Damn...I wish I had bought a house on Camano Island back in the days
when it was "the sticks". That place is filling up quickly with lots of
spendy houses!

Anyway, I wouldn't bother quenching them. If over-designed, there would
be no real need for extra hardness anyway and you run the risk of
over-hardening and possibly causing cracking. It's a small risk but not
the kind of thing you want to find after installation.

As to finish, if these are way up where you have to really look hard,
I'd have em powder coated. There are some powder colors that look like
iron from a distance. On my in-laws place, some surface rust started
showing up after about 10 years due to tiny amounts of condensation as
well as some of the tannins from the wood. Not a big problem but it
gets a little irritating to see your work with a rusty haze showing up.

Koz (who wishes he was out shore fishing off Camano island right now)



Rich-in-WA wrote:

Hello again...

A couple months back I got some great advice from the group
concerning a set of large steel brackets I'm fabricating for a timber
frame house we're building. I have sixteen brackets to make, each
with five pieces, weighing about 40lbs total per assembly when done.
I designed the brackets so all the cutting could be done by my steel
supplier. I now have (32) 1/4"x2"x34" bars that each need six 90
degree bends (insert loud groan). Since I'm doing this in my home
shop, I plan to heat the bar at the bend spot to cherry red with a
MAPP gas torch. I'll then quickly clamp the bar in my (large) bench
vise and (hopefully) complete the bend using a sledge hammer.
My question concerns temper. These parts are grossly
over-designed for aesthetics, but I'd still like them as strong as
possible. Will it do any good to quickly quench the bar in water
after making each bend? I'd imagine that if I just let the bar cool
on it's own, it will end up fairly soft. The steel is nothing
special, just plain structural steel (probably A36) from the local
yard. I don't want to get too fancy here, but if it won't hurt
anything quenching in water seems easy enough to do. As I mentioned
in my original post, I plan to finish these parts by planishing them
with a ball peen hammer and then following up with some sort of rust
resistant finish.

Thanks,

Richard Johnson
Camano Island, WA