Case Hardening

To go quite nicely with my scrolling plyer

guide i thought i would bang up a

demostration we got a while ago on

Case Hardening steel.

Mild steel has a carbon content of about 0.15 to

0.13 if you need to raise that on tools 

you can add a carbon rich powder like casenite

to the metal which can send the carbon

content up to 1.2 to 1.4

In the old days to apply a carbon skin to metal, bars were

packed into clay and stuffed with carbon rich powder,

usually made up of ground down bone and horse hooves.

They were baked for around a week to 

become really hard.

This process did leave large blisters on the surface

of the metal where the carbon powder was thicker,

this process lead to the carbon rich steel

being called Blister steel.

In this case we will just be applying to the

scrolling plyer nib ends.

1. heat the nib end of your scrolling plyers right up to an orange heat
2. apply the caseite evenly across all of the heated area
3. place back in the fire to melt over the surface
4. repeat two or three times to get a good surface over the tongs
5. Finally quench them off, there should be a great crack to show you have done it properly.

Do all this correct

and you should have steel tougher than

Adrian himself