Jump to content
I Forge Iron

Nathan Hall

Members
  • Posts

    101
  • Joined

  • Last visited

1 Follower

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Southern Indiana
  • Interests
    Blacksmithing, welding, metal fabrication

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. So right on the dog, cant imagine not having one. His worst habbit is drinking out of quench tanks lol, plenty of iron in his diet I guess. I worry about his ears sometimes, but I have noticed that he seems to know what is too much and if it gets too loud he will go lay outside.
  2. Ha Ha i suspect you are right as I just had to try it out myself and it works you out thats for sure, but it does make a nice circle. Great advice for smaller rings, I have been pondering a way to do that with out modifying it. How do you keep the pipe or diameter piece from rolling out? I was kicking around the idea of making a roller that sit in saddles I could just sit on the frame, and clamp in place, any thaughts on that?
  3. I have never made a tool other than some pokers out of rebar, I mainly just used it to practice on, when I first started I would square it, round it again, taper it out, practice small scroll work. Try to make it flat and strait, practice fullering, determined what a croos-pein was for, and how much difference it makes, etc. Just basically got used to hammering and controlling fire with it, if you can get different diameter pieces all the better, but you will notice that sometimes it will bend nice, or move nice, and sometimes not, its pretty random. Ecspecially the old fence post, they seem to be a lot more random in quality than other sources. Tongs are a great first project, may I recommecd the "Easy Tongs" for your first, I beleive their is a blue print on here for them, they are in my opinion a very great starting tool. ( I still make and use them quite often) Large hardware stores or farm supply places have small metal at not break the bank prices if you want to just get a few small bits to start on. I think that a trip to TSC and twenty bucks will get you two sets of "easy tongs" made from new material.......... I say think because I havent purchased steel from them in a few months and prices change. If the vice you are talking about is a good sized well made vice, the flat on the back will service, caution here though, I have heard of folks breaking their vices by doing this. I have an eight inch Wilton, that has had the crap beat out of it though and it has not failed yet. I personally started on same thing, then few days later a piece of rail road rail, then a few months later an actuall anvil............. its pretty neat the difference between those three. Incredible what mass will do for you You dont need much to get started man, just the want to. Welcome to the most addictive hobby ever LOL!!!!!!!
  4. Of the old used tool bin, "Allan Wrenches" or " Hex Keys" what ever you want to call them are pretty much the most usefull in my humble opinion, they generally dont have any coating other than maybe a tool black, and they make great punches, chisels, scribes, etc.... So although I never do anything with broken sockets, open end wrenches and stuff of that nature, I do save every hex key that I come across. When I fisrt started out working in machine shops, I asked a guy that was teaching me to run a surface grinder if I needed to wear any type of breathing protection while grinding and he told me "If it dont rust, dont trust" .............. I am no doctor, and cant tell you all the different bad things that come from all the different alloys out there, but the "If it don't rust, don't trust" moto seems to be a vary good thing to go by in my book. The safety section on this forum has a lot of very great information in regard to these kind of things. I am betting that the reason you asked this was because of low cost readily available metal to get a start, and that seems to be a very common question and a good one I think. Your location has a lot to do with things, but these things worked well for me and may for you too if you are in right area. I live in farm country and it is not very difficult at all to stop in at any rural yard sale and buy all of the old hammers, axe heads, and various other hand tools for next to nothing, offer a decent price for all the metal they have and see what happens, that has worked great for me. Most times they will ask why, and when I tell them what I am doing a lot of times they will have something else I may be interested in as well. I have a very large selection of good old junk from doing just that. Tell everyone you know that you are looking for metal to practice on, rebar fence post for electric fences are very cheap, and very easy to get, I like a lot of guys use them for temporarily sectioning off pasture and often they will get bent or damaged and once bent trashed most of the time, rebar is not great, but a free piece of 5/16 inch three feet long is good practice material. Rail Road spikes are very easy to come by in some areas, and they are great too have for a lot of reasons. A junk yard trip is always good fun, and a great start. I know a few guys that regulary scrap cars for a bit of spending money, and I have traded quite a few spike knives for coil springs and leaf springs. I am still fairly new to smithing, and learn a lot every day, but their are a few items that are really easy to make and everyone seems to want, and when I first started out if someone asked me to make them something that I knew I could make, I would often tell them sure if they would bring enough material to me to make two......... I dont do this anymore, but it built me up a fairly decent stash of metal I could use pretty quick. Just a few ideas that may help you get started on the cheap.
  5. Any chunk of steel, preferrably big, a very common one is Rail Road rail. Just head to a scrap yard and look for something. Ideally you want something fairly heavy with good mass, avoid cast iron anvils like the ones they sale at harbor freight....................... Rocks have been used, I am not recomending a rock, I was just saying that a starter " Anvil " something to get you going on the low budget is one of those things that seems to be over thaught often. Your best bet is to probably head to a scrap yard. If you share your location that may help. A lot of guys on here know some really great sources of such things local to them. You may be pretty close to someone willing to help out with some of these
  6. Thats good to hear I think hand crank wont be too hard to come up with, I am now in a pretty heated custoday battle over it because my wife thinks it was custom made for flower beds lol
  7. Thank you, we sure do love the big guy
  8. This was given to me by a guy in Pennsylvania that beleived it was used to roll rims for wagion wheels, I think the wheels on the end are not part of the roller but maybe wheels for an old belt drive system, have not been able to find any markings on it yet, I may have to take it off the stand and look on bottom. I do think it is missing some pieces mainly a handle or crank to drive it with. Anyone ever seen one similiar to this?
  9. I did not take any offense to the words of caution at all, and they will be well heeded indeed, I was just simply stating that there does have to come a time when you do it, if you do indeed intend to ever do it at all. I have not been smithing for that long, just a couple of years, but that is plenty long enough to realize the difficulty in doing what some of you guys do so well. There is absolutely never anything wrong with caution in anything one decides to do, but there is also a time when you do have to take that next step, so no jumping right into the deep end is not advisable, but you cant stay in the shallow end your whole life either............ I really think we are all saying the same thing just different ways of saying it............. I do hope I did not offend anyone, or seem offended myself, that was never my intentions at all, just sharing my thaughts on a subject, that really could be applied to not just sword making, but a lot of other things in life as well.
  10. I am sure that anyone that has ever worked in a machine shop can relate to that very well Steve, I know I can, I am constantly being asked to make this part or that part, which if the people asking realized how much goes into some of these request I would hope they wouldnt even ask. Point well taken, and someone that has never even swung a hammer at hot steel is most likely I waste of your time and effort in regards to making a sword, and another thing that I have noticed in regards to this forum and im sure many others is a lot of people seem to ask a question, with out reading much first......... its rare to see a question posted in bladesmithing or heat treating that has not been discussed in detail in other threads, I am certain that must get very frustrating to you guys that do have so much knowledge on the subjects. But does there not come a time for a guy that is mostly self taught, learning by trial and error and what he can read to just go for it? After all you cant learn to make a good blade with out making a blade. Or do you feel like if someone has got to the point that they feel they are ready then they need to find someone that is experienced and start into it under their wing? I am not trying to be argumentive in anyway here, I am just curious as to what someone that has been there and done that feels on the subject, I have made knives, and i have made other tools involving the processes in heat treating, I want to try something more complicated because im sure that will make me better, I am willing to except that I may fail in my attempt ( it sure wouldnt be the first time for that ) so is there a safe way for someone like me to proceed in your opinion?
  11. You are correct Francis, and I kinda missed name this thread it was my feeble attempt at naming one well, but what I was getting at was starting a discussion on handles, because they are an often over looked thing when starting out I think. Son_of_Bluegrass, I agree a thicker handle is best for me too for the same reason, and I learned quick that is a bad thing. As far as materials go, I havent tried many besides hickory, but I suspect that like you mentioned anything that resist splitting would work, now I have a question in regards to that as well................ turning frame from splitting in the sense of a handle and to splitting in the sense of firewood........... most woods that seam to be used in handle making actualy split fairly easy with the grain like if you were splitting them for fire wood I suspect this is do to the long strait grain that is desirable in handle material also makes wood easy to split for the stove.......... so with that in mind I would think that anywood that splits fairly easy in the manner one wood split for the fire would be a candidate for handles, some that come to mind are hickory, oak, walnut, and cherry........... is my reasoning way off base here or what do you think?
  12. Glad you weighed in on this Thomas I was really hoping you would I feel i am going to have to make another library trip on this one yet again because their are so so many misinforming bits of writing on the web what general time period was bronze replaced by iron, I get the feeling from my brief bit of digging that it was a slower cross over and varied greatly from region to region, can you recomend any books on this, the few I have at home talk of the progression but rarely give time frames, thank you by the way for the recomendations on the books in referrence to the looks of medeival smithies. The more correct information I get on blacksmithing, the more I start to see a lot of errors in places that you would really not expect to see errors, for example the few documentaries I have been able to find on any subject close to blacksmithing ( usually bladesmithing) very often seem to have a lot of mistakes and vastly disagree with even themselves. I think a lot of this probaly comes from them getting much from interviews with guys that beleive they are right when they are telling what they have always been told or heard and very often that seems to be wrong. It takes quite a bit of work to get to accurate sources of information on these topics, never dreamed in this age of computers I would end up back at an actuall library so much.
  13. I have no idea if this would work in your application, but we always wrapped tool steels like a2 or d2 in a stainlesss foil before heat treating, basically creating an air tite container for each piece may help with need to control air so much, or it may not I am no expert. The thermal mass cool down effect is readily visible in mine, I have ceramic fiber all the way around, with a brick work shelf the bricks dont get to temp quite so quick, but they glow a long time after she is shut off, the IC10 coating really helped with evening the heat out too. The biggest complaint I have is width. My next one will be wider for sure, I am very limited on scroll work due to the size and shape. So I definately would like something bigger eventually, so Im thinking wide and not so tall chamber would be better than my basically round one.
  14. Cool, thanks for sharing I really like the deep belly in the last one you posted
  15. file size is to large is the issue with pic, but if your on facebook you can get to my facebook threw here and I have pics of it on there if you wanna take a look at it
×
×
  • Create New...