jason0012

I feel your pain on that job! I have worked in many such places. As long as I am treated ok its alright, the moment the boss decides that the employees are ripping him off it all goes to xxxx. A big reason for that is that there is a lot of stress that goes with running a business and more so with having employees. Its still no excuse to abuse those who do the grunt work in the shop. If you are only making $12-15 an hour it shouldn't be too hard to replace that income. You need to bring in about 2-3 times that to make it your take home income. It really depends on what sort of work you are doing and how much it costs you. It is somewhat harrowing relying on your home shop to pay the bills , but after a few years it will change the way you forever view employers and employment.

Unless you are using some mighty special materials your material cost will be next to nothing in knife making. (I work in silver on occasion and very rarely with gold, stones get pretty expensive too) Materials like ivory, pearl, exotic woods, titainium, stealite, ect are kind of expensive bot not enough so to come close to the labor cost involved in making a nice knife. You are willing to work for $10 an hour? Can't recall the last job I worked for that kind of wage, I think it was back in high school! You need to charge enough to pay 1)you, for the time you invest 2) the shop, so you can make the next one 3) then enough to cover the materials 4) anything left will be profit, most of the time there isn't much left for this one , at least in my experience. I see a lot of very fine knives selling online for about 1/5 what I would charge, and I am not well known at all! I am impressed to see hobbiests turning out such nice work but so many are undercutting themselves selling entirely too cheap! I recall when I was turning out a lot of custom knives there were a lot of collectors who tried to convince me that the way to get famous and sell more of my work was to practically give my work away . I have never found such people to be worth doing business with.

Funny, I have never had the least bit of trouble welding 5160 to its self or just about anything else. The one exception was the time I tried welding it up with 440C( that didn't go well) Lots of people will tell you something is impossible without trying it. High chromium steels are touchy about welding, but 5160 just has a little chromium and doesn't seem to have that problem. Remember, lots of old forging texts claim that no steel should ever be forge welded to its self, that it doesn't weld well! When I started in blacksmithing there was a common myth going around that it was impossible to forge weld in a gas forge! It was the first thing I did when I switched to gas! I have welded literally tons of 5160 into damascus, axe edges, and lots of various tools. It welds fairly easy, forges easy (its soft), and heat treats easy, to make a vary durable tool. the heat treat on 5160 gives it quite a nice range of hard/tough properties so it is adaptable to many different types of tools. Oh yeah, unlike 4340 , its really cheap too!

The original rubber was a natural latex. The rubber that came with my hammer may very well have oozed out of a tree in Brazil over 150 yrs ago! They fiddled with the formula quite a lot over the years. The new cushions I have are composed of an ether based urethane(I don't recall the durometer) They are bright blue and the consistancy of "super balls". I don't recall the name of the fellow from Michigan who made them for me, I am sure I have it written down somewhere. He explained quite a lot about the chemistry of rubber and the development of rubber products over the years.

I would also suggest that you forget the "traditional" blacksmith tools only. This sure doesn't sound like a good start. Unless you have an angle I have yet to encounter (in 23 years). The truth is, if you intend to make any kind of living at this, you must either be well established with a museum of some sort, or use modern tools. I doubt there are any professional smiths who operate without power tools. In this field those power tools often hold value fairly well too. Mills, lathes, and grinders are all part of a modern shop, as are plasma cutters, mig welders, drill presses, bandsaws and powerhammers.

I have welded a LOT of bandsaw blade damascus. I have also used quite a lot of files and leaf spring. 5160 makes a fine blade, in damascus will etch a light grey. The file steel will etch a dark grey-almost black. I dont usually weld up anything with mildsteel aside from nickle or stainless. It really detracts from the blades hardness considerably. I have rarely ground the teeth off of files also, only when they are really deep or some special gnarly form like aluminum files or milled files. most surface crud gets burned off in the fire, and anything left gets washed out by the flux(that's what its for) The bandsaw blade was my primary damascus material before I owned a power hammer. I started with an average of 21 layers so triple twice and then double and I have about half the forging in on the piece as I would if starting with 5-7 layers. Welding thin stock is a quick way to get layer count up without working yourself to death. You could also try some shim stock. At work I see spring steel shim stock in .002-.065 thicknesses. (I have never used it but always meant to) The real thin stuff could get a whole bunch of layers in a single weld (50-150). Working by hand I always found about a 3-4 cubic inch billet to be a good starting size(1x1x3-4)

I had a lot of trouble with my 100# with the factory set up like that. It squeeled and squaled a lot, burned through several belts and had terrible pickup. I am used to the controls on a little giant so i set out making it run similar. Going from the little pulley to the big pulley you driven side has a tremendous mechanical disadvantage at starting. The contact area on the little pulley is quite small in comparison to the hammer pulley. I switched from a 3 1/2" pulley to a 14" and get good responsive single blows now. I also don't get the squeeling or burn through the belts. Now this did require redesigning the whole drive system, and of course adding an additional jackshaft. Now on the 100# hammer I have a 16 or 18" drive pully and the 14 was the closest I could find. I would have prefered an 18-24" but hey it works. Flat pulleys seem near impossible to find! Locating a match for a 26" could be problematic especialy 9" wide!

It is awfully easy to bash the chinese hammers for the quality of their castings. How many hammer frames have you cast? I would personally rather have a Nazel/Bradley/Beaudry/Chambersburg and in a 300-500# range. We dont always get what we want though. The Kiss 50 is a good hammer and has customer service which is actually such a foreign concept I can only vaugely grasp its meaning. It is in fact very much a one off custom machine. Therefore it will come with all the pitfalls of other one off or discontinued machines. This isn't really a huge problem as lots of old iron is still running and running well(my own hammer is pushing 110 yrs of pounding steel). The Kiss is a well built machine that runs beautifully as lots of skill and engineering went into its design and construction. The Kiss as well as the KA75, and the Phoenix hammers are real, serious, production machines. All are custom built in small shops. There simply is no big factory in this country producing an off the shelf kind of hammer. The Striker and Anyang both impressed me as being far better machines than the fabricated frame variety that dominated the market through the 80s and 90s. The price of the Kuhn was far beyond reasonable and I found it to be somewhat mechanically lacking. I think the entrance of the chinese machines fills a much needed gap in the available machinery. While I am no fan of the chinese government or the fact that they seem to have suplanted ALL manufacturing worldwide, there really is no alternative to theses air hammers. Nazel never built a 33# hammer. They certainly should have but they didn't. Little giants and other old hammers are getting scarce. newcomers to this field need an alternative. I have learned from my students over the years that not everyone has a desire to understand the intricacies of the tools they use. Many simply want it to run. For them a self contained hammer is the only possible machine. Why worry about the availability of factory service? Short of Sid Sudemier is there any factory service still for domesticly produced hammers? Despite this many still pound away. Perhaps it is that I am used to buying old iron and having to tear down/rebuild everything that the QC on chinese machines doesn't bother me so much.

This discussion degenerated didn't it? I don't think the origin of the hammer was ever in question. john fails to mention the one single domestically produced air hammer he could have purchased. I suspect that if the Kuhn seemed pricey he probably would not have had the room in his budget for a $200000-400000 Chambersberg. That's why there is no more Chambersberg Engineering Co! This is a capitolist country. Everything here is controlled by the almighty$$. Business, government, schools, health care, everything. If a product can be produced cheaper in some communist country and imported here at a huge profit is not that the ultimate capitolist ideal? I see so many people these days spouting mindless coldwar propaganda without considering what exactly they are saying. Have any of you who bash the china hammers shopped at wall mart? If you have your authority to xxxxx about a chinese company that fills a niche market that no American manufacturer has been succesful with in decades is quite suspect! More domestic jobs were affected by the closing of textile mills, steel mills, plastics manufacturers, car parts manufacturers ect, than by the importing of a chinese air hammer! My point about the dissapearance of the striker tool co was more a querry into why they might dissapear after landing a nice fat gov contract. Obviously it is a stretch to call the striker a US made hammer.

I have several old CO2 tanks in the shop that are past their safety date, empty and the supplier that had rented them to me went belly up about ten years ago. I was kind of thinking they would make superb quench tanks with the head cut off. Any reason an old tank wouldn't be good for this?

Dies from the manufacturer? I know not of that of which you speak.... I use 4140. My reason? I came into several tons of the stuff when Naval Ordinance closed! I had some 2375 and some T-15 but mostly its 4140. I gave away the 2375 years back and the 21/2" round T14 just doesn't do anything when I put it under the hammer! 4140 is easy enough to work and pretty commonly available. I do have a friend who buys old drop forging dies aneals them and cuts them up for his hammers. The steel is some special Finkle alloy, expensive stuff but I am not sure its worth the trouble.

After giving some further thought to the question, no blacksmithing is not a "good career". But it is quite worthwhile and if you truly feel inclined twords it, by all means jump right in! It is more than possible to make a living at this. I have sold almost everything I have ever made, so there must be a market. It is simply not an easy way to make a living. But that goes for any career in the arts. Our world would be a far lesser place if there weren't those who dedicated their lives to seemingly futile pursuits. As bad as things have ever gotten with my iron business I have never gone hungry or lost my home, car , ect. I have faced long periods of not being able to buy gas/coal/steel/ect, and long stretches where I had no idea where the next project was coming from. That is part of the adventure! And for every lean time I have had some good booming times too, you just have to find the right project/product.

I am currently reopening my shop for the third time. I am quite the glutton for punishment apparently. In response to the question, yes you can make a living as a metal smith. You could make a far more comfortable living doing just about anything else, but whats the fun in that? The sad truth is that demand for hand wrought metal products is quite limited and most businesses that provide forging services are running on marginal profits. But, they are running and making a profit, so yes you can make a living at this. You won't survive working for another smith though. In my experience most shops pay student wages and little beyond. Mostly this is due to the economics of the business and not necessarily due to smiths just being cheap bastards. I for one am pretty much done with having employees for that reason, not being able to make payroll bothers me more than not hitting a delivery date! I find, at least for myself, that I can't get away with doing this as a hobby, it sucks up too much time and money! So I have little choice but to find a way to make the shop pay for itself.

There was an anvils ring article years and years ago that mentioned a solar forge someone brought to the Dupres Wisconson conference(1984 or 86? I wasn't there) The article mentioned that it could reach welding heat, but only on a sunny day. It was built by someone from sunny climates out west.

The big problem with picking a hammer by brand is that most of us start in business on a shoestring. Given that, few of us have the luxury to buy an absolutely ideal machine right off from the start. How many pro smiths today started with a 25 or 50 little giant? The first machine need not be perfect. Your first hammer has to produce enough to buy the next one( the tool collecting gets into high gear then) These machines are obscure and aren't always available used when one is looking. I would say that it is better to have any hammer than no hammer. If it is a question of the ultimate hammer get a #3-#4 Nazel. Some of us aren't so lucky as to be able to stumble into such machines or have funds available when we do. A 55# Striker is a far cry better than my first hammer or , put another way you could do a lot worse. My personal vote would be that the external powered hammers have greater versatility and would be the more useful hammer. There is a downside to an external powered air hammer, namely they need a big compressor. If you have one already and the price is similar go for the iron kiss. Self contained hammers have their advantages too. The striker will most likely be a plug and play affair while the iron kiss will take some tweaking to get all its parameters set. For those who do not wish to have to learn the machine a self contained hammer is truly ideal. On the other hand, the iron kiss can do things a self contained hammer cant, like clamp, press, and deliver single blows. So there really isn't a simple answer to the question. Both are good machines, both will smash steel, both will make your work easier, and eventually , both will seem far too small. For a first hammer the striker may be the ideal, for a professional the iron kiss may be better. The striker comes with tooling and is ready to go, barring any great malfunction. (self contained hammers are shamefully simple and rarely break down- though when they do it is a major uh-oh) I am sure it would be nice to get some factory support for your machine, but that is something I would not have experienced. I have tried to get assistance with my Bradley from Cortland but always found them less than helpful. Many of us get by with old machines whose manufacturers have gone extinct long ago. Stumbling along with a mysterious mechanical problem while a hot job is cooking in the fire is part of the excitement of being a blacksmith!

I have ( on two occasions) forged 5" square 4140 on my 100# so that 500 can go a lot bigger than that! 5" would be within the normal range for a 500 I think.

What happened to Striker? I heard not too long ago that they had been certified by the Navy as a domestic manufacturer so they could sell to the government. I'm not sure by what stretch of the imagination they could be considered to be of domestic origins but it seems that would bode well for the company.

The case hardened ones have a lot of nickle in them usually and do have some carbon. I have welded them into damascus before and find they gave really good contrast. They are casehardened pretty deep and after being folded a few times are pretty homogenous. I'm not sure I would use a case hardened bearing for a knife by its self though. It seems like Wayne Goddard did a good article on identifying bearing steels a good many years ago. I think the article is in one of his books.

I switched over to propane back in '93. At the time I could get the 100# tanks filled for $30. Now a fill is 3 times that ! I have been considering switching to waste oil but have this small fear of the danger of a grease fire in the shop. My building is kind of small and crowded and the oil forges I have seen run usually seem to sit in a big puddle! I know I have grease and oil puddled around the hammer but they arent exactly near an ignition source. ( I have dropped some big pieces of hot steel into the hole in the Bradley's frame before, that fire wasnt much fun to put out!) How big of a risk is there in running on oil?

There were two articles by Don Hawley back in the 80's in the Anvil's Ring. I have them some where, I will try digging them up tomorrow, perhaps they could be posted here?

When I was 13 I apprenticed under Craig Kaviar. The first hammer I ever used was his 200# Chambersburg. God, it seemed like the biggest machine in the world at the time! I got over my fear of it rather quickly though, seems awfully small now when I visit!

Way cool! I have not heard of home brewed micarta, quite a lot of possibilities with that.

Home made micarta? How is that made?

I think Little Giant dies are a 7* offset(if memory serves- its been a while) I think Kuhn hammers were 5* as well.