Tool Making Overview by S.O. Smith

Tool Making Overview by S.O. Smith

 

Tool Making is considered an art rather than a trade or an industry and it has been decided that there are two distinguishing properties that set aside a good tool from a bad one. Firstly the tool has to be made to endure the work they were created to do for example there is no point in Tool Making a device that will break after its first use, secondly the tool has to be shaped correctly and precisely so it can be used for the job it was intended for. 

 

There are three states of tool steel, annealed, hardened, and tempered. Annealed is soft and is easily shaped which is great for tool making, hardened steel as the name suggests is hard and will break if struck, and tempering is the process of removing the hardness. For each of these three states there is a process of tool making. Here we look at the tool making process of hardened steel. The first step of the tool making process includes shaping. Shaping can be accomplished by whatever means you see fit such as grinding, forging, sanding and so on. With shaping it is important to remove the scratches that will be prevalent from the tool making process. Scratches should be removed as this is where the stress will be focused and will lead to a shorter life span. Once shaping is finished the tool needs to be heated to a high temperature for a couple of minutes and then let the tool cool down, a process called normalizing, it helps reduce any stress within the tool. The final stages of tool making include tempering and finishing, tempering involves removing the hardness, and improving its toughness. You can choose different parts of the tool to be tempered differently. For example some tools require being very hard at the top of the tool where most of the work will be carried out but it doesn’t need to be so hard on the handle. The tempering process allows you to selectively choose which parts to temper differently.