Barry, If the spiderweb cracks had not taken place, we could have annealed or just normalized it and it would have been fine. Most likely the steel itself was not ruined. It was just coming apart. Of course that meant we could not use it for our purposes. A person could go ahead and break it all up in little pieces and arrange a stack and forge weld it back into one piece and still have a usable steel.
The steel had cracked while sitting in a fully hardened state. The cracks were so small we could not see them under the scale. An anneal would not keep it from cracking since they already were in place and were merely becoming manifest when we hammered the material.
Someone asked why a file dont crack because it is so hard. It's hard but not full hard. They do draw them back just enough to stabilize them.
Also, when the steel was allegedly hardened while stirring the oil, I imagine he OVER heated it which is the perfect recipe for cracking. The grain was huge. The guys at the event broke a few pieces of it and it was BIG. I was busy and did not watch where on the bar they broke it or anything. I'm mostly using deduction to try to explain this.
Topic: Here's a puzzler (Read 915 times)
