Chat with a farrier last week changed how I heat treat

I was at the feed store grabbing coal and this old farrier started talking about his shoeing process. He said he never rushes the cool-down phase on a set of shoes, lets them sit for a full 10 minutes before he touches them again. That hit different because I've been pulling my blades out of the oil after like 2 minutes and wondering why they come out brittle sometimes. Has anyone else gotten good advice from someone outside of traditional blacksmithing?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliaa6512d ago

Read a metallurgy blog that said cooling too fast causes internal stress.

the_elizabeth12d ago

Honestly used to think faster cooling meant stronger metal. Saw it in some blacksmithing videos where they quenched blades in oil and water. Then I tried annealing some mild steel for a project, cooled it too quick on accident, and got a tiny crack right down the middle. Read up after that and realized slow cooling lets the atoms settle into a relaxed structure. Now I'm careful with cooling rates, especially for stuff that needs to hold up without snapping.

kevin_williams12d ago

That farrier was SPOT ON about the cool down phase. I learned that lesson the hard way with a batch of garden tools I heat treated last year. Pulled them out of the oil after maybe three minutes and they chipped like glass the first time I used them on some hard dirt. Now I let everything sit in the quench until it's barely warm to the touch, sometimes I even stick the whole thing in a bucket of sand to slow it down even more. The internal stress thing is real, you can feel it in the metal when you start filing it and it fights back against you.