Home made picks.

I found some very old threads on this. If someone knowledgable here can stomach what I am doing, please help. My project: Forrest Mjollnir resurrection. I have the Terrordactyl pick in it, and used to have the alpine and nut picks for it. Searching high and low everywhere they are just MIA. So I AM going to make new ones. I need to buy material. All I seem to find at vaguely reasonable price is annealed A2 and somewhat hardened 4140 (HRC 27-30), which seems the better choice and about appropriate? The hammer will be carried mostly for hammering shit (like pitons) when neccessary,  and in case a second tool is needed at a bergschrund crossing. So no heavy duty near vertical ice chugging. 

Or maybe someone has a Forrest Mjollnir nut pick they would sell? Alpine too?

Picture is Mt. Fay, 1989 I think. Same hammer. 

https://youtu.be/V46y4s5aTLI?si=fkSwhHdABenf5bU2

You might find this relevant, if a bit overly artistic for your needs.

Thanks Alex. I enjoyed the video. Yeah I won't be going through all of that, but some of it. I do have some metal working experience, including some forging work (horseshoeing and a little tool making), but my heat treating and tempering is kinda weak, both knowledge and experience. A couple of my tools didn't stand the test of time. Never tried making Damascus steel. Really cool stuff though.

Eric:

I love the ambition!  As a chuffer blacksmith myself, I've considered similar projects, but haven't dug in yet.  I, too, find the black magic of heat treatment and tempering to be mostly mystifying.  Given your use case (only occasional use of the pick), I might consider just using mild steel or an unhardened low-carbon steel.  Of course, it wouldn't survive much rock contact without frequent resharpening, but it might be satisfactory enough for your occasional use.  Worst-case scenario, you carry a small p̶i̶c̶k̶ file for field touch-ups and not worry too much about it.

Another option is to send your picks out for heat treatment (I believe there are shops online, and perhaps even some local to you, which will do heat treatments to order).  There's also at least one free mobile heat treatment app out there that might help.  Lastly, I assume that you're familiar with iforgeiron.com, but if not, you should spend some time browsing some HT threads there, as well as some of the knife makers' forums.

Good luck, and let us know how it turns out for you!

Yes, I have thought about using annealed 4140 or a2 and sending it out for heat treat. I  actually have access to a heat treat oven, but no experience with it. I have just tried a bit off heat treating and normalizing with a torch, and case hardening with casenit. With mixed results. I want to do this once and not fuck up.

just save ypurself the trouble and smash your knuckles into a frozen cinderblock... Those tools were painful to use.... 

Nick Goldsmithwrote:

just save ypurself the trouble and smash your knuckles into a frozen cinderblock... Those tools were painful to use.... 

In case you didn't notice, I am experienced with that exact tool. And it fits my projected use better than the modern ICE climbing tools. Or a lot of older ones too. But thanks Nick. I don't mean any disrespect. 

BTW. If I venture out onto the frozen winter wonderland next winter, I will arm myself with something modern. I look forward to experiencing leashless ice climbing.

Eric Craigwrote:

Yes, I have thought about using annealed 4140 or a2 and sending it out for heat treat. I  actually have access to a heat treat oven, but no experience with it. I have just tried a bit off heat treating and normalizing with a torch, and case hardening with casenit. With mixed results. I want to do this once and not fuck up.

Eric, let me know if you have temperature control of your oven. I'll dig out my heat treating book and give you the details. 4140 is easy to heat treat, and fun if you oil quench it; sometimes you get flames! You can kinda get away with letting 4140 self quench in thin cross sections, but I wouldn't trust it. It's easier just to dunk it and be sure. I really dislike machining annealed 4140. 4140 prehard is a pleasure to machine in my opinion, because it makes nice chips. You could also buy 4140 prehard, machine, anneal, then re-heat treat. You'll have very relaxed grain by that point!

A2 is also very easy to heat treat to a reasonable quality. How hot does your oven get?

Hi Duncan, thanks for your contribution. I should be able to dig out the oven the next day or so. In the meantime this question: if I buy a piece of heat treated 4140 it is specified to be rc27. While I have a whole machine shop available to me, I have almost no experience running the machines. I am skilled with hand tools.  So an angle grinder,  drill, hack saw, files will be my tools. Oh, there's a couple band saws, so they should work for rough cutting the two pieces. Is the rc27 4140  appropriate as is for my finish products? Is it workable with the tools described? 

I have scale drawings of the two picks. I never was especially fond of the Forrest "Nut". I plan to make something similar to the Chouinard Crag hammer pick.

Thanks again for your help .

4140 at RC27 (Rockwell hardness C scale 27) is workable with hand tools; everything just takes a little longer (and dulls your tools faster).

• You can hacksaw it; I recommend bimetal blades and cutting lube (anything helps, Home Depot or Lowe's has something for ya, it doesn't have to be the fanciest stuff for hacksawing). 
• Angle grinding could be fine, but you have to be careful not to get the metal hot enough to draw the temper. Basically, if the 4140 prehard changes color while you're angle grinding it, it got too hot. If you're going to use an angle grinder, take your time, let the metal cool, and try to machine/file off that angle ground edge to get rid of any potential thermal issues at the grinder cut.
• Same thing with drilling; go slow, don't let the metal get too hot, use cutting fluid. When your drill is about to finish the hole, you'll inevitably heat up the last bit before you pop through. But I wouldn't worry about that because you're not likely to be banging the holes of your parts into the ice   
• Bandsawing will be fine, just make sure to slow your blade down and again, use lube. If you have a bimetal blade on the saw, even better. HSS (high speed steel) blades might not fare too well if your tooth pitch is too big for the thickness, or they have too big of set.
• I think 4140 prehard files great! Sure, it doesn't peel off like soft 1018, but it won't wreck your elbows either. Use a good quality file (old Nicholson's, Grobet, or Swiss-made files (not the same as Swiss pattern files!))

As far as suitability, yes, 4140 prehard at RC27 will be fine for what you're doing. They will definitely dull much faster than a proper hard pick, but at RC27, they shouldn't snap from the cold, they should be decently pliable (I wouldn't go stein pulling on 'em though! Or torquing them in cracks too much, either, just a little bit of torque every now and then), and they'll still be hard enough to hold an edge for a day out climbing. If you strike rock with 'em, they'll do more than just birdbeak, so swing smartly. And the best part is, if you do decide you like 'em, you can always anneal and re-heat treat them without having to make whole new picks  

Get some 4140 prehard, try it out, have fun, and let us know how it goes! If you like your designs and want something a little more durable, hit me up and I'll whip up something for ya. I don't have a heat treat oven anymore, so it'll have to be waterjet or lasercut out of something already hard like AR500 steel.

What's the RC hardness of, say, the Petzl picks?

Hey Duncan, thank you! That's the information I was looking for, and the answers I was hoping for. I'll be ordering up my little piece of 4140 tomorrow. 

My sketches are down in my dungeon. I'll post a picture tomorrow. 

I made picks out of 4140 before. I was hoping they could serve as cheap prototypes but this steel was too soft to be used even for testing out the geometry. 

For a usable pick imo you need approximately 45hrc and 1500mpa tensile strength. 50hrc and 1700mpa is already quite good. Top quality picks go up to 56hrc 2000mpa. 

As mentioned before AR500 is a much better choice than 4140. Even better would be 4340 or 300M. Better options than that are hard to obtain or expensive. 

I make dammerr hammers out of 4140/4142 steel which is easy enough to work annealed and heat treat. I think A2, which is more suited to cutting edges, will be too brittle. I work the steel in the annealed state and heat treat to about 50 Rockwell C. You might want an ice axe pick to be a bit harder. If you have one you like, get some hardness testing files and see how hard they are and match that. Quenched without tempering 4140 should be about Rc60 which might just work - heat it cherry red with a torch and quench it then see if it bends or snaps. I use canola oil for quenching but have used old oil from when I change the oil in my car and it works fine. I don't have access to a Rockwell hardness tester but I have a Brinell system that works so I can hardness test a pick if you have an old or broken one to send me. I also have a heat treating oven so if you make some picks, I'd be happy to harden and temper them for you.

I have a Mjollnir in my collection but Brinell hardness testing the pick would require polishing a surface and I would rather not screw it up. I don't have a set of files.

Jedrzej Jablonskiwrote:

I made picks out of 4140 before. I was hoping they could serve as cheap prototypes but this steel was too soft to be used even for testing out the geometry. 

For a usable pick imo you need approximately 45hrc and 1500mpa tensile strength. 50hrc and 1700mpa is already quite good. Top quality picks go up to 56hrc 2000mpa. 

As mentioned before AR500 is a much better choice than 4140. Even better would be 4340 or 300M. Better options than that are hard to obtain or expensive. 

I stand corrected! Thanks for the information Jesrzej!

Eric, if you have access to any sort of CAD software, draw up your pick designs and send them off to SendCutSend for them to cut some out of AR500 steel. That could be quicker than sending me your designs and having me cut them out here (and SendCutSend has surprisingly good cost margins at volume, but even their one-offs aren't too bad)

Edit: or just email your drawings on graph paper to me and I could turn them into CAD drawings for you as well

Hi Guys, thanks for your contributions! I received my prehard 4140 today. So I am going ahead with it. I don't know, of course, what the original material is, but the hardness of the 4140 seems to be at least as hard as the original Terrordactyl pick I have. The head is about the same. Based on some test filing.

The expected use is for summer alpine climbing,  which means driving or resetting the occasional piton, and to use in conjunction with my piolet if a steep bit is encountered at a bergschrund, or elsewhere. I am easily good to 55 degrees with just my ice axe. I don't expect to ever again climb routes like the Super Coulior or Asteroid Alley. If I take up winter ice climbing again, I will get some modern tools. The Mjollnir with the 'crag hammer' pick will be carried some rock climbing,  as it was for many years in the 80's and 90's, mostly for fixing up fixed pitons when they need it. That Mjollnir hammer is very effective for piton work despite being about 6 oz. lighter than a real wall hammer. It has a nice powerful balance to it, much better than a Chouinard Crag hammer of similar weight. The first version of the crag hammer was good too, but heavier.  I definitely will consider sending the ice pick out for a proper heat treat, and you guys have given me a good idea of how hard that should be. But 'toughness' is probably most important. 

Thanks again. And I am still listening. 

I did the easier rock pick first. Hack saw, files, cordless drill. Guess I will blue both picks. 

Nice work Eric! Let us know how they perform, and if they fulfill your needs.