Anneal the steel

Dan Mosley

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Palm Springs, Ca
I was making a tool out of cold rolled steel........a comment from one of the turners suggested when i heat and bend to make sure i anneal the steel after...........a bit new at what they mean by that...........??
 
Oh boy are you in for some fun :D

What are you making?

In a nutshell.... :rolleyes:

If it is an edged tool, then you need to start with the right steel, cold rolled steel is not going to hold a good edge, no matter what you do to it.

If it is just steel for something structural, then you don't need to anneal it, as it has not been tempered.

To anneal steel you heat it up to a certain temp and then let it slowly cool off, if you want to harden it, you heat it up to a certain temp, then quench it, that is cool it rapidly, then you temper it, so it is not so hard that it is brittle, this involves heating it to a certain temp, and then holding it at that temp for a certain time.

Lots of fun! :thumb:
 
Stuart ---- I am going to make some additional arms in 3/4 and 1" colled rollled steel then fit some 3/16 HSS bit in the front of it. Thanks for the explanation about anealing but I dont know why I would need to aneal the arm of the tool...............thanks
 
You would not need to anneal the steel for the arm, in fact you would not want it hard, if it had a huge catch, for example, you would want it to bend, not snap.

Just work it the way it comes to you :thumb:
 
Dan,

Stuart is essentially right about the need for annealing in your application. The original suggestion was probably about the fact that bending steel is a form of work-hardening. Cold-rolled steel is already work-hardened from the rolling process and further working can increase this hardness and make it more brittle. Annealing a work-hardened steel is a good idea to reduce this brittleness. Cold rolled steel is a plain carbon steel and is easy to anneal as Stuart already described-heat it good and hot and let it cool slowly. It then becomes soft and workable again.
 
you can anneal it in your cooking stove oven if it will fit,leave the part in the oven until it cools down
 
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