ThomasPowers

I tilt so my best eye is at the best angle; not based on my handedness at all. Weren't the Kerr's of Scotland known for their lefthandedness as a clan? (ah yes Wikipedia!)

Old hardy holes are often out of square as well as out of dimensional spec Besides heat shrinkage there was also tool wear, biased striking etc combined with there is NOT a standard size for hardy holes; I have anvils with 7/8", 1", 1 3/8" and 3 at 1.5" hardy holes. If I was making tools I would go for a standard number like 1" and let people dress them to fit their anvils; sourcing undersized stock would drive the price up considerably! In the 1800's blacksmiths worked to the tolerance of a worn shilling, (from a compaint on early steam engine cylinders), your hardy hole is well within that! And you had a typo there it's heel not heal. Since you are being precise....

I find mine at the local scrap yard near my house in Lemitar NM. Also I see it for sale to make fences from---might find a fence builder that has short scraps. Last time I visited the scrapyard they had some very large sucker rod 1"+ to big for my elbow!

Flatter is only for dressing the surface at the very end of forging. I would suggest cutting off a strip sufficient to your needs and convincing some friends that it would be fun to use sledge hammers striking for you. (Note using a whonking big chunk of steel rather than your anvil may be indicated if your strikers do not have much control---I would suggest having them always hit the same point on the "anvil" and you move the workpiece back and forth....)

I met Dominic Tweedle of the York Archeological Trust at a Medieval Technology conference at Pennstate must be 20+ years ago. Really wished I could have taken him up on the invite to stop by if ever I was in the area. I really would like to know the early bound for that type of scissors; I'm not near my research library either but 12th century sticks in my mind---I certainly wouldn't advise *anyone* to take that date as at all certain! Another datum: I don't see signs of an applied steel edge to theose originals which was more common in earlier times even for quite small items.

Between the chisels is a part for a woodworker's bench the toothed part levers up so you can trap a board between your vise and (which should have a part that raises up to use for that task) it for planing or other work.

I think the important part was the idea that you have to maintain a gas forge and NOT expect it to be unchanging over time. I consider the entire forge to be a "consumable" just with a use life in the years or even decades.

Knives and Scabbards, Museum of London has several pages of scissors and shears in it. Also page 196 of "The Viking" Bertil Almgren et al has 3 sets of shears on it. Both are respected sources. The reason we asked for the reference is that I have never seen that style used during viking times and only have seen them several centuries after the viking era. We were hoping for a new discovery with good provenance; but I fear it's more Caveat Emptor.

Now I didn't say it was worthless just not worth a lot to most smiths. Check out the blower and the ratchet on the drive wheel If they have any issues it might make a better petunia holder. I wouldn't say that that cost you anything as I expect you will get at least what you paid for it if not a bit more.

I'd like to know the reference too!

How would you set a value on a car not knowing if the engine worked? If everything was restored and repaired about US$120 because of the crack If the blower/ratchet system is not working much less. In general these are not worth much to blacksmiths as it is easy and cheap to build a forge mahap easier and cheaper than repairing one like that. They do make good demo systems to wow the crowd though and for small work. I would not want to be doing large work or good sized billet welding with one!

Ahh the old pre twist drill bits which lasted quite late as a variation are still sold as masonry bits, though with carbide inserts. Practical Blacksmithing, Richardson, book 2 around the mid 120's has quite a bit on such drills and drillbits; I commend it to your attention! Also: Making milling cutters, Augers and Drills in "The Complete Modern Blacksmith"; Weygers In my experience with such drillbits high pressure and slow speed are needed and NOT modern electrified drillpresses as you are more scraping a hole rather than cutting one. Drill rod is almost like they intended it for this purpose! forge the end down, leave fat and file to final shape. Heat treat and do a differential temper on it to the edge is the hardest part.

May want to think about summer/winter set ups and only shift your anvil twice a year...

One aspect of getting some help from another blacksmsith is that they should be able to look at *how* you are hammering as well as how you are *hammering*. Most people can look at the work piece and see what kind of issues they are having with the hammer hitting it and try to correct them. Most can't see their form and tell themselves to step up to the anvil and work over the workpiece rather than at arms length....to hold their off hand even behind them if that puts them where they need to be to hammer---or to choke up on the workpiece, many grab the far end when they may have a foot or two of cold stock in front of that. I tell a lot of folks to stop using their wrist and start using their arm. Or to use a smaller hammer (and rarely a bigger one!) To hold their elbow in close and to not put their thumb atop the hammer handle. To raise or lower the anvil to strike so the hammer face is parallel to the work piece; etc. Nice to get them working *right* rather than trying to break bad habits later. And yes it can be amusing to be able to compliment the person using the lighter hammer on a nice even taper while their SO has to have their workpiece cleaned up by the teacher because they hammered like lightening. (Not always the lady with the lighter hammer---but usually so.) I push control as many people come to me wanting to do bladesmithing. I will also warn a student several times and then let them go on to mess up a piece through not paying attention to what I've told them. ("three types of people: Those who can lean from reading or being told; those who can learn by watching others and those who....on the electric fence")

Those cast iron hammer heads were used to drive wooden fence posts. They degrade quite rapidly if you try to use them on anything metal.

I have known makers that turned their billets on a lathe before twisting them. I consider that crazy over kill myself...

Designing your projects to require forge welding instead of avoiding it is subtle blacksmith showing off---and keeps you in the groove with welding. What I really need to try out is to prebend the precut pieces so they are set up for welding without more than a bit of tweaking afterwards

The regularly scheduled reminder that these charts are usually based on 1" (25mm) sq cross section material and items with knife cross sections do not generally need the same times at temp to be sure the entire piece is up to the same temp. Now where things get difficult is with high alloy materials where the soak times may be engineered to alow re-solutioning of the carbides; but high alloy steels generally require more professional heat treating to get the best from them anyway.

Too dark in the shop for photos even if I took them due to the rain. Much like a trivet except usually longer legs as it is supposed to allow for a fire underneath them for cooking purposes. I do two main types: the first is circular/oval with applied legs---riveted and then forge welded and based on the ones in "The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi" 1570, with or without the skewer holders for thrushes. The second is as I described; let me describe it another way: Cut 3 identical lengths of strap stock. (I generally like to use stuff half as thick as it's wide so when you weld up the legs/feet you get sq stock.) Take 2 pieces and place them together and justify the ends. Forge weld one end up about as far as you want to have the leg long. Forge the end into a penny foot and bend it 90 deg to the leg Now reheat and bend the straps out above the welded leg till they make a T and then swing them in till they make a 60 deg included angle. Take the third strap and lustify the end with one of the free ends and forge weld it making leg/foot 2. Bend it as above. Take the final two ends that should cross each other and heat and bend till they overlap and you can forge weld the final leg/foot Now with everything welded up dress the spider/trivit----I like to have a heavy slice of round the correct size to just drop the spider over it and just tall enough to have the legs touch the heavy steel slab when everything is adjusted just right---so the length of the legs tend to be based on what heavy steel rounds I have or can stack to build. For campfire cooking exactness is not a big deal as you just tap a high side down a bit into the dirt/ashes. For cooking on a hearth it does make a difference---if you have one short leg you can hammer it slightly smaller in cross section and longer---generally easier than tryng to upset the others (a better trick for an extra long leg is to forge out an enhanced foot using up the excess. The extra long foot can then be trimmed with a curved hot cut or just left and punch a hole in it so it can be hung up ie: "I meant to do that" or stamp it with your mark! The little ones of 1/4x1/2 stock I don't make extremely large; but I can stand on them as a selling point. I do need to make a cauldron holder like is shown on the Bayeaux tapistry though... Did this help?

Tongs, drifts, fullers; things where the higher than mild steel C content helps but are not buried in hot steel where the low alloy content of general sucker rod does not provide high temp hardness, so no slitting chisels, punches, etc.

The first hot cut I made, (still going strong after 25 years of use), was made from the broken off end of a jackhammer bit: Forged the remains of the shaft to fit my anvil(s) and forged and ground the working end sharp. Normalized it, (yes it dulls faster than if I did a harder heat treat but with students in the shop dressing it is a lot faster, easier, cheaper then shrapnel or ER visits and only 1 of my hammers is softer than it is anyway.) One important thing: as I acquired anvils with slightly differing hardy holes I found that some would hold it tighter than others and so I took it and forged out the bottom of the stem smaller and longer to give a place to bop it to unseat it rather than rivet it in place as the skinnier end will extend below the hardy hole for all my anvils it fits. Again students pay no attention to the "this hardy is for this anvil" and even though I am surrounded by thousands of sq miles of desert dry gulching them gets you talked about---after a while.

And it will be the envy of most of us!

Saturday it rained pretty much most of the day---incredibly unusual for NM. The plants were in shock except for the weeds---you could fairly hear them grunting as they tried to grow before the miracle ceased. I did get out to the forge and worked on the new spider, (to hold pots/pans over the coals for campfire cooking), I needed a larger one as it looks like my cowboy skillet will see some use. So I started with 3 pieces of larger strap stock than usual and forge welded the ends together for the feet and ended up with a triangle with feet. I wanted the included area to be a bit larger so I heated each side in turn and hammered it down on my cone to make it bow out a bit. I placed a 1" thick pipe flage cap on some heavy rounds on my screwpress and slid in the spider and placed another piece of steel on top of it and whomped it "flat" and then adjusted the feet with a hammer while it was held flat----the trick is to stack the supports till the feet of the spider will just touch the base of the screwpress when "adjusted" making them all the same height. Not my prettiest work but it will be a help in the fire for a long while. The little ones I make from 1/4"x1/2" strap generally come out much better as it's easier to weld and manipulate them. (And I've made a *bunch* of them....How do you get to Yellin Hall?---PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!) Now to schedule some eggs, bacon and pancakes in the big skillet! (It's pressed steel and the handle mounts to it with butterfly nuts...) Next weekend I'm supposed to demo at a "Medieval Fair" except the Fire Marshal will only allow a propane forge; so early medieval anvils, hammers and tongs and a propane forge, grrrrrr. Going to work on some viking cooking gear.

The error message explains the search issue rather well I thought: "One or all of your search keywords were below 4 characters or you searched for words which are not allowed, such as 'html', 'img', etc, please increase the length of these search keywords or choose different keywords." I did find some info searching on "L6 heat treating" (using the quotes) The search limit does make problems for L6, ax, axe, etc. As for heat treating it; what are you trying to accomplish? Band saw blade heat treat is usually not a great knife blade heat treat as in general only the teeth are made hard and the body is kept much softer to lower breakage. You can always try your own system: I'd start by quenching from slightly above magnetic in warm vegetable oil, (around 140 degF) and then, if it survives that, testing various draw temps till you get one you like. Please remember that the hardness/toughness one person likes may not be the same that another person likes. One person may want a very hard blade to cut abrasive materials, another a springy blade to fillet fish. One is NOT better than another they are suited to their use case and personal preferences. (I dislike blades I have to use a diamond hone on, a friend loves blades that can only be sharpened with such...)

one aspect of stainless is that it's a material of choice for ornamental items that you don't expect the owner to maintain. It's not used as often due to the extra work forging it and extra expense however if you have a low cost access to it...