The Matherton Forge Metallurgical Research and Development Lab

In May of 2004, I broke ground on what I jokingly refer to as the The Matherton Forge Metallurgical Research and Development Lab. What it amounts to is a clean room devoted to test and analysis equipment. Going was quite slow and took most of the summer, since I did all the work myself, my son Kevin did provide invaluable "go fer" assistance while shingling of the roof, I am a serious boob when it comes to heights.

Within the floor joists are the foundation forms for my Riehle impact testing machine. NIST recommends a foundation that is 60” x 36” x 18” deep. My foundation exceeded that in width, and since we have the Michigan ground frost to contend with, I poured a footing that extended 41” into the ground. You can see the footing top with the reinforcing cage holding the mounting bolts on top.


Along with ample lighting, I also incorporated plenty of cabinet space and plumbed in a water supply so that it has everything “including” a kitchen sink. This has made my life much more pleasant for mixing solutions and doing the etching work for my damascus and test sample preparation.


Many other smiths who have tried to justify tool (toy) purchases to their wives have asked how I managed this one, after all, not many bladesmiths require a metallurgical lab to make knives. When Karen found out that the hardness tester would be out of her way in the basement, the impact tester would vacate her garage space, and the ferric chloride stains would move from her kitchen sink to mine, it was actually a pretty easy sell.





Here is my hardness tester residing in its new and permanent home. Plenty of drawer and cupboard space below it makes life much easier than a bladesmith deserves. It is not one of the most expensive models available, but I have some good test blocks and it reads very consistently. I had kept it in my house for years because of the huge fluctuations in temperature and humidity that it would be subjected to in my shop. The new lab is very well insulated and heated with ducting that allowed me to put good filtration on the incoming air. I do go through a few furnace filters due to the other work areas in my shop, but the lab remains pretty clean in comparison.







Perhaps the best deal I ever got on E-bay was my Riehle impact tester, I guess nobody else had a need to do Charpy or Izod type impact testing, since mine was the only bid. It did cost a bit to get it shipped to me since the entire unit weighs in at over 700 lbs., but it was in excellent shape and I got four different heads for the full range of testing all the way up to 240 ft lbs. with two different drop heights. For the readings of this gadget to have any meaning it needed to be meticulously leveled and secured with grade 8 bolts to the foundation mentioned above.




Anybody who gets really obsessive/compulsive about this whole metallurgy thing will eventually need to have a look inside of their steel and see the microstructures that they are always reading about and pursuing. Martensite is hard and will skate a file, but the same is true of very fine pearlite, or Bainite, loaded with carbides, the Hardness tester can’t tell you the grain size that is just as important for performance. To meet these needs I acquired two Olympus MF metallurgical microscopes. Each has its own capabilities that I desire. One has a wide and completely adjustable stage for laying an entire blade on for examination, while the other has a very tightly controlled stage that can handle slide mounted specimens, and trans-illumination. One is binocular for regular viewing, but has brightfield and darkfield capabilities, the other is trinocular to handle the mounting of my digital camera for easy metallographic uses. The metallography is accomplished with a MaxView Plus™ system and a Canon A95 digital camera with a USB interface to my laptop computer. With compatible software, I can control the camera from the computer and view my images on the wide screen. My laptop is networked to my other computers in the house and the internet so that I can almost instantly produce and upload images to the web.



A guy needs to be comfortable as well, so the lab is wired for sound, with remote speakers in all the other rooms of the shop ran from its stereo with a five CD changer, dual cassette decks and the tuning presets for the talk radio I prefer. There is also a Television mounted above the stereo, but I seldom use it as it is too distracting, and there really isn’t much worth watching on television these days.

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