newsmth

it wasn't half circles... the pattern on the face of the hammer is a spiral pattern, like they coiled wire on it with the end point in the middle of the face. that was the pattern that was being left in the metal. i had the half cirlce problem at first, but i fixed that pretty quick.

dunno but try reposting, cuz i also have some old files and probably wanna know what you wanna know, lol

so over my past break off from grad school i threw together a forge and got some materials to start teaching myself the basics of blacksmtihing. i started off by just heating some rebar and beating the crap outta it until i was ready to actually try something. what i've noticed is that the face of my cross peen is leaving a pattern on the metal due to the way its made. would i be able to take a grinder to it and shape it to remove that pattern or do i need to anneal the face before hand?

agreed... it would be nice to have a quick reference like this available

thanks for the advice chris... yeah i def. had some scale problems. i don't have a wire brush yet (going buy some supplies today), and i'm using a chunk of railroad rail for my anvil, which happens to be a little dented where my grandfather used it, so there was a lot of scale that was built up on it. i dunno if i'll polish it or not, cuz i know that rebar is too low carbon to really make a great knife. this was just an attempt to get a shape without grinding, and good practice with learning how the metal behaves when heated. thanks for the kind words!

i built myself a temporary forge while i'm waiting on a more permanent one to be finished, and i started doing some work on it... today i attempted to shape a knife. i just hammered out a piece of scrap rebar i had laying around... hopefully some prettier things are soon to come!

wow... very nice...

wow... haha, maybe i need to read a little more. i actually started reading the stuff on iforgeiron.com and made it through some of the forge building stuff. i'm gonna push back the knife idea until he graduates from boot camp, which should give me til may. i won't lie, i'm extremely excited to get started... i've been telling people to get me coal for christmas thanks for all the advice!

Hi everyone! So here's the deal... i'm pretty much brand new to any type of smithing (although i did dabble a little while i was bored in high school). I am going to build my own forge next week using some random parts from around the junkyard and start in practicing. I could really use any and all tips you have for a newbie such as myself. but specifically, i would like to forge a decent (not being too optimistic) high carbon (something like 1060 and up) knife for my best friend for christmas. i have been reading a LOT of material, but anything you all could tell me would be beyond helpful. thanks in advance! patrick