Drilling through old files | Problem Solving | Forum

Mark,  Many things to work on here, but let's try drilling first.  Your steel may be too hard if you wrecked a bunch of bits.  First grind off the fire scale, then a torch tempering through the temper colors until it turns clear should let you drill it.  I use Cobalt bits from the local fasteners shop here.  They work much better than High Speed Steel bits.   Drill, clamped on a wood block to lessen the chance of catching the bit when you break through, thus breaking a bit, and also to protect you if it catches and spins as can happen if unclamped. Cool bit with a bit of water while drilling.                Next, you only want to heat the blade to just a little past non magnetic as checked with a magnet on a stick and then let it cool til most of the color is gone then re do for three normalising cycles.  If you are heating to a white heat you are undoing everything you are trying to do in a normalising cycle, and are growing the grain to a large weak structure, that will cause a broken blade later.  With proper thermal cycles your grain size should be so small that it looks more like flat grey paint when broken, than gritty sand as in your broken handle tip photo.  For home knifemakers I highly recommend two books by Wayne Goddard, a former NWBA member.  They are The Wonder of Knifemaking, and The $50.00 Knife Shop.  They can be found fairly cheaply on Amazon.  You do not want to heat your blades past a bright salmon color seen in subdued light if possible.  You can get away with overheating mild steel, but with high carbon steel you want to minimize grain growth by keeping your forging and heat treating heat in the bright salmon and cooler ranges, but do not use any heavy forging blows below a bright red.  As far as your tang being too thin at the end, many knives used in the fur trapper era of this country had tangs tapered to nothing at the end, but full thickness at the blade/tang junction, and lasted very well.  I have several from that era and they are still working.  I hope I hold up as well!  If you have further questions that I can be any help on feel free to contact me.541-954-two one six 8.