Pic of the tanto I've been screwing with...

[Chiro75]

Here's a link to a picture of that tanto I;ve been fooling with. The scan turned out pretty good, at least!

One thing before you click the link...Geocities has an annoying policy that you can't just directly link to a picture. So, if you click that link, you'll go to a "page unavailable" thing. To see the picture, open a new window in your browser, enter the address you see below in the address bar, and it should take you to the pic. Worked for me, at least.

http://www.geocities.com/chiro75/tanto.jpg

Here's everything that's been done:
1st HT- coated in clay, tried to get to critical temp, thought I made it, quenched in hot oil, and tempered @ 375 (it's 1084, by the way). Then refinished and etched in ferric chloride. Then I quickly found out that the whole thing, with the exception of the two inches around the tip, was soft.

So, I did it all again, this time heating in a one brick forge. The end result was that the proximal portion of the blade that was previously soft was now hard, but the part that was hardened before, was now soft! Obviously I need to anneal the thing and start over. Anyway, you can see the hardened zone very well on this picture. This is after finishing the knife again, etching lightly and steel wooling. The finish on this knife is great by my standards, but it's still unusable! If you look really closely you can see where the original temper line sort of took toward the tip. It's very faint. The other thing, that I don't think you can see on the picture, is that throughout the blade there are little spots of shiny (versus the sort of matte finish the etching creates) bits. I don't know if these are areas that hardened, too, or if I burned out the carbon from these areas or what. Weird. Anyway, somebody offered to try to rehab this thing, so I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens. I'm very pleased with the way the thing turned out. If I could get a decent HT on it I'd be set!

 

[Chuck Gedraitis Knives]

It sound slike you didn't get the whole thing hot enough, evenly. When you think it is hot enough, leave it in for a few extra seconds. You want a nice cherry red color. When you quench you can submerse the whole blade, clay and all, and move it back and fourth paraell, not side to side. Next time test it with a file to see if it is hard. If i is not just heat treat it again. Moving th eknife keeps a "vapor cloud" from forming around the knife. This cloud of gasses can insulate around part of the knife and keep it from hardening.

 

[Epsilon]

Chiro,
Exactly what striper said. Also, careful to not overheat as well. That can give poor transition lines, more importantly coarse grain. You won't necessarily have to anneal, but I would. Don't want to break Murphy's law. Like the style, should be a great companion blade. Good job.

-Jason

 

[Scott Fulford]

Chiro75,
Man thats a nice looking tanto blade,I would like to ask you to take one more stab at doing this yourself,I honestly believe you can do it and I think if you acheive success by doing it yourself you will feel infinitely better than if you give up and send it out.
I took the liberty of modifying your picture to show how I would apply the furnace cement,the top pic shows how the clay ribs should look and the bottom pic shows how the temperline should look when the blade has been polished and etched.

I believe the problem is that you are not getting the blade hot enough,which is something we can easily rectify..........
Heres a pic of my old shade tree charcoal forge:

What we have are a big metal box,a bag of charcoal,some starter fluid an ammo box and some el-cheapo transmission fluid(I`ve since switched to vegetable oil,it works everytime)and an airbrush compressor with a piece of hollow fishing rod tip taped on the hose to use as a nozzle(a hairdryer works good also,you can even use a length of electrical conduit squeezed almost shut on the end to give your breath more velocity,but be warned,the lung type bellows will give you a massive head rush)
You will want to get the coals fired up and all nice and ashed over with little or no black areas of the coals remaining.use at least 8 pounds of charcoal,you will want the coals to surround the blade at least 2" on any side,bury the blade in the coals edge up,with hot coals covering the top and let it sit in there for a couple of minutes,you should be able to peek in between some of the coals and see portions of the blade here and there.When the blade appears to be glowing,start forcing air into the coals around the blade,you`ll notice things are goetting a lot hotter! keep a close watch on the blade and when it looks bright orange with no shadowy or duller orange areas quickly immerse it edge first into the ammo box full of pre-heated vegetable oil.
clean,temper,polish and etch with ferric chloride solution as before.
I know this will work and I know you want to do it yourself,I remember the first blade I tempered that showed a fancy wavy temperline,I was grinning like a possum eating briars.
Scott