[Source] Punctuation steel stamps

If you go to her site, www.victorialansford.com, follow the
"Instruction" link for her corrected instructions. 

This thread has become a more general discussion, I guess. That’s
good, making tools is an important part of what we all do. I looked
at the above site, and it’s interesting except that the part about
tempering is pretty wrong. Well, very wrong…Here:

is a fairly thorough discussion of what hardening and tempering
steel is about. The nice thing about making simple punches is that
you can get about any tool steel and temper it badly and still get a
decent punch - it’s not that big of a deal, mostly. When you heat
tool steel, the iron and the carbon form a range of crystalline
structures - martensite, austenite, ferrite, cementite and even
others. When the steel cools slowly those structures break back
apart into carbon and iron. When you quench it, they become “frozen”
in place, leaving hard steel. Then when you temper it by a more
gentle heat, you let SOME of those crystals break apart. That’s a
pretty quick and incomplete rundown, because books can and have been
written on the subject.

Most people can get an allen wrench and abuse it in the hardening
process and still get a good punch - it’s just nice, and useful, to
understand what you’re doing…

Also - for fine lines on a stamp, use the edge of a scraper - those
three-sided, sharp tools that probably not many people use much. Use
it like a knife, and it will give very fine lines in stamp making…

I posted a link to a site that has good about hardening
steel - then I realized maybe it’s over some people’s heads. It’s a
pretty important skill, so I thought maybe I better take it down to
basics for those who don’t know it. It’s going on 10:30 Saturday
night - don’t have a life, I guess. No, I just thought it was
important…

The physics of steel are deep, vast, and beyond what any of us here
really need to know. This is definitely a condensed version.

Tool steel must have something around 7 - 10% carbon to be
hardenable. I’m not going to do research while I write this, so
don’t shoot me if some of the details aren’t precise. Less carbon
will not harden (thus the uselessness of nails and other things) and
more carbon will not, and the why of that is definitely the stuff of
somebody’s research…They just won’t, for reasons that can be
learned, if wanted.

When you have a piece of steel - “plain carbon steel”, as they call
it - it is composed of iron and carbon in a mixture. That means they
don’t interact, they are mixed, like red and green jelly beans. When
you heat that steel to around 1500F - 1600F, depending on the steel,
which is red hot, BTW - not dull red, not orange, not yellow - red
hot. The iron and carbon atoms become more free in the metal. Not
free like a molten metal, but free enough to move about a bit. When
you reach that heat in most steel - again there are many steels and
this is generic - the iron and carbon move about a bit and form
crystalline lattices with each other. There are names for the
various types, the most important of which are martensite and
austenite. As I remember it is those two, but most especially
martensite, which are important. The most important thing of all to
understand is that if you heat steel to that temperature, the
lattices form. If you let the steel cool off, the lattices will
disintegrate and the metal will return to iron and carbon atoms in a
mixture.

So, here’s what happens - I’ll say again that it’s generic, because
there are many alloys of steel: You get your steel stock. You heat
it up to around 1500F, and then you let it cool off slowly. The iron
and carbon atoms have moved away from each other, the steel is soft
and you have just annealed it. Then you do your shaping, you’re
done. So, you heat the steel up again to around 1500F, which forms
hard crystals of iron and carbon called martensite and austenite
(and others), but this time while it’s still hot and those crystals
are formed, you dunk it in water and cool it in a moment. This means
that the crystals did not have time to disintegrate, and are still
intact, glass hard as martensite and austenite are. In fact they are
so hard that the steel will break like glass if you stress it, so
you need to temper it. You have caused the hard crystals to form,
and then you have cooled it so fast that they didn’t have time to
break apart, and are still in place.

Tempering steel means just what the word says - to make it “a bit
less so” - to temper something. So, you take the skin off the steel
so you can see it, and you warm it back up just a bit, for which
there are charts as to how much. As you warm it, the crystals of
austenite, especially, are disintegrating, leaving more martensite
behind, but just enough that the steel becomes useful - this is far,
far away from anything you would call annealing. It just takes the
edge off of the hardness, and gives a useful hardness and much
toughness - the ability to retain it’s shape under stress, and
resist stress.

Probably the most important things to understand about this whole
process:

It only occurs in steels with a certain carbon content. You can do
it all day long with nails and they will never harden.

You must reach a temperature of around 1500F for the crystalline
structure to form, to harden the steel. Heating steel to 600F from
an annealed state does nothing - it’s as though you never heated it.
You much first harden the steel by creating the iron/carbon
structures, which occur at a higher temperature. After that you can
temper it, and should.

Bottom line:

If you anneal steel so you can work it, and then “temper” it, you
still have annealed steel. You must first harden it at red heat,
which is where the crystals form, and quench so the crystals can’t
un-form. Then you can temper it to a specific hardness for your
needs.

Finally - the reason to use oil vs. water has a lot more to do with
the specific heat of the two than anything about getting carbon out
of oil. The oil cools steel much more slowly than water, and
sometimes that’s a good thing. And this whole process is really
pretty simple and pretty idiot-proof - newbies shouldn’t be put off
by it. It’s just important to do things somewhat properly to get
something resembling good steel. Toolmakers need to agonize over
exact times and temperatures because they want optimum results, and
yes, it’s best if we all do that too. But you can get decent results
in your garage, too, if you just understand some of the fundamentals
of it all.

http://www.donivanandmaggiora.com

Even though this thread has been done, this posting to me is so
interesting I thought I’d pass it on. I doubt Gary minds - I’ve
seen his posts here, before. Nice rundown on it from another
perspective. Toolmaking and at least casual working of steel is an
essential part of metal work, no matter what one does…

Hi John.... 

Ms. Lanford's punch article corrections need correcting........ 

Technical confusion aside, a great article..... (JD - as I said
earlier, I agree) 

Apparently the punches have been working for her for years.... 

Anyway....high carbon steel will have between *.7% to 1.0%*
carbon in it to be hardenable, not 7%-10%....(JD - Mea Culpa, and
I knew that somewhere back in the cobwebs) The only reason I
caught that is because I sell the stuff, and had the decimal in
the wrong place myself for a long time...I've been in industrial
distribution for almost 25 years, half of which time I had it
wrong........! 

I got into gemstones and jewelry about 7-8 years ago.....One of
the reasons I think folks get confused about ferrous heat
treating, is that ferrous process is kinda butt-backwards from
most of the jewelry metals....I was terribly confused when I
first read about those procedures, as I had only done ferrous in
the past, but The Complete Metalsmith cleared stuff up for
me..... 

The website you linked to has a great explanation of ferrous
heat treating....I just wish it was in deg. F not deg. C..... I
know, I know, we're supposed to be completely metricafied by
now, but I still think in terms of deg. F..... 

I liked the descrption explaining what happens to when you
harden...the jelly beans...great analogy..... 

I loved the desription of the hardening temperature by
color.....The steel's recommended hardening temperature does vary
by some amounts depending by type, but red hot should get you to
the right place whichever kind you have.... Besides, it's hard to
take the temperature of it when you're working on it....... 

The two most common drill rod available from either industrial
distributor or a good hardware store are O-1, oil hardening and
W-1, water hardening... .95% and 1.0% C respectively... O-1 is
more common... 

The neat thing, with the drill rod, you get a nice bang for the
buck.... 

Example: McMaster-Carr charges $2.54 for a 3 foot X 1/4" round
piece of O-1....5/16 is $3.96, 3/8 is $5.43.... 

All kinds of things have been used as quenching
liquids....blood, ice water etc...... 

W-1 is "supposed" to be done with a brine solution....O-1 with
quenching oil...... 

Water will work good for W-1, and the shade tree mechanic or
gunsmith uses automatic tranny fluid for O-1.... 

You can use the kitchen oven or even a toaster oven to do your
tempering....and you don't have to look for the steel color for
your hardness.....though it serves as a double check.... 

The way I learned it....your final heat (draw) is one hour at
the temperature your temper requires.... Pre-heat your
oven....shine up your piece....do your draw....then final quench
and make pretty... 


Temp(F) Color Hardness-Rockwell C Hardness


As Quenched Shiney 64-67 As quenched 

420 Faint Yellow 63 Extra File Hard 

435 Light Straw 62 File Hard 

465 Dark Straw 60 Knife Hard 

490 Yellow-Brown 58 Extra Hard 

520 Purple 56 Hard 

570 Dark Blue 53 Half Hard 

620 Blue-Gray 50 Spring Temper

That part I did look up, in a Brownell's (gunsmithing)
catalog... 

These values for high carbon steels in general, and obviously
there's lateral room around them.... Other charts I've seen vary
by 2-5 Rc....and use slightly different temperature points... 

Also, ran across one mfr claim their O-1 has maximum hardness
63-65Rc, whilst another has a max of 62Rc....It's actually kinda
a moot point, because beyond 62 Rc, you're really in the brittle
zone... 

Most kitchen ovens and toaster ovens can get you where you want
to wind up for tool usefulness... 

Other minutae..... 

W-1 runs 2-3 Rc higher at a given draw temperature than O-1.... 

The purple is quite startling if you catch it right....I never
could come up with a way to preserve it.... 

Drill rod under 1/2" is ground accurate +/- .0005"..... 

With high carbon steels, when the heat opration (whichever) is
over, quench immediately, if not sooner.... 

Swirling the tool in a figure 8 motion as you quench helps
insure consistant quench..... 

Hope I didn't bore you, Sir..... 

Regards..... 

Gary W. Bourbonais
L’Hermite Aromatique
A.J.P. (GIA)

P.S. How great is it that you do some heat treating for
Argentium in the oven, also!

John,

Tool steel must have something around 7 - 10% carbon to be
hardenable. 

You have your decimal point wrong - it should be 0.7 - 1.4%
Carbon… - now people in the future will be finding your post and
trying to harden very sooty cast iron… :wink:

Best wishes,
Ian
Ian W. Wright
Sheffield UK

Most people can get an allen wrench and abuse it in the hardening
process and still get a good punch - it's just nice, and useful, to
understand what you're doing..... 

Well, I certainly give different than many of my
colleagues on tempering stamps and repousse tools, but it is hardly
incorrect or “very wrong”. I am not just some schmo who messes around
with indestructible allen wrenches.

Sometime back, I contacted my teacher, Gia Gogishvilli, about the
tempering process I originally learned from him. Gia is a master
smith from the Republic of Georgia with whom I studied at Georgia
State University in the early 90’s. He not only comes from a long
family tradition of outstanding artwork, he comes from a world with
no Rio or Stuller, where every tool in his studio was made by him or
his father.

His reason for teaching tempering the way I’ve chosen to continue is
to prevent the tool from becoming too brittle from the burnoff of too
much carbon.

There are many metalsmiths for whom I have great respect, including
Jim Binnion with whom I’ve agreed to disagree about the tempering of
allen wrenches. My proof for what works for me lies in the the way
the tools handle and the resulting work. Perhaps John, you’d like to
post links to photos of your repousse work.

Best wishes,
Victoria
Victoria Lansford

Hi All. John Donivan, your explanation of
annealing/hardening/tempering was most excellent! Newbies should
indeed not be intimidated by the process.

I have mostly used center punches or nail sets as the raw material
for the stamps I make. Typically they come in sets of 4 or 5. They
have just the right form factor, and the knurled pattern on the
shank makes them easier to hold accurately. I have always assumed
that they must be made of decent tool steel, and have treated them
as John described, usually with success. But not always. I’ve used a
number of different types, and I’m guessing they were made in China.

Does anyone know more precisely what type of steel they might be
made of, and if that might suggest any modification of the process?

I just ran out of the last large purchase of punches I made, and my
source is long gone. Anyone know of a particularly good source for
cheap centerpunches and nail sets- besides Harbor Freight? Thanks!

Allan

Hello Allan,

I’ve bought numbers of old nail sets at auctions and estate sales.
It’s always a crap shoot. Sometimes old tools go high and other times
they’re giving them away.

Judy in Kansas, where we had a lovely light shower last night - the
weeds are going crazy!

Do you have any Pawn Shops or “re-sale” stores in the area. I’ve
found many of these have an “over abundance” of assorted hand tools
that they practically give away. One has to pick through boxes and
bins, but you might find another treasure enroute. Just a thought.

His reason for teaching tempering the way I've chosen to continue
is to prevent the tool from becoming too brittle from the burnoff
of too much carbon. 

I understand and appreciate your respect for your teacher but his
concern is not applicable to the steel you are using or to the
process one would use to harden it at the bench. While concern for
burning out the carbon or decarburizing is needed in industrial
furnaces where load heat up and soak times are many minutes to hours
it is not so much of a problem for the individual craftsman
toolmaker. Also the process of decarburization will result in soft
un-hardenable layer on the steel not brittle tools. Steel is an alloy
of.01% - 1.5% carbon and iron, more carbon than that results in cast
iron. Tool steels have 0.45% - 1.5% carbon. If the tool decarburizes
it will have lost some of its carbon by reacting with the oxygen in
air to make CO2. This is a diffusion process and is very slow to
occur. It will leave an iron rich/carbon poor layer on the surface of
the tool which will not have the hardness of the bulk steel resulting
in dull edges and decreased wear resistance.

In general you can have hard or tough steel but not both. A fully
hardened piece of basic water hardening tool steel will very likely
shatter if you drop it and almost any tool steel will crack or break
if left fully hard. This is why we temper after hardening to reduce
slightly the hardness of the tool and return some toughness to the
steel. Your process as described is basically annealing the steel.
There is no hardening going on. Your punches work because the
material you and most of us are working on is so soft that you
really do not need the full hardness available from the steel and
even an annealed piece of modern medium carbon tool steel like those
wrenches are made from is quite hard enough to act as a punch. The
caveat is the finer the detail you carve in the punch the harder it
will need to be to survive use. If you were making cutting edges like
chisels or gravers you would see that your method would yield no edge
retention as it would be way too soft to hold an edge.

James Binnion
@James_Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts

360-756-6550

I understand and appreciate your respect for your teacher but his
concern is not applicable to the steel you are using or to the
process one would use to harden it at the bench. 

For some reason I haven’t been getting Orchid in the mail, but it’s
still there… The real point to be taken from what many have said
on this thread is that steel is neither a secret or a mystery.
Concrete and steel are two industries where the properties of
materials are defined, codified and quantified in great detail. That
means that if one gets that steel, and treats it in that fashion,
they will get that result, and it will happen each and every time.
The mechanism for hardening tool steel is like a little machine - a
certain heat hardens, another certain heat tempers, or draws, and
another heat/cool process anneals, and it can be done over and over
with the same results, just like a little machine.

The reason I have helped define it here, along with several others,
is to instill confidence in any who are beginners with steel - it
really is just that simple to do, for simple bench tools. I don’t
“agree to disagree” because there’s nothing to disagree about -
these are simple, easily accessable facts about the machine called
steel. I learned about it as much as I have learned (a fair amount,
but no expert) from various sources, but the first memorable one was
a little old Indian stamp maker. He taught me, "Heat it red hot,
quench, polish. Heat to straw yellow, quench, polish - there’s your
stamp. Then after that I read books and articles about the why and
how.

It’s easy…

For those interested in steel hardening and tempering Dr John
Verhoven wrote a phenomenal paper just for blacksmiths and knife
makers. It will give all the you could want if you really
want to know about the subject. Dr Verhoven was a materials science
professor and helped to rediscover the ancient technique of making
wootz steel the original “Damascus” steel. The paper is 200 pages
long and is written for a non scientist but is not a how to or step
by step but rather a metallurgy basics on iron and steel.

Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others who Heat Treat and
Forge Steel

http://tinyurl.com/6pflmj

Jim

James Binnion
@James_Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts

360-756-6550

For those interested in steel hardening and tempering 

I want to pound the horse a last time for those newbies with steel
and remove all mystery and doubt about it - also to dethrone all of
us who have expressed knowlege about it ;}

Steel is designed by people to have certain properties and do certain
tasks. It is literally like cooking - a pinch of this, a dab of that,
cook so long, and there’s your steel. There are hundreds of types and
alloys of steel, and then there are cast and wrought irons, too. And
there are steel experts who can say that XXX is best for roller
bearings and YYY is best for ball bearings. I’m not one of those, and
I daresay most here share that. When a steel is designed and made,
the maker doesn’t just put it out and say, “You figure it out…”,
they also issue instructions on how to handle and treat it. That’s
the dethroning part - Jim and I and Ian and Gary aren’t some kind of
steel wizards, we have simply read the instructions, and you can too.
There’s a reason we all say pretty much the same thing. It’s
literally just like a cookbook - “Heat to XX temp, soak for XX time,
quench in YY, clean etc.” This is all available in
many, many places - it’s not a secret, one just needs to learn it.
And for the purposes of this thread you don’t even need to learn that
much. Someone who needs to make a progressive die that can take a
million strikes needs to know everything and do everything exactly.
For us in this thread making simple tools to whack with a hammer or
burnish or whatever, all you really NEED to know has been written
already, here.

Of the hundreds of steels, there are half a dozen that are the
bread-and-butter of the industry - 1018, often called cold-rolled or
mild steel, hot rolled, which is structural steel, the tool steels,
of which W-1 and O-1 are the workhorses, and then there’s stainless.
For the purposes of this thread there’s no need to know much more
than that, unless someone just wants to. Odds are that the (quality)
Allen wrench you buy is W-1 or O-1, and if it’s not you could handle
it like it is and get good enough results to whack it with a hammer.

Heat to red hot and air cool (or bury in sand and other tricks to
slow cooling) to anneal. Heat to red hot and quench to harden and
then clean off any scale. Heat to temper, which is most often straw
yellow for punches, and quench. Polish, whack with hammer. Many
times only the “business end” of a tool is hardened, which gives a
softer shank, but that’s up to the maker. There are soak times,
quench solutions, and other things that will give better or best
results - those are documented for any given steel. And off you go…
It’s easy…

When a steel is designed and made, the maker doesn't just put it
out and say, "You figure it out..", they also issue instructions on
how to handle and treat it. That's the dethroning part 

The problem is that these instructions are useless for the craftsmen
and knowledge of how to modify and in some cases ignore these
instructions is very useful.

Leonid Surpin

Jim and I and Ian and Gary aren't some kind of steel wizards, we
have simply read the instructions, and you can too. 

Oh No, John. While I don’t doubt that you and Ian and Gary do indeed
read the instructions, in Jim’s case, he really is a wizard. Really.
Walks on water and all that sort of stuff too…

(grin)

(sorry Jim. couldn’t resist. Your secret’s out now, I guess. Kinda
like a box of chocolates left out. Gotta have a piece even when I
know what it’ll do to my blood sugar… :slight_smile:

Peter

You don’t need to get carried away or need an engineering education
to learn how to determine approximate steel grades or selecting
scrap and heat treating it for tool making.

get this book: This is the Amazon listing

The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Alexander G. Weygers (Paperback -
Mar 1997)

This was originally published as three books for $20 each and they
were worth it!!

13.95 for all three combined is even better

One of those really good things

jesse

Hey guys…

in Jim's case, he really is a wizard. Really 

Over the years I kinda came to the same conclusion…

You too, John…

I’m just a wingut making an occasional pin for old military rifle,
or ninja spikes on the kitchen stove… So it’s more
like…“That
looks kinda red hot”… Some of the steels are forgiving…

Gary W. Bourbonais
A.J. P. (GIA)

in Jim's case, he really is a wizard. Really. Walks on water and
all that sort of stuff too... 

Yes, Peter, I know what you mean - he’s a real nice guy, too… For
those who don’t know him, he also looks like a Greek god…;
Life is rough…

Understanding that you also had a grin - Jim is also smart enough to
know that he’s smart, but there are people who live and breath steel,
and analyze it under electron microscopes and experiment with small
batch alloys and all sorts of stuff. Steel people who are like some
of us with gold or silver. What I actually meant is that I, for one,
have climbed the mountain high enough to look above and see what I
DON’T know, and that it’s a lot. That’s why professionals earn the
title… And I hope readers have seen that I’ve (and others) just
been trying to get people to know that making a punch at your bench
is really very, very easy to do.

The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Alexander G. Weygers (Paperback
- Mar 1997) 

Great book, well worth the price. How to make all kinds of tools
from scavenged materials. Good simple heat treating info and well
illustrated.

Jim

James Binnion
@James_Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts

360-756-6550

Yes, Peter, I know what you mean - he's a real nice guy, too.. For
those who don't know him, he also looks like a Greek god........;
Life is rough..... 

You guys are funny. About as much wizard as Mickey Mouse in the
sorcerers apprentice and I might give Hephaestus a run for his money
in the looks dept :slight_smile:

Jim

James Binnion
@James_Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts

360-756-6550

I might give Hephaestus a run for his money in the looks dept :-) 

Well, hey, Hephaestus was a Greek god, right? God of the forge? They
didn’t specify! LOL! This is in no way a comment on Jim’s looks–
I’ve never set eyes on him.

But you know, the gladder you are to see someone, the more beautiful
they look, so draw your own conclusions.

Noel