Heating And Bending Hooks

[jigmeister]

I printed an old thread posted here about heating/bending hooks a while back . It was pretty detailed explaining about heating then cooling the hooks to remove the temper, then bending into a different shape , and then heating the hook followed by quelching to retemper the steel . It seems to me one could heat the hook only in the area requiring bending and then immediately quelch to re-temper the bent area and omit the middle step .

Any one have experience with hook bending that could explain why this will or won't work.......Jigmeister

[Vodkaman]

Working a hook with heat and returning it to its original state of temper does work, but you will never be able to achieve the factory state of the hook with a blow torch and a beaker of water, but you could probably get acceptably close.

The problem with trying to work on an isolated area, while maintaining the ‘shop bought’ properties of the rest of the hook, is that there is always going to be a transition area between the modified portion and the original. Because of the slow cooling of this transitional portion, it will probably bend easy at this point. This may or may not be acceptable.

If you wish to try the idea, soak a couple of blocks of scrap wood in water, warm and soapy would speed up the process. Clamp the hook between the two pieces of wood. This should prevent the heat getting to the hook bend that you are trying to protect.

Dave

[bassrecord]

I printed an old thread posted here about heating/bending hooks a while back . It was pretty detailed explaining about heating then cooling the hooks to remove the temper, then bending into a different shape , and then heating the hook followed by quelching to retemper the steel . It seems to me one could heat the hook only in the area requiring bending and then immediately quelch to re-temper the bent area and omit the middle step .

Any one have experience with hook bending that could explain why this will or won't work.......Jigmeister

Just a suggestion if you heat/bend/re-temper jig hooks as you described above - please destructive/break test a statistical sample of your hooks before and then after your work. Then you could know with up to 99.9 % accuracy that your work has not deteriorated the original quality of the hooks you used.

And another point that may or not apply. Hooks fail break tests in the eye, in the shank, in the bend, in the point, and if jig, in the jig bend. I saw a jig hook test (10 hooks = non-statistical sample size) that broke in the jig bend at about 15 pounds, as I recall, without lead and about 25 pounds with lead. Not being a jig fishing guy, I thought it was interesting that the lead, or whatever metal it was, strengthened the fish hook. The 10 leaded jig hooks broke in eyes, bends or points - never in the metal covered jig bend. I don't know if this information is useful or whether or not the lead will get in your way when you are heat/bend/re-tempering your hooks.

Good luck and keep us posted.

John