Ed Steinkirchner

very nice indeed! i was down there the last week of june in their teen program, they ask the art teachers for good art students and i got to go. good thing too, because it was my senior year! the class was with richard sheppard. he came down just for two of us! it is a very nice place down there, and it is less than 2 hours from my house.
by the way, did they make any headway on the dining hall, or are they still having meals in the lodge?
again very nice work, the hammer especially

Ed Steinkirchner

kitchen knife for my parents. this is the second version, the first was pretty ugly and not very well proportioned, and it was worped! i am actually happy with this one.
the handle scales are curley maple from a mine support beam, the pins are copper(telegraph wire), the blade is bandsaw blade from a sawmill. the original one was used as a pattern which was changed to work better. it is triple normalized and edge quenched about 3/4 inch along the edge, which looks kind of yellowish in the pics. it has been used daily in catering for a little more than a year now and is still super sharp.i am glad that the blade blackened, because it doesn't get rusty as easily.


thanks for looking

Ed Steinkirchner

very nice just as i expected. i like the ball peen dents, usually they make things look "fake forged" but you made it work really well. what is the idea for the handle? wood with a piece of tubing for a ferrule?
looks good Sam
Ed Steinkirchner

in my shop i have tin walls, and i wouldn't trade them for anything! fire proof, to a reasonable extent, hard to damage, it was cheap(got it used), and my favorite part is, with magnets you can use all of the walls to post drawings, patterns, small tools, etc. if price is an issue, look in your newspaper's "for sale" section, or find somewhere that sells seconds, because cosmetic seconds may not work for a roof, but inside they work great.

by the way, the one wall in my shop is 3 railroad ties high for a base, 2x6 framed concrete forms to make it 7 feet, and the inside is 0ld 3 inch thick foam board with the tin nailed on. it is the right side in the picture. the other side is different tin and is 10 feet high. concrete block up 4 feet and old concrete cement forms, each was 6 feet x 8 feet, made of 2x6 boards and 3/4 plywood (the whole garage that my shop is attached to is made like that)insulated on the garage side and tinned on my side. my shop is 7 feet by almost 30 feet which is why it looks so cramped.
wow it looks like i am rambling...
i just never thought i'd have a real shop.
uh. in short, i would look for used tin instead of drywall.
Ed Steinkirchner

got to agree about the lanyard and the differential temper. my khukri has differential hardening with no temper, i agree about it being easier to sharpen when soft, but i carry a little stone(1 inch wide x 2 inch long x 1/4 inch thick)in a little leather sheath in my pocket, so the hardness isn't an issue. also i don't need to sharpen as often, both have their pros and cons, i like it on the harder side of the spectrum, but that is a personal opinion. also it is great to have that wrist strap after swinging it for a few hours, i accidently threw the thing 40 feet into the jaggers and didn't have anything but the scabbard to hack through the things. the next one gets a strap. also it is good to see that someone actually tests their scrap steel before making decisions on it!
By the way, what is the weight and balance of it?
wery nice blade looks like it will serve its purpose very well
Ed Steinkirchner

how did you make the v in the swage? was it milled or filed in, or did you make a strip with a 108 degree angle and hammer it into the die?

also to forge a taper on any angular stock with odd sides, all you need to do is forge a round taper then use the swage. but the swage either must be shallow enough to forge it at an angle, or made in a taper. for example, a triangle swage would need to tapered because it is too deep of a "v", but a pentagon probably wouldn't need to be tapered because the "v" is so shallow. hopefully this made sense.

Ed Steinkirchner

sounds like you got a plan! if your going to weld without a bit (all steel) use something like leaf spring, if you want to slit and drift the eye than weld a bit in, start with something 7/8 inch or bigger. make the eye, then split with a chisel or saw and weld the bit in. i would start with the folded one since youve never welded before, because it takes less work to redo if you screw it up. you can take a piece of mild steel, wrap it around a drift, weld almost to the edge, insert a steel bit and weld it in. do final shaping and haft it.you got a lot of options. do whichever you have the material for, or the inclination to do. good luck, and post pictures.

Ed Steinkirchner

the long srm of the bsil goes into the top holes until the spring wings click into the bottom slot, thus keeping the lock...uh...locked. the key is inserted through the other end of the tube and pushes the wings back together and allows them to come apart. it took about 5 hours and that counts breaks and lunch. this lock was more for fun than anything, and the next one will have a tube around the bail leg, about 8 bars, and a better overall appearence. but this one works and the fit is very tight, no jiggle when locked. oh, and those old cartridges are good sources for short pieces of extruded tubing, like ferrules for chisels, and anything that should resist splitting the tube, they also make good file handles for the small triangle files. that site is a very good site thank you for posting! i will make some of those in the future. the enginuity and creativity in those mechanisms is amazing.
thank you all for posting

Ed Steinkirchner

made this over the weekend, a "Nordic" padlock. i saw a very nice one in the gallery a while ago but cant remember whos it was. if anyone cold tell me i would like to know. anyway, this is a very simple mechanism but can throw a coupl curveballs in fitting the key. the springs are old carbon steel hack saw blad tempered purple-blue and rivetted on. probabl would have been fine just brazed on and left un tempered, but oh well. the tube was an old spent CO2 cartridge and i would have put another tube in the long "arm" of the bale but had no tubing that size. i will make another of these someday, alot better aesthetically and more rods to hold it together, but it works!

Ed Steinkirchner

looks like you got yourself a good deal there, i made a stake plate from a railroad track plate because of the expense, it works but it isnt a long enough "sleeve" for the stake to jamm into so it wobbles a bit. but some square tubing forged to a slight taper, and welded to the bottom would solve that. btw the stake i made too them things are expensive round here!

Ed Steinkirchner

that be her! thanks a lot. there were no markings on it that i could see so i couldn't tell what it was, but a quick google-ing and i can now tell that is exactly what it is. thanks dkunkler

Ed steinkirchner

found an old cheese press in an OLD shed behind our store(which is 111 years old) and the sheet metal is nearly rusted away, every thing else is good, even the press screw, so i decided to make a new box fpr it. the sheet metal is from a worn out box fan and is heavier gauge than the original. i made it all by hand(no big shear, no break) with tin snips and angle iron in a vice. the shape was hard because it has a slight taper from base to edge so the cheese comes out easier. the original also has a wire in the rolled edge and a ratchet-like strip on each side so it would lock pressed down and could be removed to use the press on the next block.
the original box with all he old rivet haeds ground off

half of the "ratchet" strip, both are broken so i need to forge new ones.

the sheet metal removed. you can see the holes for the whey to drain out in the cast iron base.

the box cut out and fit

i didn't want to solder the joint like the original (lead!) so i riveted it together

i still need to roll the edge and rivet it to the base, also forge new rachet strips for the sides and clean it.

more pics to come

Ed Steinkirchner

just bought this little lathe for 300 dollars a week ago. ive no idea who the maker is, or if it is a good lathe or not, or even if it was worth the money or not. it works very well, but thet is the opinion of someone who hasn't used a lathe since i had metal shop 5 years ago. well what are your thoughts?


Ed Steinkirchner

my bad. here this ought to work

i see now, heat in the local area and hit the high spots, you could do that on the anvil, or better yet a wood block. the pic shows where the most heat is needed (circles), and where the hammer must hit (arrows)the heat should be low to medium orange.

Ed Steinkirchner

i would almost have to see a pic to help, hope it isnt too much trouble.

i would heat treat just the fuller area and leave the spring normalized, because it is not going to do anything more than hold them in line really. how thick is he flat section and did you weld a hardy post on it?

Ed Steinkirchner

you dont need to temper the spring part on a spring fuller, not even the fuller part really. i would harden the dies after triple normalizing(heat to non mag and let air-cool) then temper to bronze-purple,or softer than my hammer and anvil face, whichever. no matter the temper, it will hold up for a long time. i have one from an old crowbar, no heat treat except for 2 normalizing cycles, hasnt turned swayback yet and wont hurt may anvil or hammer.
by the way, it looks like it was either too hot in hardening, of the quenchant was too severe. is the break in the fuller part or the spring?

Ed Steinkirchner

no, cant say that ive tred a mace, but ive tred on quite a few rakes, never ended well sorry, i can be that way. but i digress. i would make a mace by punching a hole in a block of steel, and adding any projections on by welding, brazing etc. i would make a morning star by startinh with thw ball and drilling blind holes in it and making spikes out of round or tennoned square, then shrinking, shreading, or brazing them into the ball. just my thoughts. hope they were helpful.


Ed Steinkirchner

sorry, i don't know how to make it so the pic just shows up.

here's my idea, sliding bolt style but still fairly simple. no pics, just a sketch.

lock hasp.bmp

i posted this in a different post and went in to more detail there, but the jist.
14 inches overall,mild steel, 7 inch blade, 7 inch socket


Ed Steinkirchner

i usually start with the 3/8 only because that is what i have, here it is mild steel. with high or medium carbon, it could be thinner. i made a 14-ish inch spearhead from this stock, and cold hammered the blade when it was done. it is a very good spear, didn't bend when a poor throw at a stump made it glance off into the woods. oh, and when i say 14 inch i mean point to socket base, so overall length is 14 inches. it takes almost the same amount of steel to make the socket as it does the blade, so it should balance at about the point where blade ans socket meet. and remember that if you make the socket too long just hack-saw it off when your done.
hope that answered the question

Ed Steinkirchner

i am not welding the socket, so a bickern isn't needed, the socket can be rolled between the fuller and the anvil face.

roll as much as possible with the cross peen(a swedish pattern or similar long peen hammer works best)and close on the anvil face



there is no good way to tell how to finish closing the socket but after one or two you get it down.
i for got to mention that the flaring of the blank must be symmetrical or the seam won't be straight. if there is a slight twist, use the vice and a wrench to get it straight again.
the finished socket.


once the socket is finished, you can forge out the blade. the blade is the easy part. hope this helps someone.

Ed Steinkirchner

when i first wanted to make a spear, i couldn't find a tutorial on how to do it. of course later i found out it really wasn't terribly difficult. but i figured that it still may help someone so here it is.

the bar im starting with is 3/8 by 1-1/4, and the tools used are the anvil, a cross-peen hammer, and a 1/2 inch radius bottom fuller. this size bar makes better long socketed spears, but for the sake of time the socket here is 5 inches long, 7-8 is much better but oh well.

the bar to start

start at the near edge of the anvil and start necking down with the hammer using angled blows

why don't i use a top and bottom fuller? i like to get more upsetting than length you can see that here.

once it is necked down, decide which side is the inside. then in the necked area, fuller to get the upsetting on one side. then peen the "tail" wider. note: this spear has a "tab" to put a small nail in to hold it on the haft, so the tab will be forged in the center of the socket




once the socket has been flared enough for the right size haft(take the diameter of the haft X 3.14 to get the total flaring needed at the base) sit the neck back on the fuller and break the outside edges.(you'll se these can be ground off too)

once it cools, grind or file the edges straight to get a good joint, and grind off the outside of the neck(if it wasn't forged that way by now)


next up, rolling the socket

Ed Steinkirchner