ThomasPowers

I'd guess that folks didn't commonly run around with AP rounds on them---just like today!

DANGER that method of "annealing" may result in HAZ brittleness. I'd try to just fully draw temper on the end of the tang staying *below* the critical temperature and keeping the blade cool. Historically the tang usually wasn't hardened to start with and sometimes wasn't even hardenable. There are examples where wrought iron was forge welded to a blade to make the tang. Are you going to make a small dimple in the end of the pommel to fill with the tang when it's hammered? Allows you to smooth over the end without worrying about removing all the swell. You will definitely need some non-marring jaws for your vise to hold the blade in place while riveting. Yes you can heat shrink parts on with very good results *IF* your fitting is nigh on perfect---chilling the blade can help too. I heat shrunk a war hammer head onto a steel shaft intending to rivet it down later; but after 10+ years it still hasn't budged. Note that if it lodges in the wrong place it can be very hard to extract without damaging a blade.

What country do you live in? Shipping things internationally can run into customs problems as many such items are banned or require special handling! Moscow hide and fur http://www.hideandfur.com/inventory/Antlers.html? has a very nice selection of a lot of stuff!

Wow we have a "General Curmudgeon" on the forum---I think I have never even seen a full bird colonel Curmudgeon before!

Powers Proctocol????? On a different forum they have given certain people a title indicating that they have some background in a specific area and list what area---so you could be quite knowledgeable about one aspect but folks will know which aspect and not think you must know everything! Folks who stick around long enough generally can come to their own conclusion as to if someone knows beans about what they are posting about; but a lot of folk do drift through... Thomas

WARNING Friday Rant ahead! "I love reading all I can but $60.00 is a bit much for me to spare, im already loosing quite a bit of cash on the equipment needed to start up." Have you not a local public library? Is not a library card free? March down there and ask about ILL (Inter Library Loan) where you can check out books from other libraries in the system that your local library doesn't have. Shoot here in NM I can check out books from over 90 different libraries including university libraries! I can get books that are over $200 on the used market and I've had on book search for over 3 years without a bite for a 3 week loan for only $1 search charge and there is NOWHERE in Ill that is as remote as we are in NM! (Our county is 6,649 Sq Miles and the largest town in it is under 10,000 people. The entire county has about 1/2 the population of Granite City IL, next county over is 6,928 Sq Miles and has fewer people in it than just our town.) Frankly I once put together a complete beginner's kit: Forge, Blower, Anvil, basic tools for under $25; you posting that you're spending over $30 for a hammer and then talk about not having money for books---the Horror! (OK I'm several steps beyond a bibliophile...but my wife's an enabler---she bought me the best book on the metallurgy of renaissance armour, over $300 *used* for my birthday one year..."The Knight and the Blastfurnace" ) While you are at it check out "The Complete Bladesmith, The Master Bladesmith, The Pattern Welded Blade". Shoot look over all the suggested books so you will know which ones you should get and think about buying them used at abebooks.com When starting out it is usually more important to get at it than to worry overly much about your tools. With experience will come the knowledge about what you need to upgrade first to make things easier on yourself.

Testing: 1: learn the spark test and start building up a "sample library" to compare to an unknown piece; but realize that spark testing is just a rough guess at what you may have. 2: forge out a piece of the unknown alloy to about rough knife size, heat above non-magnetic and quench in water, then CAREFULLY with PPE try breaking it. If it breaks just in the quenching it has high enough carbon to be a knife but needs a slower quench. If it doesn't break in the quench put in a vise and then CAREFULLY with PPE tap it with a hammer. If it snaps/shatters it has high enough carbon to be a knife and may need a slower quench. If you can really wallop it with the hammer and it bends or breaks only after you get medieval all over it then it's not a good knife steel. 3: Take another piece and forge out to about rough knife size, heat above non-magnetic and quench in oil. Repeat the testing, if you fget a nice brittle fine grain fracture then oil may be a good quenchant for that alloy. 4: Take another piece and forge out to about rough knife size, heat above non-magnetic and quench in oil. Remove any burnt on oil and any decarb layer till you get to steel that will skate a new file and start on tempering tests: heat in an oven at 325 degF for 1 hour (please get an oven thermometer as the settings on the dial are almost *always* off!) , let cool and test with the file---still no bite? Re-heat 25 degF higher and try again. Repeat until you just start getting file bite. Then depending on how hard/brittle an edge you like use a temp around file-bite or just prior to it...(note if you clean the surface each time you reheat then the colour of the oxide coating will be a decent marker for what temp you like FOR THAT STEEL---this helps as you may want to do a differential temper and so have the back of the blade a different colour than the edge!) 5: now you have a good guess at a reasonable heat treat for *that* piece of steel. Remember *nothing* prevents a manufacturer from switching alloys used for a part at any time; he can just switch heat treat to make them work about the same; but can surprise you! (I have run into 1 strain hardened micro alloyed leaf spring---couldn't harden by heating and quenching!) 6: starting with a known alloy: you can look it up or follow other knifemaker's suggestions for it---and still tweak it to suit yourself better!

No; I've noticed that as the week goes on my patience is thinner with folks posting stuff they have no idea about to folks who obviously don't know enough to winnow the wheat from the chaff. What is it about the internet that folks who don't have a clue figure that it's a good idea to foist their ignorance off on others? So I updated my ranking. And *please* feel free to call me on anything I post; I'm happy to provide the cite or my experience in that area to let you make an informed decision!

Viking swords were forged on even smaller anvils. Of course they were working with wrought iron and *very* *hot* making the material quite soft.

Boy I'm glad my name doesn't start with an *F*! I hope you ran out and bough me a lottery ticket!

We had a water pipe break on us once, *under* the slab. While waiting to get it worked on we would turn on and off the water at the meter a lot---so I forged an extra long tool to do so so my wife didn't have to bend over to turn the water valve.

"Coot", "Old Phart", ...

"Play it again Sam"! Western european swords tend to be quite thin, most leafsprings I have worked with would tale a lot of hammering to get it thin enough! If you have no forging skills in blademaking I would look at doing a stock removal version to start and starting with a piece of 1/4" thick steel.

Sorry but: "The best way" depends totally on what you are trying to accomplish. If you are trying to make very accurate versions of historical blades that "best way" is terrible and you need to research what they used at the time and place. This is a great resource for people but I object to the term "best way" without qualifiers.

Judson have you tried placing cheap clay based kitty litter in your tray?

Having welded up damascus billets with a carpenter's claw hammer before I'll have to say that pretty much any hammer will work when *you* have the skills. There is a well know smith out there who welds up damascus billets with a wooden hammer. Now as to what's best to start with: don't get too heavy a hammer and dress it so it has a smooth rocker in both directions of a Sq face and shallow hemisphere for a round face. If I was starting out a student I like them to use one that is soft---lot easier to dress a hammer than an anvil! (I have a french cross pein from the Lynch collection that went through a fire and fits the bill perfectly!) My main hammer for my first decade or so smithing was one I picked up at a fleamarket for US$2.

No what he said was "it depends on the alloy"---that method won't do much for a low carbon steel; it's OK for an oil hardening steel and may result in the destruction of an air hardening steel. The temp you quench at also depends on the alloy with some steels requiring a higher temp than non magnetic and some requiring a soak time to dissolve carbides. The temp you draw temper to depends on how you like your edges (*real* hard, easy to sharpen, etc) and the ALLOY. Do you see a theme developing? If you don't know what your alloy is you will want to make a couple of test pieces from it to figure out what heat treat works best for it before you hazard your good piece!

Do you *need* an anvil? Do you have the money to spare? Is it worth it to you?

I have both hawk-eye and hammer-eye drifts but prefer the hammer-eye one for small axes I'm going to be using---easier to find cheaper handles. Hawk-eye still works for throwers as you can save the handle by having it pop loose in a bad throw...(always have a loaner hawk anyway so some "friend" doesn't break your good handle right before you need it for a contest...) Like having a "loaner" tentstake hammer; was camping once and went off to the can and when I cam back someone had "borrowed" my mirror polished silver smithing hammer to drive ratty old tentstakes with...

Ahhh "ornamental" now you can go wild with them. Personally I would forge the rings and the straps from farriers rasps, twisting the ring stock after forged round and before ringing it, to give it an appropriate look. Buggy tyre would still make a good strap and was a very common material for re use back in the day---I've seen examples of hinges, straps, door hardware, mending plates, tools, etc made from tyre

Buy that girl a woodburning kit so she can decorate them in ways that will survive shop usage! She's one to be proud of for sure and when you can hand down a tool with a handle she decorated to a grandkid and explain that she had decorated it when she was a kid...

Hand Finishing and shortest amount of time don't tend to intersect....However Many makers don't buff; just taking it up through 1000 and 2000 grit. Learning to love a satin finish at a lower grit. Look into burnishing rather than buffing. Invest in power tools. Biggest way to get good results is to not stint abrasives or time at the lower levels and keep every thing clean and separated in their own sealed boxes so you don't cross contaminate your abrasives! Best way to speed things up is to get good hammering so you can get close to final dimension in the forge. Remove scale (vinegar, sandblasting, etc) before starting with abrasives Keep your files CLEAN and un pinned! Make a filing vise---the better your working conditions the better/faster a job you can do.

Living in the USA Furnace Cement is pretty common in hardware stores...leastways in NM and OH...

Most of the folks here will be telling you *not* to use a 4# hammer; too easy to mess up your arm if you're not up to using it! I know when I teach I show folks my 1500 gm hammer and tell them I used to do these 1/4" stock S hooks totally with it until I realized I was just showing off and it was stressing my arm holding back doing the counter bend and other finicky stuff and so now use a much lighter hammer for that job. BTW "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" has a chapter on making a RR track anvil including heat treating it!

Scale is an abrasive not only will it remove rust, with years of working it will polish a pitted face out!