find a toilet Paul.

Eine Pils bitte, und vo ist die toiletten

oh yeah,
Eine Stimme für die ja Schwenkspanner,
(hope 'google translate' did that last line right )

[Puff]

You're showing your age Allen

[DarwinStrings]

Right, the black oxide is much more stable than red rust.
With bluing you mean heat treating perfectly good chisels? I wouldn't do that.

Nope (you may mean heating red and quenching in oil), I mean rust bluing with out any heat (gunsmiths do it on shotguns or other gun that have soldered joints that would be destroyed by heat), just rusting and carding then rusting and carding about 5 times to build up the black rust. You can get faster bluing potions for touching up guns but it is not as good as rust bluing for protection. As far as "hot bluing" goes, that is some nasty shit like boiling in a caustic soda/potassium nitrate solution or "Parkerising" where you boil in acid.. The idea of having boiling pots of caustic or acid around my home is not very appealing with curious kids about.

With regards to the "light bulb" cabinet, I already have a grip on that as my dehumidification cabinet works fine on wood and never gets anywhere near a ignition temperature. Also no real need for control as the "wet" would need it on 24/7 so may as well leave it on for the "dry" just to be safe. I would have the bulb glass fronted so I would not waste the light so I reckon fairly efficient using the heat and light of a incandescent.

With the drying elements the gun guys use you still will run the risk to forget to dry those elements when they are filled with moisture respectively when the RH inside the cabinet goes up, but there is the advantage that no heat source will turn on when nobody is at home. But hey, the fridges and freezers are also heat sources that turn on when the have to...

Yep, good thinking, you know me better than I thought. I am very likely to forget about the drying thingamabob and open a cabinet full of rust after coming back from holidays.

VCI emitters might be a good thing for the plane bodies, but I don't know how long it takes until they start to protect a recently sharpened blade edge. Maybe this is really not an issue (if it is significantly faster than rust buildup). Probably it's the easiest solution, but until having tried it out one will not know if it really works in the environment of one's own shop. Also, how to know when to replace the VCI emitters?

The idea with the emitters is to wipe the tool with a VCI product before putting it in the cabinet then the emitters are added protection, you can get VCI products that you do not have to clean off before putting the tool across wood so unlike oil you can just pull it out of the cupboard and use it. The emitter I am looking at last about 2 years (at $15 I could just change then at Xmas time every year to be safe) and will look after about 1 cubic metre of space (they are used up here in electrical contact cabinets to great effect), the cabinet need to be well sealed

Jim

Decisions decisions

[charangohabsburg]

[...]
With bluing you mean heat treating perfectly good chisels? I wouldn't do that.

Nope (you may mean heating red and quenching in oil), [...]

No, I was thinking of the colours that appear when annealing.

[...]
I mean rust bluing with out any heat (gunsmiths do it on shotguns or other gun that have soldered joints that would be destroyed by heat), just rusting and carding then rusting and carding about 5 times to build up the black rust. You can get faster bluing potions for touching up guns but it is not as good as rust bluing for protection. As far as "hot bluing" goes, that is some nasty shit like boiling in a caustic soda/potassium nitrate solution or "Parkerising" where you boil in acid..

Thanks for explaining. I didn't know about that technique.

Decisions decisions

VCI looks very tempting.

Just for curiosity, what range of RH do you have there?

[DarwinStrings]

I agree Markus VCI looks good and maybe the cheapest option.

Here are that annual averages for the airport which is 3 minutes from my place.

Here is the latest, as you can see it got up to 91% today which seems about normal for the last month or so, I would guess it has probably been hitting the 90's at some point most days since December but you would have to check that on that site.

Jim

[DarwinStrings]

Oh and there is another bluing method which I would steer clear of but apparently you can get a beautiful peacock blue by immersing the steel in molten potassium nitrate (or something like that, it maybe another chemical though) where you bring the temperature up to around those same tempering temperatures but I get the feeling those temperatures would again interfere with the tempering so maybe that technique is not good for hardened tools either.

Jim

[kiwigeo]

Oh and there is another bluing method which I would steer clear of but apparently you can get a beautiful peacock blue by immersing the steel in molten potassium nitrate (or something like that, it maybe another chemical though) where you bring the temperature up to around those same tempering temperatures but I get the feeling those temperatures would again interfere with the tempering so maybe that technique is not good for hardened tools either.

Jim

The hardest part of this method is searching around amongst the ruins of your workshop for the piece of nicely blued metal following the huge explosion.

[ckngumbo]

Oh and there is another bluing method which I would steer clear of but apparently you can get a beautiful peacock blue by immersing the steel in molten potassium nitrate (or something like that, it maybe another chemical though) where you bring the temperature up to around those same tempering temperatures but I get the feeling those temperatures would again interfere with the tempering so maybe that technique is not good for hardened tools either.

Jim

The hardest part of this method is searching around amongst the ruins of your workshop for the piece of nicely blued metal following the huge explosion.

Not to mention locating the plastic handles

[DarwinStrings]

Oh and there is another bluing method which I would steer clear of but apparently you can get a beautiful peacock blue by immersing the steel in molten potassium nitrate (or something like that, it maybe another chemical though) where you bring the temperature up to around those same tempering temperatures but I get the feeling those temperatures would again interfere with the tempering so maybe that technique is not good for hardened tools either.

Jim

The hardest part of this method is searching around amongst the ruins of your workshop for the piece of nicely blued metal following the huge explosion.

Not to mention locating the plastic handles

You are absolutely right Martin I reckon it would be very difficult to get access to the Feds evidence room for a start and then finding the neatly labelled plastic bag with my chisel amongst all those other neatly labelled plastic bags would be quite a task. They probably rent the house across the road from you the day after you buy the stuff nowadays.

Jim

[Paul B]

I think the "black rust" is Iron Phosphate, isn't it? Not an oxide, much more stable than that. Products like "Endrust" produce Iron Phosphate.

Potassium Nitrate - isn't that what McVeay used on the Federal building in Oklahoma City? You wouldn't want to heat that shit up and cut a loud fart.

[DarwinStrings]

Iron Phosphate and black rust are different beasts, I think iron phosphate is what you get when you covert rust with phosphoric acid. Iron phosphate is FeP04, black rust is Fe304.

Jim