Alan Longmire

He wants all the tools. So do I. Seriously though, we use roughly the same toolkit. I have the power hammer and belt grinder, but otherwise it's about the same. If I did fancy damascus I'd want a press.

Your videos are always worth it, Niels!

I love it!

1084 and 5160 do not require a soak at all. Get them to critical, quench, and you're fully hardened all the way through, assuming a blade-shaped section. Depth of hardening is dependent on alloy, and has nothing (or very little) to do with thickness or soak times. The textbook example is a 1" round bar of W1 versus a 1" round bar of O1. W1 is a shallow hardening steel because it's just iron and carbon with a trace of manganese. It will harden to a depth of around 1/16" from every surface. O1 is deep hardening because it has a lot more manganese, plus chromium and tungsten for carbide formation. It will harden all the way through as 1" round. Those carbide formers are what require a soak to get evenly distributed. 1084 and 5160 don't have enough of anything that forms carbides to require a soak.

I have not worked with it myself, but the late Larry Harley had a foot-long hippo tusk on his bench for years. He used pre-ban elephant, fossil ivory, walrus, oosik, and warthog frequently, but never the hippo. When I asked why, he said the interior dentin was soft and the enamel wasn't thick enough to shape without getting into the dentin. Sounds like your PH friend just wants it slabbed, which would be fine based on what I was told.

If you drawfile, starting with the biggest file you have, then a smaller one, then a smaller one, then a finer cut, you can knock hours off hand sanding. If I'm going relatively unplugged, it's 16" mill bastard, 14" ditto, 12" ditto, then 6"mill bastard (they get finer as they get shorter) followed by 6" mill 2nd cut, then 6" mill smooth. On a blade this size, the whole progression after initial descaling with either vinegar or an angle grinder, takes about two hours if you go slow and steady and take several breaks. The 6" mill smooth drawfiling leaves you ready to start hand sanding at 220. 15 to 20 minutes of that, then 15 minutes at 400, and it's done for a satin finish. If I'm using the grinder it's much faster, just not as zen.

There's no such thing as too many tools, only too small a place in which to keep them.

Thanks, Jeppe, that is an invaluable resource!

It's really not as hard as some make it look, and you don't "need" a micrometer. A cheap set of calipers is fine. I got some $9 digital ones because I have to wear magnifiers to see a vernier anymore...

What Jeremy said, but 1/4" is a thick blade. Anything thinner than, say, 3/32" / 0.093" /1.5mm is better to grinder after HT, only because steel that thin tends to warp in the quench if it's bevelled. Think filet knife or thin kitchen blade. With most blades over 3/32" you'd just be wasting belts to do heavy grinding after HT in my opinion. But that's just me.

Gerhard, what kind of ivory? Warthog should be relatively legal, don't know about hippo. I've been told hippo is much softer than some, though...

I think he missed the part about it being in coin-type slices rather than scales.

Prejudice. . Seriously though, I have used a lot of anvils, both old and new, and never found a newer one (Peddinghaus, both pre and post- Ridgid tool, Refflinghaus, TFS, Cliff Carroll, Etc. but not Rhino) which has as hard a face or as good a rebound as any pre-1970s anvil. Laurel Forge and Foundry came close, and the later Kohlswas were even harder (and thus prone to chipping), but no cigar. And it's not a forged versus cast thing, Columbians are cast steel, and Fishers are steel-faced cast iron. All the new ones advertise a face between Rc 54 - Rc 56. If that is true, my Columbian must be Rc 59 or better. A file won't touch it, and it will not dent. Send me a Rhino and I'll let you know what I think...

You can also vary the tension, that (and the tooth spacing) affects how tight the pattern is. My sample above is 1" round with a 14-20 variable pitch blade as tight as I could tension it. A 10-14 blade leaves a coarser pattern. Less tension makes it more pronounced, as the bkade can flutter a bit more.

That's the harmonics from the bandsaw blade. I think it's pretty cool. I actually took pictures the last time I cut some 1" round bar, looks exactly like that. Looks like your saw has a tighter pivot. This effect shows up on square bar too, but as horizontal lines. Only rounds get the curved ones. It's just a "reflection," if you will, of the vibrations the teeth take into the bar with them.