Josiah Peters

You photographs look like renders from 3D software! At first I was thinking, "that can't be real" and then I went over to your Facebook page and saw you holding it. Great job on the photos, my only suggestion would be to throw something in there that makes it look less fake. (That's a compliment because all your angles on that thing are so straight!) Awesome job.

Great to find someone within a few hours of me. Once I get a shop built and a permanent setup I'll let you know. Maybe you can pound some iron with me when you're this way. Thanks Nobody, I have a feeling my dog knows she's cool. She at least knows she's cute and sweet!

I'm very blessed and grateful he's willing to teach me. It's a night and day difference between his teaching me in a properly equipped shop versus me trying to figure it out alone with minimal equipment and YouTube and written instruction alone. I am very happy I spent the time watching videos and reading before he started teaching me though. I already have some understanding of the concepts and terms that he's showing me. I'm sure that helps us keep the pace up. You're right, as nice as it looks compared to other things we have made, its very much a practice piece. The fact that we made four different scroll ends speaks to the skill of my mentor. And I don't feel rushed or pushed in a negative way. He knows the next step I need to take to learn something new and seems to know just the right amount to challenge me each week. Do you think you could dig that link up again? I'd like to check it out. Baxter sure is a cute little guy! Here is Guinness the dog on the lookout for squirrels. And here she is just before a local run with your dog race:

Thanks, but credit goes to my instructor for pushing me so quickly and having well planned out lessons for me to do. He already had jigs for the scrolls so it was just a matter of me bending along the jigs. So its definitely nicer looking than if I had tried to freehand it or using jigs I made myself. I'm truely blessed to be able to learn from someone like him! Neil, I joined the blacksmith.org forum a while back but I find it harder to keep up with over iforgeiron.com. I'll have to look into officially joining them because I'm definitely enjoying forging and I'm sure I'll be doing it as a hobby for a long time. I will definitely have to try and fit the conference in my schedule! I remember seeing that on blacksmith.org but I had forgotten when it was thanks for the reminder.

I've made a few posts since I originally created my account, but I wanted to officially introduce myself. My name is Josiah Peters, I mostly go by Joey and I live in Boise, Idaho with my wife, dog and two cats. By trade I'm a software developer and I've always had a great joy for making things. I was inspired to get into blacksmithing while learning about timber framing by watching a video I saw by

I found the english version if anyone wants to know what they're saying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scdb18Mp4ac

Which book is that? I'll be interested in picking that up.

Brian, I just checked out their website and it looks like they've got some great product offerings and great prices. Now that I've looked a second time it looks like Ryerson has a location in Boise and I'll be giving them a call or making a trip over there. David, Thanks for the advice. I imagine as I work my way up to this goal of creating a hammer from scratch it would make a lot of sense to try using some of the tooling I will have to build on an existing hammer head like a small 4 lbs sledge or something. I am very excited to learn. I am a software developer by trade and I really enjoy making things. I've been itching to make physical things instead of only digital items and I think blacksmithing will provide me that outlet. Ultimately my goal is to be proficient enough that I can make tools if I need them. FireyFurnace, I'm glad you pointed out there are no hollow car axles. I will definitely see if I can get my hands on one. One of my old neighbors works at a junkyard / scrap yard and I will be giving him a call. I also need to get a hold of some coil springs so I can work on making chisels, splitters and drifters. Francis, Thanks for linking this! The chart about weights is great and I really appreciate the part in the article about heat treating the hammer. Quick question, is my formatting of answering multiple replies in one post confusing? Should I break it up into one post per answer or does this work okay?

Brian, Thank you for listing your dimensions! I do hope that I can fit taking a class from you into my schedule sometime in the next year. I really appreciate all your videos on YouTube and the posts you make here. David, I couldn't agree more. After lurking here for a few months I know how highly regarded Brian is and my glimpse into his teaching style through his YouTube videos makes me excited to take a class from him. Which I do intend to do. I was actually trying to schedule something over the holiday season because my in-laws live about 3 1/2 hours from his place. Unfortunately my plans fell apart and I will have to wait until the next time we are down there to schedule something. That may not be until late summer and fall, so until then I will have to try and glean as much information and advice from these forums and YouTube. FireyFurnace, I live in Boise, Idaho. I just finally got my account accepted for the NorthWest Blacksmith Association forums so I will hopefully be able to link up with some people around here. As I mentioned earlier in this reply, my wife is from the south and I look forward to our next trip down there to visit her family, hopefully I will be able to schedule a class then. Unfortunately that may be more than six months away. I've been trying to build a mental inventory of the tools that I will need to make before I can attempt to make a hammer so thank you for including specific names for some of those tools. I know I will gain valuable experience in creating these tools for this process so I look forward to that. I will take a closer look at car axles. I had written them off when a friend of mine may have falsely suggested that they were not solid but had a grease channel, though he may have been referring to tractor axles. This online metal calculator is fantastic! Thanks for linking this, I probably could have avoided posting this question had I known about this because I would have found that a 3" diameter 5" length hammer would be almost 10 lbs! bigfootnampa I was making a bad assumption of the size of stock Brian and others used based off the pictures. Unfortunately there was no scale on them so I made my best guess. I appreciate you correcting me as it's going to save me a lot of hardship trying to forge a piece of stock that big. Everyone else, I really appreciate your input, especially for my first post. While I know that making a hammer is something I am not capable of right now. I am setting that as my goal. I look forward to learning and exploring through creating all of the different tools I will need to forge a hammer. And until I can take a class from Brian I will have to "Learn by doing" for now.

I'm new to blacksmithing and I have been doing as much research by reading books, this forum, watching youtube, and gleaning any other information I can for the past four or five months. I've recently built my forge and I'm currently working on a pair of tongs. I've been watching Brian Brazeal's videos on YouTube and I've been reading up posts here on his rounding hammer. Right now I've got a blacksmith hammer with a flat face and a cross pien on the other side. I would love to try his style of rounding hammer out. Obviously making a hammer is a big step for someone new to blacksmithing to undertake. And I'm not planning on attempting the hammer for at lease few months, but I'm trying to get the materials sorted so I can budget for them. With that out of the way, I've found some 3" round stock on McMaster Carr for what seems like a decent price. I've read that Brian uses 1045 or 4140 alloy steel. My question is, how long of stock would I need to make a Brazeal Style rounding hammer? They have 3" and 6" lengths and larger increments by 6": 1045 - 3" diameter round stock 3" diameter 3" length is $20.86 3" diameter 6" length is $48.48 4140 - 3" diameter round stock 3" length is $28.67 6" length is $48.48 What length of round stock would I need? From some of the pictures I've seen of the process of making those hammers it looks like 4"-5" If I needed to go with at least a 6" piece of stock is it practical to use a hot cut on a piece that large? I guess if the blanks are 4"-5" in size I could always buy a 12" or larger piece of stock and use it for multiple hammers. In lurking around here I know some of the answers are going to be to take a class from Brian, which I would love to do and tried to work out over the holidays but my scheduling and situation didn't work out. So until I can get that squared away I'll have to try and do it on my own. I still intend on taking a class from him in the future as he is highly regarded. Thanks for taking the time to look at this, I apologize if this has already been answered but I did not come across it in my searches.