I have bent a tine ( new word for me) on my garden fork.
Some people say don’t heat it, just straighten it with a long pole. Others say no, that just weakens it, heat then bend. Others again say heat but it has to be right temp but cooled quickly in cold water.
What say the Massive?
Useful Scrabble word that. Which is the actual bent one? They all look a bit bent, but it still looks usable. All your solutions sound a bit of a faff, so I’d be inclined to soldier on. I’ll ask the Head Gardener when she emerges from her office though.
The picture looks a bit blur to me – is there a bit of fog on it ?
Arf!
Not sure, but maybe do it while streaming music:
“My call: Bend tine spotty time”
Wow! That calibre of punmanship this early in the morning..
👏 👏 👏
It is 40 years since I did my CSE metalwork (Grade 1, I’ll have you know) but the one thing I remember is the quicker you cool hot metal, the more brittle it becomes.
“Quenching” is the technical term. It produces a nice shiny finish but makes the metal brittle, and I don’t think you want those tines to snap. Air-coooling (“Normalisation”) is your best bet, the slower it cools the stronger it will be.
Top tip: clean the fork first with water & washing up liquid, then rinse. Any dirt will embed itself when heated, and you don’t want impurities – they will become weak points.
Also, how are you going to heat it? Carbon steel needs to be about 540 C to bend, and Stainless steel even hotter (820 C). A blow torch probably won’t get it hot enough.
I am very dull.
Doesn’t everybody have a blast furnace on their property?
In one of those hilarious pre-HASAW incidents, I burned off my eyebrows, eyelashes and much of my fringe, when the school gas-powered brazing hearth refused to light. Until it did, and generated a small fireball.
Sadly, it was pre-camcorder, so I missed out on 250 quid.
I would just carry on using it as it is or recycle it if possible and buy a new one.
Easy, bend the other 3 to match. If anyone queries it, say it’s a sign of the tines.
👏🏻👏🏻
I’m trying to shoehorn in a ‘fork on the tine’ joke without success.
As used on Linda’s farm?
Push the tine side against a gates head.
Look, I’ve got a bad back. That’s the best you’ll get from me.
Definitely applausable response
Where’s Forks Geordie when you need him?
I’d have used the wall’s end to sort out a long bent ‘un, or maybe just get a new biggun.
Fantastically done there!
Mind careful using a blade on that repair. You don’t want a graze monument.
I’d be inclined to leave well alone, as the steel? used to make the business end might have been treated in some way. Any blacksmiths your way you could ask?
We have two Spear and Jackson forks and one spade, and they are currently next to each other in the shed. We don’t have a rain gauge.
Ooh is it a No 3?
One of the forks and the spade are 1980s vintage. The handles creak a bit sometimes, but the metalwork is true. The other fork is possibly mid-1950s, and is a ‘border’ fork, about 2/3rds the size of the other.
I suspect none of them are No.3s.
As Monsieur Fenton says, you’re not going to be able to heat it to forge temperature at home.
A slight corrective bend, cold, is unlikely to weaken the metal but is going to be tricky.
Easiest is to slip a strong metal tube of some sort over the part of the tine that you want to correct and apply controlled force. The tube must be long enough for the principle of levers to apply and strong enough or sufficiently supported not to be the thing that is bent or snapped when force is applied. A tube buried in the ground would possibly work.
Either the fork or the tube needs to be clamped somehow so that it cannot move while you are applying the leverage force.
It will be very easy to bend the tine more than you actually want to once you start and hard to judge while you are doing it. Repeated correction of an over/under bend WILL weaken the metal.
The bend doesn’t look all that severe from your photo. If the fork was mine I’d be inclined to leave it like that.
Thank you for all your input, irrespective of its merit.
Leaving as-is is unacceptable. The photos clearly show 3 tines curved forward as they should and one straight up as it shouldn’t. As any fule kno, using the fork in its current state is a disaster due to the divergent angles. The errant tine was far less errant before I persisted using it after the initial bend.
Since my post I have consulted with a a proper blacksmith, forge , big hammers, leather apron – the whole kit. He said just bend the fucker, it got bent, it will bend back. I queried possible further weakness. He says he can retemper ( unlike tine, probably not a word) the tine in 10 minutes. Just heat it up ( presumably hotter than holding it over the BBQ) and then errr do something.
I’ll report back.
Bend the fucker back was going to be my suggestion. It’s a tool for the garden.
The issue was and is – will that weaken it further?
There is an argument that it was already too weak. Bend it back and see how you go with it. If it goes again you may need to buy a more robust fork. How did you bend it in the first place?
Possibly by fending off a snake/shark/crocodile/spider or all four but more likely by leaning on it while drinking a beer.
He reports below that he was rooting hookers. Something like that, anyway.
Combination of my abundant Aussie masculinity , the leverage of the long handle, the unlucky tine being on the outside and hooking the aforementioned root. I dont think strength of the tine is in doubt otherwise I’d have expected others to bend as well. Tine after tine as it were.
Buy a new one you cheap git. 😘
Wasnt that expensive $A 57 and a heavy duty. Farmer type fork. I might even buy another one in the interim til I see the blacksmith.
The long handle is the thing – leverage is great for the sod turning but if you hook a root ( Moose !) you end up where I am now.
Where is that confounded Moose?
This thread has reminded of Tools You Can Trust for some reason. I’ve just listened to this and I don’t like to suffer alone.
I am seeing headlines about a weedy Australian music nerd tragically impaled on his garden fork as he struggled to bend the tines back. If I could turn back tines.
Give it a go, you might find that tine is on your side.
Whatever Junior decides, I think it is a tine for action.
Junior is in a different tine zone as well. That could complicate things.
Isn’t that spelt tinny zone?
Strewth mate. I think you’re right.
You calling Junior weedy? Just wait till he gets up!
I’m up! Weedy? Weedy asthmatic is the usual descriptor thank you very much.
As long as he’s not in budgie smugglers, he’s prone to posting photos.
Nice work Didds
Can you remove the business end of the fork from the shaft?
If so, heat it to the beginning of red heat, bend it straight/aligned again using appropriate tools (hammer and anvil, or easier something like a length of scaffold tube you can use to lever it back in line) then there are two ways you can temper it to relieve internal stresses; ideally bung the whole thing once hot and straightened into your kitchen oven at max heat (hopefully >200C) for a couple of hours, before switching the oven off and letting everything return to normal temp. Once cooled, re-attach to the handle, job done.
Failing permission being given to use the domestic oven for this eminently practical, perfectly understandable everyday purpose, from red heat shove it deep into a bucket of dry sand and leave it there for long enough to cool right down very slowly.
If the business end can’t be parted from the shaft, use the sand option – cooling slowly from its bendable heated state is the thing you want to achieve
Whatever you do don’t get it red hot and straight then plunge it into water – that’s called hardening – and the bloody thing will likely just snap the first time you use it in anger.
Some of the suggestions have reminded me of a couple of conversations that I had a long time ago with someone I worked with who, scarily, was our UI solutions designer at the time:
The first revolved around the fact we both had housecats. She suggested I followed her example regarding the litter tray. This involved buying an old sideboard, largely hollowing it out but leaving a shelf for the litter tray, fitting a sensor activated drop down ramp for the cat to walk up into the sideboard and wiring it up (the sideboard not the cat) to the mains so that a lightbulb could be fitted to enable the cat to see what it was doing.
The second related to the then relatively new concept of supermarket deliveries to your house and what she was planning to do. This involved importing from the USA a kind of chest chiller that had a combination lock. Installing it in the front garden, connecting it to the mains, and then on each order giving them the combination number and instructions to put the shopping in the chiller unit. It went a bit quiet when I suggested just picking a delivery time when you knew you’d be in.
She left soon after without ever completing a single design document, which was probably a good thing.
I can see some merit in the chiller proposal , the sideboard is next ievel odd.
A hero for our changing tines:
Breaking news, correction bending news. Just been to the blacksmith for some rectification.
Contrary to your advice @Vulpes-Vulpes he just whacked the red hot fork in a bucket of water, confident it’d be right.
I have added a couple of shots of his workshop. Would fit in an episode of Peaky Blinders.
A test till awaits.
That’s forking great news.
Party tine !
Those pics were a treat this morning, Junior – thanks for posting them!
Can he handle it?
He’s dug you out of a hole there.