What steel for forging?

[Screwdriver]

anvil is on order, will be here tuesday ish...only small but if it makes that much difference then it will be worth it and i may upgrade to a larger one in time. see how i get on and how often i want to use it.

ive got some steel coming for a set of tongs, and ive got coil springs here that i would like to use to make a kiridashi, possibly a small knife and maybe some punches. the anvil has a hardy hole so ideally would want a cut off tool and a set of spring fullers too but plenty of time for that.

Even a small anvil will be a massive improvement. It's not the weight that does it so much as the concentration of mass and a hardened top. Worth putting a bit of time into setting it up on a decent stand too. Tree stump is the perfect starter base.

 

[BrokenBiker]

when you say, cherry, glowing then yellow. im assuming glowing is were it needs to be for forging/shaping?

i do all my bending at cherry, or atleast did, until i left that bit of 30mm flat bar in for a bit longer to see how hot it would get and then twisted it 180 degrees like it was nothing. that little dint top right is the total damage done by wailing on it against the 10mm plate. looking at it, i did just as much to the plate as i did the flat bar i think

ive got steel coming monday that was destined for a new welding bench, but as i always order atleast 1 length extra, and only needed 11 meters anyway i will have about 10 meters left over from that, so will make a stand and i have plenty of stuff here to weigh it down with and can fill the box section with sand if needed. the anvil claims to have 'over' 70% rebound rate...ive just gone out and smacked the top of my welding bench with the 10mm plate on it and the reboud equated to exactly nothing...and ive got another dent in it now

had i known a few weeks ago i would be buying an anvil i could have had my pick of an entire beech tree that we lifted out with the crane while the arborists were felling it. ot plenty of small bits for turning but could have had some fairly big chunks. always the way i guess.

 

[Screwdriver]

You could twist that by hand, cold. The metal merely deforms in shear.

You can't squash it cold though because you are moving the material in tension/compression and (depending on the hammer/vice jaws) moving a larger concentrated volume of material.

 

[Jackimus]

If I am remembering correctly, my steel went cherry, then solid red glow, then orange almost throughout - just red edges.

That's when I took it out and gave it a few smacks and it deformed no problem at all.

Only had time for about 10 effective hits before it was back to solid red and toughening up again, at that point you could still deform it but had to give it quite a thump which was less controlled than I wanted. (I was making decorative wall hooks out of little rods)

I probably could have gotten away with orange throughout, but didn't want to overdo it.