Fooling around with the temper.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

A very intelligent friend of mine, also an armourer, has been changing the temper of blades using a torch, heating them to gold, and then quenching them. I thought that this was forbidden in m.12.2?

[prototoast]

You seem to know the answer yourself. It may be "illegal" but I doubt anyone would know or care, unless he told them.

[melihop]

so if you have a kink weak spottish thing in your foil.. you just.. wait for it to snap? rahter than a simple retemper job and improving the safety and length of life of your blade?

[keith]

so if you have a kink weak spottish thing in your foil.. you just.. wait for it to snap? rahter than a simple retemper job and improving the safety and length of life of your blade?

or generate a new weak spot - you'd think if it was only a good thing they wouldn't ban it. Unless of course it's all part of an evil conspiracy between the FIE and blade forges

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure of myself here. Maybe I can get neevel or DHCjr to confirm this.

[Artisan]

Yes, it is illegal. Yes, it is a stupid thing to do. Your friend is a knuckle head. There are so many things wrong with this practice, I wonder if this "friend" is not actually yourself? (just a tease now, as in: I have this "friend" with a rash on his... )

Do not use these blades in a bout against another person.

Heating any steel of unknown composition, to an uncertain temperature for an arbitrary amount of time, and quenching it in water wil produce at the very best, random results.

First I doubt he has a means to adequately and evenly heat the blades accurately, unless he works in a pizza shop, and even a pizza oven will not heat metal to straw or gold color.


Heating them will anneal (remove) the temper the manufacturer has produced using far more controlled conditions. Quenching with create a different temper, most likely more brittle and less flexible, thus stiffer and more prone to breakage. Some steels are made to be quenched in air, some in water, others in various oils.

In the zone that he does manage to get hot enough, the surface finish will suffer from the oxidation that occurs at that temperature. Depending on how long it is hot, the mineral structure of the metal will change, drastically altering its properties. Because fencing blades vary dramatically in cross section the heating, hardening and tempering of them is not a trivial matter.

[Artisan]

so if you have a kink weak spottish thing in your foil.. you just.. wait for it to snap? rahter than a simple retemper job and improving the safety and length of life of your blade?

simple retemper job = home dentistry

go ahead

I dare you, do your own root canal.

[telkanuru]

Hold on, I think I can work out the equations....

[sudden realization]

OMG WTF!!! SWEET MERCIFUL JESUS GET THAT KID HELP.

[calm]

[DHCJr]

Artisan, said it very well, so I can add very little.

All the FIE worries about are FIE blades (we will ignore the question about Sabre for now). They take samples of blades. Here they have a known quality. Your 'friend' or anyone who does it, how good are they and their equipment. How much experience do that have with blades other than knifes. Very few make swords, while there are many who make blades, because they need a much bigger sword.

Now we get to the final point. Who pays, if your 'friend' doesn't know what he was doing? I hope noone ever tries.

The 3rd line of M.1 is the rule people were looking for.

[neevel]

Ditto to what Aritsan and Donald said-- it's against the rules and unsafe (which is why the rule is there). There's a real difference between being "intelligent" and "as intelligent as you think you are". If your friend is intending to use these blades, he's risking injury to other people. Artisan gave as good a brief explaination of the technical issues as anyone can- if you don't know what the steel compositionis, to what temperature you're heating it, how evenly you're heating it, and what you're supposed to quench it in, it's a total crap shoot. This article by swordsmith Kevin Cashen gives a lay-person's overview of what's involved in heat treating a sword blade (and he's using a simple carbon steel as an example, not a more exotic high-alloy composition like maraging steel).

-Dave

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

I can assure you that its not me, but just a shy poster who isnt registered. Apparently, his or her coach told said person just to annoy that rule. As an apprentice blacksmith, I would say that heating it to strawish-gold and quenching it would actually make the steel weaker, since each heat of the steel weakens it a little bit.