Since I’m getting some badly needed rain today I went ahead and fired up the forge. Last time I was home a watched a couple of videos and they were quenching the fire steel in water to get some extra hardness. Now I would never do that with a knife blade, oil only, but I figured to try it out on the two junk steels I have and I wanted to try my hand at making a steel from rebar and 1095 steel.
After I finished, I did a side by side comparison with my file steels on the same flint. The two junk steels remain junk steels, no sparks, nothing. They will disappear for good this time.
I had low expectations for the rebar since most rebar is mild steel, but it actually threw a few good sparks.
I’ve made a couple of knife blades with 1095 before, but never really worked it under the hammer. With my meager talents I found it difficult to work, but I was able to fold it in on itself and forge wield the handle. And, as I feared, even after letting it normalize a few hours before quenching, the strike face cracked in two places. Hot 1095 and water don’t mix. But, it still throws very good sparks as I hoped it would. Pretty much on par with the file steels which I’m so very happy with.
And yes, the 1095 striker is UGLY!
But I was able to easily catch a spark on char cloth with it. I’m going to try making another 1095 striker but with conventional oil quenching.