SilentBob

Perhaps a combination of nakedanvil’s & brianbrazealblacksmith’s ideas would be the easiest and most productive.

nakedanvil I sure would like to see the dies you’ve made for your ‘whatever you decided to call it’ on it. If you’re waiting for somebody to beg you I’ll do it, Please, Please, Please…. It’s been almost two months from when finished the bottom part and you’re too hard a worker not to have gotten some progress on them. Are you making all the dies you saw at the shop in Sheffield first? So take some pictures, please. Ok that's four begs is that enough? If not, anybody else interested?

Go to Walmart and get a washable, the reuseable type air filter build a frame to hold it and a drain tube to a reservoir. The filter should stop any oil from escaping. I’ve never tried this, but it should work. Test it first, you may have to double it up if the exhaust is too strong

Have you thought about charcoal? It’s not too hard to make if you can get free materials its cheap too. If your interested look around in the forges section or ask in there somebody will know what you need.

If you want a hunk of steel to hammer on go to the scrap yard if they are scraper ‘poor blacksmith’ friendly look around. If you can’t find what you want ask the guys working there they can be real helpful, if you come up empty offer a reward and give them your phone#, they’ll come up with something. It will cost a whole lot less than new steel. If it’s too soft it’ll still last a while, and you can look for something better as you go.

nakedanvil, Em…… well I don’t know you and I’m not sure if I should be the one that points this out to you, but I think you’ve been working too hard lately, you’ve lost a lot of weight! You should take better care of yourself. I agree, system may have been the wrong word, but learning the ways of others may improve yours, well mine anyway. And I admire his simplicity of tools and his results have a refined ruggedness that is pleasing to the eye. So I want to learn more. Thanks Brian for the ‘Slitter Geometry’ lead, it answers many questions. That topic is almost a year old I would have never seen it. I still have 896 more questions but I’ll take it slow, I don’t want to hear you do a W.C. Fields ‘go away boy you bother me’ line. Nakedanvil don’t call that guys tools crappy they look a lot like mine, and my skins kind of thin.

Brian, I’ve never seen your method used or described before, your ‘punch’ looks like the same type used in Hofi / Clark system but not the same technique. Do you drive the slug through from one side into a backing slot of some kind? Or do you back drive the slug as usual? Your post #14 & 18 describing the tools you ‘carry around’ are these just the tools you used to make the hammers or are they the only tools you keep? When needing a ‘special’ tool do you just think of it as part of the expense and process of the project? I want to try your punching technique but first I must get busy and make that style of punch/cutter. Do I need to follow any specific pattern or is it a ‘close enough’ thing?

Brian, I’m fascinated by your few tools and obvious success forging with them. I have a thousand questions, I hope you don’t mind. The first picture looks like it shows the slug from punching with the slot punch, but the picture of your tools looks like the punch is sharpened. Would you show a picture of the punch? It would be hard to drive a flat punch that size through that thick of steel. But the hole looks clean, do you get fewer rags with this method?

Hi, I have access to a lot of lawn mower blades, the local grass is high in silica so it eats blades. I’m guessing stock removal is the method of shaping the blade but what heat treating would you recommend, should I start testing with water or oil?

Brian, Do you slit and drift with a single tool? Or is the lower one, below the drift, of the handled tools the slitter?