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Hi Gentlemen! Need your help and input. Just bought a really nice M1905 bayonet manufactured by Springfield in 1919. Its in fantastic shape but...... about the first 1/4" of the tip has a slight cant - perhaps 5 degrees or so. My first thought was to strike it with a hard plastic mallet on a wood surface. And then I decided to draw on the collective wisdom of this group as to the best plan of action, other than leaving it alone. Yours thoughts? Best regards, H.T. Rea, Katy, Texas
I might be tempted to use hard wood and bend it back the way it was bent in the first place, drive it in and bend it back. You may not get it the first time, but it'll work. I've done them before.
I was thinking the same thing Jim...
Don't use anything realy hard, and definitely not metal, heat, etc, or it will mar the finish for sure in some way... You can direct the force directly to the spot to the bend and bend it back into place by using wood to place onto the little bend on the end and 'tap' it into place without any damage.. You could never use a plastic hammer, etc to hit the exact spot anyway, and plastic hammers are not hard enough to bend the hard tempered blades anyway.
If it were mine, I'd get a wide(ish) dowel from Home Depot, Lowes, etc, for a couple of bucks. They come in stalks about three feet long and the wood is hard and dense (Harder than a soft 2X4).
(More info) - A few years ago I walked into a Home Depot and two different kids working there told me they didn't have "dowels" or "Wooden dowel pins".... (They didn't know) They have them... I walked around both Home Depot and Lowe's and found the dowel stalks shoved into little slots in the back of both stores, and nobody working there knew they even had them in the stores.) :ugh:
Cut the stalk off to a manageable length to use it with a hammer and tap on the bend in the blade. I have a wooden workbench in my little shop, and if I had your blade here I'd use the bench as a backstop to tap against against it. (Possibly have to BEAT with a larger hammer).
As Jim said, take your time and go slowly. (It's easier to bend that to 'unbend' so go slowly) The bent tip should go back, or at least make it much less noticeable.
~ Harlan
For this kind of work, it really is worthwhile getting hold of a copper-headed hammer. They deliver a heavy but "dead" blow - i.e. no bounce - and will not mar the surface of steel. I got mine for peanuts from a boot sale, and it has a recess at one end to take a roll of hard hide for working brass or copper sheet metal.
The trouble with whacking the metal is that it is not easy to get the right force in the right spot. Personally, I would press the bend out in a bench vice, using 3 brass offcuts as backing pieces to get the "unbend" positioned precisely right. A setup rather like a pipe-bending jig, in fact. As you write that the bend is only 1/4" from the tip, hardwood dowels will probably not be hard enough for the force that will be required. Because the blade has a certain amount of spring, you need to apply a tiny amount of "overbend", so that when the vice jaws are slackened off the blade springs back to be as perfect as you need it.
This "overbend" is almost impossible to achieve by simply hammering the metal, unless you are such a skilled metalworker that you would not need any advice from the forum!
With care and a straight edge to test the result as you go, you should be able to get the blade straight to better than 1/100" - maybe as good as 0.005" - anyway, so good that you cannot see the bend with the naked eye.
Gentlemen: Thanks so much for your input as to how to best straitening the tip on my bayonet. Using a variety of the suggestions, I ended up using a brass hammer to fix the tip. I really liked the vise idea but the bend was too close to the tip. Thanks again for your timely and expert advise. Best regards, H.T. Rea, Katy, Texas