I’m a huge fan of “forged in fire” and it seems to me that technology hasn’t done a great job of improving this craft. I mean except for things like a power hammer, how is it possible that we’re not able to control a quench.
There are so many “castrophical failures”from what seems to be competent bladesmith. I don’t understand how in 2020 there are still variable in that process that we are unable to control.
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I’m french so sorry in advance if there are error in the text.
In: Technology
Metallurgy has come a looooooooong way since the metal ages, and has allowed us to understand how the crystalline structures form in metals and at what temperatures they exist. When the metal is quenched, the formation of those structures “freeze” at the stage they are in. However this freeze creates a lot of internal stresses in the metal because the behavior if metals makes them expand while being heated, and contract while cooling. If this expansion and contraction is too extreme, the energy between the crystalline structures forces the metal to break or shatter at the grain (boundary between crystals) where the difference is the highest.
This is made more difficult to control in the real world than the predictive equations materials scientists use because there are always impurities in the material. Depending on how the impurities interact with each other, the core metal, and their concentration, they can make the boundaries stronger or weaker.
And even in the most highly controlled forge with the purest of materials, there is just the simple issue of human error. Mistakes and accidents can just happen.
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