Spindle gouge lost temper?

[Royce Meritt]

I have a 5/8" that is gouge that I had used a lot. It is NOT HSS. Before I got my wolverine sharpening jig I was attempting to sharpen it free-hand. In the process of sharpening and resharpening it the cutting edge got quite out of shape. Once I got my wolvorine jig I decided to reshape it and start over.

In the process of reshaping the gouge I think I burned the temper out of it. I thought I was being careful but it appears not careful enough. It won"t take a good sharp edge. Is it garbage or can it be saved? It wasn't an expensive gouge so I'm not out much if I toss it. However, if it can be saved I would like to as I liked using it. It was the perfect size for some of the things I do. Thanks.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Royce....I can tell that Bill Grumbine in his video recommends throwing them a way if this happens. In theory you ought to be able to (a) retemper it...or (b) grind back to a tempered section but I suspect both would be difficult for the average person.

[Lee DeRaud]

That's odd: usually when I lose my temper, there's a skew chisel involved, not a spindle gouge.:D :p :cool: :rolleyes:

[Royce Meritt]

That's odd: usually when I lose my temper, there's a skew chisel involved, not a spindle gouge.:D :p :cool: :rolleyes:

Trust me, I've lost MY temper with a skew lots of times. Perhaps the gouge lost it's temper because I was TRYING to use the skew!:D

[Jim Becker]

If you did indeed loose the temper, your choice is to cut it back beyond the problem and reshape or, um...retire it. The former isn't necessarily fun, especially the reshaping since you have to take great care once again while grinding and it's REALLY easy to get too hot very quickly with carbon steel. Personally...I'd replace the gouge with a HHS tool.

[Cecil Arnold]

Without knowing which carbon steel you have it would be difficult (but not impossible) to re-temper IMHO. Jim is correct that it would be very difficult to grind back and reshape. You could try to re-temper--a shot in the dark approach--by heating it with a torch to a dull cherry red (about 1-2"), then quenching in motor oil with a swirling motion. It will flash when quenched, but should go out quickly. What you will have is an unknown Rockwell hardness that may be brittle and chip when you find knots and such. You can draw the temper (reducing the brittleness) by reheating to 3-500 degrees. You may want to PM Dave? Anderson (Chester Tool Works) and verify this since Dave works with metals and may have more information available.

[Randy Meijer]

If it is just a cheapie, it may not be worth the time to fool with it. If it ia a good chisel or a family heirloom, I'd try to retemper it......what do you have to lose?? There was a show on PBS just yesterday showing a blacksmith at historical village somewhere tempering a gouge that he had just made from scratch. Didn't appear to be all that tricky. I bet a quick search of the Internet would turn up some detailed instructions for the process. OTOH, this certainly would be be a good excuse to buy another chisel if you need to make an explanation to the wife or just want a nicer chisel.

[Jim Bell]

Years ago when building hot rods, I learned a trick this may help. To remove temper get the piece red and allow it to slowly cool in the normal atmosphere. To return temper heat the piece again to cherry red and quickly submerse it in oil. I used motor oil. I did this when building throttle linkage for engines going into cars where that engine wasn't supposed to be.
Jim

[Jeff Horton]

There has been a lot of talk about heat treating cheap chisels (flat work) in the WoodNet forums in the hand tool section. One of the guys is machinist and he has provided some great info on how to do exactly this.

Jim has the basic steps correct. You need to take one more step though. It will be so hard that it could be brittle. So you need to temper it some to lower the hardness just a bit.

The whole process is not hard but it's not for everyone either. Just go ever to woodnet and search the Hand Tools Forum. Great group of guys in that part of the forum.