A most Horrible Bend...

[Jyc]

So I was in a tournament until this guy fleched me and I got a decent stop hit. Unfortunately he kept going and got yellow carded and ran right over me.

Short story is, now my favourite bf blue got some interesting S bend and I have been doing the standard warming it up and pulling it. Unfortunately It seems to be stuck in this position.

Any tips?

[Beloit Fencer of Old]

Melt it down and re-forge it. You can pick up a home-forging kit at Super Wal-Mart.

[Beloit Fencer of Old]

But seriously, folks, I have had luck with closed-end wrenches. It's slow, steady work which rehabs the blade properly.

[the reluctant fencer]

What about stripping it down and warming the blade in an oven? Get it as hot as you can before straightening.
The closed end wrench will work fine. Just work SLOW and bend it a little bit at a time.

TRF

[Hauptman]

Is it a good idea to heat it? Wouldn't that weaken it and affect the overall stability? Aside from that your typical oven only gets to about 500 degrees, would that be a significant amount of heat with steel like this?

I have no idea about this stuff, but I am curious.

[Morion]

I have had some success with this method:

Clamp the blade in a vise and flex it in the direction you need to remove the bend, release, move the blade about 1/4 inch, repeat. Do this wherever the bends in the blade are. The blade will probably never be perfectly straight again but you can get it usable this way.

[brtech]

I have had some success with this method:

Clamp the blade in a vise and flex it in the direction you need to remove the bend, release, move the blade about 1/4 inch, repeat. Do this wherever the bends in the blade are. The blade will probably never be perfectly straight again but you can get it usable this way.

This is using a vise the way the open ended wrench idea works. The process is the same. I use the hole in a big adjustable wrench (just because thats the tool I carry for other purposes rather than a box wrench). You put the ring where you want to bend, and squeeze the handle of the wrench to the blade, release, move up a little, squeeze, release, repeat.

[the reluctant fencer]

Is it a good idea to heat it? Wouldn't that weaken it and affect the overall stability? Aside from that your typical oven only gets to about 500 degrees, would that be a significant amount of heat with steel like this?

I have no idea about this stuff, but I am curious.

By heating the blade you "losen" up the grain of the steel. It makes it easier to bend and reduces the amount of tearing of the grain in the steel from straightening. thus your blade will last longer. Do not quench the blade in water but let it cool down on its own to not damage any heat treating. Steel melts at around 2300 degrees F and is usually heat treated up to 1500 degrees. 500 degrees should not affect it at all.

I have had some success with this method:

Clamp the blade in a vise and flex it in the direction you need to remove the bend, release, move the blade about 1/4 inch, repeat. Do this wherever the bends in the blade are. The blade will probably never be perfectly straight again but you can get it usable this way.

It does work but if you heat the blade then it will last longer after straightening.

[AlphaFire X5]

I would NOT suggest heating up the steel, especially if you have no knowledge of heat treating steel. Steel is an allotropic metal, meaning that its atoms can bond together in different ways depending on how it is heat treated.

Even if you remain in the same phase (i.e. austenite, pearlite), if you heat steel up and hold it there you can diffuse out particles that will change the properties (i.e. make it softer and weaker, or stronger and more brittle). Also, if you don't cool the steel down at the correct rate you can change the properties as well.

In short, unless you are experienced and know exactly what you're doing, I would not recommend messing with your blades like that.

[Nolano]

By heating the blade you "losen" up the grain of the steel. It makes it easier to bend and reduces the amount of tearing of the grain in the steel from straightening. thus your blade will last longer. Do not quench the blade in water but let it cool down on its own to not damage any heat treating. Steel melts at around 2300 degrees F and is usually heat treated up to 1500 degrees. 500 degrees should not affect it at all. *snip*

This is true. However, I would NOT recommend heating the blade, or if you do, only a few hundred degrees. I've been a hobbyist bladesmith/blacksmith, and while yes, a blade such as this will most likely have been hardened at critical temperature(1400-1800, usually), it would have then been tempered, a process which only brings the temperature up to 300-700, depending on the application of the tool or blade. The higher you go, the more hardness you lose, and the more toughness you gain. While a fencing blade would have been tempered to the high end, you risk further softening the blade by approaching such a heat. If you go higher than If you do heat it up, there would be no danger in quenching it in water, unless you reach the critical temperature(varies from metal to metal, but it's the normal quenching temperature, also known as non magnetic, as this is the place the metal loses its magnetic properties. Always over 1000, and less than 2000).

[OROD]

I'm not sure I understand. You guys are saying that by heating a blade up you risk losing hardness... but it seems to me that hardness is not essential to a fencing blade. If anything, having one that's softer would be better since hardness in my mind denotes brittleness, and being able to bend and rebend a fencing blade without breaking seems like a good thing.

.

[AlphaFire X5]

I'm not sure I understand. You guys are saying that by heating a blade up you risk losing hardness... but it seems to me that hardness is not essential to a fencing blade. If anything, having one that's softer would be better since hardness in my mind denotes brittleness, and being able to bend and rebend a fencing blade without breaking seems like a good thing.

You have a trade off between ductility and strength. The stronger you get something, the stiffer it becomes but the more brittle it becomes. The more ductile your metal the weaker it becomes and the more likely it is that it will hold its bend. With increased ductility, the metal has a lower yield strength. Once a metal yields it permanently deforms unless re-heat treated (again, proper time and temperature are critical here).

So you do want your blade to be strong, this way it has a high yield strength and doesn't permanently bend easily, but you also want it to be flexible and not very ductile.

It's all a very interesting study of materials.

[migopod]

I'm not sure I understand. You guys are saying that by heating a blade up you risk losing hardness... but it seems to me that hardness is not essential to a fencing blade. If anything, having one that's softer would be better since hardness in my mind denotes brittleness, and being able to bend and rebend a fencing blade without breaking seems like a good thing.

.

I don't remember off hand how cool a steel can be and get annealed, (like is 450-500 hot enough for carbon steels, etc), but if you anneal a metal in addition to softening it you also affect its resistance to taking permanent bends, and if it were maraged, you might manage to lose the benefits of the processes and significantly reduce the durability of the blade. I'd agree that it's best to just meticulously de-bend it with a vice or wrench and not to mess about with heating tempered or maraged steels even to such low temperatures.

At the very least it would need rewiring after that, and it probably wouldn't otherwise

[Nolano]

I don't remember off hand how cool a steel can be and get annealed, (like is 450-500 hot enough for carbon steels, etc), but if you anneal a metal in addition to softening it you also affect its resistance to taking permanent bends, and if it were maraged, you might manage to lose the benefits of the processes and significantly reduce the durability of the blade. I'd agree that it's best to just meticulously de-bend it with a vice or wrench and not to mess about with heating tempered or maraged steels even to such low temperatures.

At the very least it would need rewiring after that, and it probably wouldn't otherwise

Annealing is the process of heating a metal to the critical temperature and then SLOWLY bringing it back down. So much hotter than an oven would get.

Alphafire X5 has the right of it about hardness and ductility.

[fleshbroiler]

Is it a good idea to heat it?

No.

Wouldn't that weaken it and affect the overall stability? Aside from that your typical oven only gets to about 500 degrees, would that be a significant amount of heat with steel like this?

Yes. 400F is more than sufficient to begin drawing temper from carbon steel, in other words, soften it.

[Downtown]

When using a closed-end wrench, I find it better to use one were the circle just fits around the blade. Then move it in tiny little advances as you bend the blade.

[fencerbill]

What about stripping it down and warming the blade in an oven? Get it as hot as you can before straightening.
The closed end wrench will work fine. Just work SLOW and bend it a little bit at a time.

TRF

Sure, the oven at your neighborhood pizza parlor. If you can fit a blade in a home oven, it's not worth fixing.

[fencerbill]

I have had some success with this method:

Clamp the blade in a vise and flex it in the direction you need to remove the bend, release, move the blade about 1/4 inch, repeat. Do this wherever the bends in the blade are. The blade will probably never be perfectly straight again but you can get it usable this way.

Even better if you use the vise and a plumber's wrench, then you isolate exactly where the bend will be. Just remember to make a very small change.

[Jyc]

hmmm

deffinitely heating it up I stayed away from because that does sound scary although the hole in the wrench seems to work great. Thanks very much for that tip!

I did had to get a peice of leather and warm it up though and it looked really wrong from behind when I rubbing the epee blade ;P

hahah, its kinda fixed but its never the same again

Damn I gotta work on my distance.