5 ms·
What a lot of people also don't know is that forging doesn't give the steel it's strength. Forging is done because it is way easier/cheaper than melting and cas
by thdrdt 6y ago
What a lot of people also don't know is that forging doesn't give the steel it's strength. Forging is done because it is way easier/cheaper than melting and casting it.
Quenching and tempering gives it it's desired strength.
- newacct583 6y agoWas. These days the labor involved in hand-forging a part dominates and cast alloys are everything anyone uses for anything, outside of oddball boutique communities like fancy knife aficionados.
- hinkley 6y agoMy understanding was that forging is work hardening (but hard and strong are not the same thing), annealing cancels it out, which is why quenching and tempering are important. Also the story of the structure of the metal is a bit different when you've folded it 100's of times. No blacksmith or foundry is getting that sort of fine work in their material.
- catalogia 6y agoForging squeezes the slag out, thereby purifying the steel. As far as I am aware this was the primary mechanism by which folding steel (which was done about a dozen times, not hundreds; those larger numbers come from 2^[n folds]) strengthened Japanese blades.
- formerly_proven 6y agoForged, cast and machined parts of equal dimensions have entirely different grain structures.
- thdrdt 6y agoThey have different grain flow. The strength is almost entirely depending on the metallurgy.