sdolcourt

Good evening, hammer dudes. Here are two views of the blacksmith lugs, temporarily attached with double stick tape. My feeling - too long, two chunky, too much metal. I need shorter, narrower, and less metal to keep it in proportion. Opinions? Don't hold back, I need it honest. The wood is 200 year old Canadian sugar maple. Behlen's string instrument lacquer, polished with Meguire's automotive cleaner. Like the figure? It's sexy. Oh, stripes are walnut. Cheers, Seth

Ha ha! Hadn't thought about connecting them like a chain; handy in case of a spontaneous bar fight or animal control situation. I was getting a church key vibe; that was my inspiration for the design, kind of like a combination drum lug / beer bottle opener.

We actually did two different ways. My buddy, whose hands you see in the pictures, followed all the instruction he's received from the blacksmith at the historical park. I merely grabbed a pair of scrolling tongs, and folded over the fingers, then opened the curl back up by knocking the mandrel under the curled fingers. My way was faster, but needed a re-heat and some fussing time to move the fingers back to true. His way took longer with several heating cycles, but looked much more tidy, and the hinge knuckle was better formed to match the curve of the barrel nut. My take away is I'd need a pair of tongs customized for bending over the fingers, ensuring the correct radius was formed. I'd get this job done in mere seconds, once the steel was up to temperature. I see relatively little need for hammer work, unless the body of the drum lug needs to have any twist straighted out. But, man, was that ever fun! Cheers, Seth

Hi, Frosty, Thanks for the welcome and the info! I'll include my locale, but I'm East Bay, SF Bay Area. Attached are close ups of the project. Cheers, Seth

Starting to make the curl. More forming of the "hinge knuckle". A barrel nut will go there, not actually a hinge pin. Sorry the shot is far away, but 7 out of 8 lugs are completed. I'll post a better picture tonight.

So here is the project I worked on this weekend. The forge is my buddy's. Shaped the waist with a grinder. Drilled some stop-holes and cut a channel. Forge is a converted chiminea. The anvil. The bench. Here is a scale of the forge's capacity. My buddy is flaring the tube end to make a candle stick

Hi, Thomas, There's no requirement for hardening or tempering. On a practice run with my buddy, we just quenched hardware store mild steel in water when finished with hammering, and left it at that. Is there a possibility of the lug cracking over time if we just water quench once? The finished size will be between 3-3.5" long. This will fit on a 5.5" tall drum shell. I'm using 1/8" thick steel flat bar; probably could go down to 3/32" thickness, but 1/16" feels too thin. In terms of force - each lug will be attached by two 3/16" dia screws through the body of the lug and through the shell. This is plenty strong to resist the tension forces as the drum head is tightened down. There might be an actual force measurement known in the drum community, but I've not seen one on any of the boards I frequent. When I get home from work, I'll post pictures of the shell and the lug mock up. Cheers, Seth

Hi, all, I'm Seth, as noob as someone can get for blacksmithing. I have an interesting project, which is to hammer some simple hardware out of flat stock, to be used as tension lugs for a stave constructed snare drum. Though I have a buddy who has a forge, big 'ol anvil, and has taken a number of training classes with the blacksmith at the historic park...his availability isn't always there. So, I'll be searching around, looking as stuff, and maybe asking a question or two. The drum lugs aren't very big, maybe 5" starting length and 1" wide, and require little more than for each end to be curled over, like a hinge knuckle. How nice maybe to add in some peening marks for texture. This sounds like a good fit for the brake drum forge, so I'll get cracking on learning what it is. Anyway, that's my gig. Cheers, Seth