I was watching some of Uri Tuchman’s excellent videos, and he mentioned making his own tools; sounded fun, and I now have a garden I can safely try that sort of project in. Kinda fancied making some sort of engraving tool; mainly for the fun of making such a thing.
I ordered some 8mm spring steel from ebay. Then I sawed a length off and then realised I needed some new steel files (I had loads of wood files, but none for metal), so I ordered those.
Once they arrived, I started shaping the cutting head; this took a wee while, but I just listened to some podcasts. I didn’t have a template, so I just freehanded what seemed best to achieve a pointy end.
I ordered a butane torch, and acquired some Canola oil (aka Rapeseed oil) from the supermarket for quenching (since this is supposed to be good for this purpose).
Then basically I waited for a nice day and heated the spring steel until it went cherry red, and quenched it in a tin can filled with Canola oil, making sure to move the tool around to properly quench. I was wearing goggles, my heavy duty Kiln gloves and had a fire extinguisher to hand obviously. I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of this as it was kinda intense and I didn’t want the distraction.
It seemed to work; and I knocked up a quick handle on the lathe.
I don’t know what hardness I’ve achieved as I don’t have the tools to test that, but it’s definitely able to engrave brass without any damage to the tool. The only problem now is that I’m terrible at engraving things.
I’ve still got some spring steel left over, but I’m not sure what to make next.
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