blafen

a sudden bolt of inspiration, a shop vac tire rim and some clay, was my first forge and my first anvil was a chunk of ibeam from the mirage hotel, i have since gone propane and have 200 pound vulcan.

"Usually these are about 1" square stock and about 4-5 feet long. But this thing was 2 inches by 2 inches square, a full 6 feet long, and weighed most of 50 pounds." dude thats an o'o bar , they follow me home all the time :)

hey yall i havent been in in a while my shops been out of commision for a while and im working on getting a computer, but any you gotta hear this my friend abe has a bad tooth right and hes in major pain but he needs tires for his truck so he comes up to my house instead of the dentist and convinces me to help him to pull his tooth out (i jokingly offered the use of tongs but he declined) and so anyway hes trying to loosen the tooth before we pull it and he says " man if only i could bang on it with something" and i say jokingly "what like an iceskate and a rock" and he says yeah dude just like that so i go and get him a pin punch and hammer and he sets against the painful tooth and asks me to whack i with a hammer so i did and it whent "tink" and so i tried again "tink" and it doesnt move so finally he hands my dad a pair of pliers and asks him to pull it out and so we open his mouth and shine a light on the tooth only to notice that the pain is being caused by the two teeth behind it (they had been pulled out and the roots where left in the gums" and so i apoligized for hitting his tooth with a ball pein hammer and advized him not to go to a blacksmith for his dental work. :)

leaf springs are usually 5160 and not very good for a tool that cuts steel it would work but would have to be resharpened often causing you a lot of work in sharpening and using a blunter tool than you need, i would use an old file, or even a chisel might work if forged flat fisrt.

the other day my dad was terlling me about this beach on a different island than we is on where the military dumped a bunch of ships supposedly starting in WWII and i was wondering if their might be any particularly unique steels in ships of that era that would warrent a flight over to that beach

a solid lump of Koa wood 6 inches by 10 and built up around that with 2x4's thing is i only had a hand saw to cut the koa wood lump 3 times.

thanks H actually while grinding i did notice that the sparks seemed different than anything else i have ground but i didnt notice the layers until recently. ill have to go ask for some more of these spikes :)

5 bucks?!?!?! what! you majorly lucked out, my 200 pound vulcan was $500 bucks, xxxx. ill give ya $50 for it. lol.

yeah tell me about it, i dont have a computer so i just take pictures with my phone and e-mail them to myself and then when i get to school i post the pics. i will post bigger pictures after the rough grinding and all that.

ok a while back my dads boss was digging up his yard and found all sorts of interesting stuff from when a sugar cane railroad ran though our town (his house was actually the turnaround) and he gave me some RR spikes and a car axle, well i forged the spikes into knives and just recently i decided to sand them on my new belt sander and i noticed some lines in the steel so i sanded it to 400 grit and etched it and saw a bunch of layers and thin black lines that look like slag inclusions in steel, and i was wondering if these could be wrought iron or if it is just from being buried for over 50 years. the railroad i believe was built in the 1910's or earlier. also the car axle doesnt show any of these lines and was presumably buried at around the same time. if these arent wrought then what caused the patterns and lines.

i got a lawnmower blade from my shop teacher and made it into a knife it hardened very well and is quite tough.

how did you achieve that emblem on the left side of the blade in the fisrt foto? is that in the pattern or selectively etched?

i once tried this on a hawk that unwelded on me i just drilled severeal holes in a fancy pattern adn riveted together the first time i threw it it went past tits target and though a window :(

very nice little knive apprenticeman are going to put a handle on the little one on the right maybe a T handle like a push dagger or something regardless they are quite nice

here is another foto with a dvd in it for scale also that is me in the first pic.

the other day this guy mike asked me to make him a machete from leafspring so i did here it is specs 1/4 in thick 17in blade 22 in overall and very heavy not yet completed either. hope to get more pics soon sorry for small picture size i had to use my camera phone

i made mine from a section of koa (super hard hawaiian wood) about 6inches by 10 and built it up with 2x4s works great but burns when i drop hot stuff on it

you might be able to heat the 1/8th in rod but not the 1/4 in and it would take a long time to get them hot enough. unless you built a single refractory brick forge just a refractory brick with a tube into which you place your steel and another smaller hole to put the torch into i have made a forg like this and used it to heat 1/2 rebar to orange heat with a propane torch. and for higher temps/faster heats try mapp gas.

i made my mom a one o them triangle bell deals and some plant hangers both easy to make

if you dont want smoke and cant afford a gas forge try charcoal it gives off little to no smoke gets super hot and is great for welding but it burns real quick. i have made a charcoal forge with a hole in the ground and a cardboard box belows