I have a couple of weed forks which have flat tines. These are mucheasier than the round or square ones on ordinary forks to push intohard ground to extract weeds.However some of them (not all) don't have tough enough tines, theybend when you try to lever out weeds with them.Is there any straightforward sort of heat treatment I can apply to tryand make the tines stiffer? These are just steel, not stainless. Ifit doesn't work then I've not lost anything really as they're not veryuseful as they are.

Chris Green laid this down on his screen :Get the steel cheery red, then quench it rapidly in water or oil.

Can one fairly easily harden/toughen steel?

Can one fairly easily harden/toughen steel? Featured

Jul 26, 2021 Last reply: 4 years ago 22 Replies

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nightjar 4 years ago

I had a 3.5kg Calor gas cylinder with a hose that fed a torch with interchangeable nozzles, varying from needle point (for soldering) up to

50mm diameter. For hardening lathe tools, any of the three largest nozzles would do.

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Roger Hayter 4 years ago

Tines folded into a vee section may be a good compromise.

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Steve Walker 4 years ago

I bought a similar torch for some silver soldering - when the regulator is turned up to 4 bar, it'll give 110 kW though! It needs a *large* propane bottle though - a small one cools too rapidly and stops gassing off fast enough.

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