ThomasPowers

Great idea, my wife is getting some stove black for her stove; maybe I can sneak a bit out to the forge. Would you edit that to read 1820's or 1920's? I do 1020's and there are no stoves, open fires is all.

Diesel, antifreeze, linseed oil; all things to replace and keep water from being absorbed and lost from handles. Note that antifreeze is deadly to animals and so having a tray around to soak hammerheads in can result in family tragedies. Out here in the desert I use linseed oil.

The cross section and taper of a sword blade affects how it flexes a whole lot as well. In the Army Museum in Spain they have a Toledo sword blade that is bent into a spiral and embedded in a block of wood as it will spring back true!

Traditionally axes had a body of wrought iron and the bits were forge welded on of steel. When you wore down the bit you brought it back and the smith would weld another piece of steel on---this could go on for generations! Part of this was that steel was much more costly than wrought iron---even as late as the American Civil War steel was 5 times the cost of wrought iron. One advantage of this method was that you didn't have to worry about heat treating issues for the body of the axe as it would stay soft and tough even if quenched. Another was if there was a failure, like hitting an embedded rock, only the edge would fail and could be replaced. In general axe steels were lower in carbon than knife steels as they are more of an impact tool and so toughness is a plus! 1070 is a "traditional" steel for monosteel axes.

No the "air" we use in all our heating means---save induction or solar---is mainly nitrogen. I must admit being a tad skeptical when folks say "You could make a wood gas forge in 2 hours, maybe less with a 55 gal drum and a smaller one to fit inside the 55""; after having admitted that they have not made one and do not know of anyone who has made one. Gas forges are not brakedrum forges; they are enclosed insulated items and usually the *insulation* is the most expensive part of them. Burners are often simply made from plumbing parts. Actually it sounds like you meant to say "you could make the gas producer in 2 hours...." As it doesn't address making a forge. I've been to several Gas Forge building workshops and even pooling equipment and skills we averaged longer than 2 person hours per forge. BTW 1500 degF is pretty cold as far as a forge goes---we were using one over 2000 degF Sunday---had pieces weld together in the propane forge just touching! (a piece of 2.5" square stock and a 3/4" rod stock,had to hammer them repeatedly to get them to separate and of course NO FLUX!) Note that most of the charcoal making plans I am familiar with *use* the flammable gasses produced to heat the retort for charring so it's not discarded; research would be better than belief. The gas used in cities for lighting was generally produced by running steam over hot coke. Wood gas is a neat technology, especially for remote areas but it is not the answer for every problem. But enough of the nay saying---Please work on making a wood gas forge and let us know how well it works for you! Keep track of your time and materials too. You may want to compare it with a waste vegetable oil forge to see how they stack up against each other.

No one has mentioned blade harmonics. You want the COP and grip at nodes (zero points) rather than max's to get a blade that will stay in your hand and deliver the most energy to the target. May I commend to your attention swordforum.com for their Performance Swords Question and Answer Forum

I'd check the wedge on the mounting piece too and see if it's pulling the top of the spring all the way back against the back shaft of the vise. Many times the original well made fittings have been lost and a quick and dirty replacement has been improvised that may not do as good a job as the "good" ones did. (I've been know to do this when I show up at a demo and find I left the vise wedge at home...) If there isn't too much play in the bottom joint I wouldn't worry about getting the bolt undone. Unscrew the vise all the way until the handle/screw drops out of the screwbox and you can open the vise to 90 degrees to clean thins up. You can also clean out all the old hardened grease and oil from the screw and screwbox once its taken apart. Often the jaws on a post vise are slightly angled vertically so they are parallel only when the vise is opened to a certain distance---don't worry about that unless it's a strong angle and is parallel for a sixe of stock you don't plan to use. It's a good idea to make a set of jaw spacers as we often work on one side of the vise making the shafts twist a bit as the screw pulls in the middle and one side is empty. They can be as simple as a set of the various thickness materials you generally work cut a couple of inches long and an end bent over to make an "L" or as fancy as heating up the larger pieces and slitting the end and folding over the flaps to make a "T" and stamping them for what size they are on top.

Well there are the cow bells made from sheet. Also the odd bells of plate forged into vaguely triangular pieces depending from a section forged into rod. I've seen special powerhammer set up to flare pipe on a bic or to fuller it down. (A local professional smith who had to make several hundred flared pipe morning glories for a project.)

OUCH! you forgot to mention mandatory safety gogles and protective suiting!

The heavier S1 pill punches fit in my screwpress's tool holder and make a dandy slitting punch. Did the nicest eye I have ever done punching through 1.25" high carbon square stock for a hawk!

Kydex clamshell with retaining clip at the top---or have it carried unsheathed by your sword bearer walking right behind you... As for the sig: I assumed that JPH "blossoms" when life rains on him as it has done so much this last decade or so.

The method I mentioned with wood doesn't require sawing, just two pieces with a flat side so you can glue them together *after* you have inlet the tang---don't skimp on the tang size as that's the classic difference between a wall hanger and a real sword. Don't make the ricasso/tang transition with a sharp corner as that's a stress concentrator in the worst place. Hrisoulas books "The Complete Bladesmith, The Master Bladesmith and the Pattern Welded Blade" are some of the few that deal with swordmaking as well as knifemaking, there are some differences between the too! Thanks for the explanation on the name. I'm less likely to think of you as a 15 year old SMW or OBW. Most of the really really good makers I know are not pretentious at all. They don't need to be!

Heat up only a small CUT OFF PIECE. If you try heating the end and quenching and it is high carbon you can mess up a large chunk of your piece. My finds today at the fleamarket:: antlers for knife handles US$1 for the pair and a tub of silversmithing stuff including several ounces of scrap silver, unused sheet silver, hard solder in good quantity, etc for $15

The *best* way would be to send it to a professional knife heat treater. You really have to tell us what alloy it's made from to get any good guesses. Some alloys do not respond well to attempts to differential harden, others can be a pain to differential temper. If you don't know wjat it was made from I would go with differential tempering using tempering tongs.

Far better to leave the horn blunt and make a bic for the hardy hole for items that need a small diameter to work them on. A "sharp" horn is a danger in the shop! Even a blunt one will provide some amusing bruising---"pretty like sunset". Since many smithies had soft floors and even modern commercial concrete didn't make a mark on my 134 HB when some students dumped it on it's nose, I doubt that such impacts made the bulge. (The floor however has a divot for the rest of it's life and one student is now banned from smithing as a danger to self and tools---this was his second chance and as it ended up with an ER run I decided not to allow a third!)

Cut a small piece off and heat to an orange and quench in water. Then CAREFULLY try to break it. If it shatters (EYE PROTECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then it's a high carbon stainless. But as was mentioned---- very unlikely and if it is they generally need professional heat treating to get the best out of them.

Perhaps wood ashes mixed with really cheap kitty litter (bentonite clay) as a fill.

1: you have not mentioned any forging, just stock removal. Is this really Cold Forged or just stock removal? The terms mean quite different things! Cold forged would be to work harden the blade by hammering on it cold. Not a great idea for a blade that has enough carbon in the alloy to harden through heat treat; but it was used for bronze and early iron age blades. 2 Metal handles are not a good idea for swords, usually too heavy for one thing; (remember that when your sword is *finished* it should probably weigh around 2.5 pounds---as that was the general average for european using swords for around 1000 years---and is actually a good weight for Japanese swords as well.) Also metal grips tend to get slippery with sweat or blood and so Not be a good thing for a dangerous weapon! 3 Take two pieces of wood with a flat side on each and trace your tang onto them and then inlet with a chisel. I usually glue them together after inletting with a piece of cardstock between them to be able to rough form the outside using rasps, belt grinder, chisels, drawknives, curbstones---whatever you work wood with. You can then split them apart along the card stock, sand off any remains of it and be ready to do the final gluing with it on the tang. Note if there are voids between the wood and tang, epoxy can help fill them. I apprenticed to a top swordmaker ( Cutlery stock removal too!) and we *Never* used heat to put a guard, grip or pommel on with: Guards should be filed to fit the tang. Grips can be epoxied on and pommels can be screwed, peened, pinned, etc. Some makers will use a low temp silver solder like Stay-Brite that can be applied at a temp below the draw temperature. As you don't hilt a blade till after it's been heat treated; how did you go about that? Run go to you local library and have them ILL "The Complete Bladesmith" by Hrisoulas. It will explain all to you and save you weeks of mistakes! I must admit that your alias doesn't do much for me; perhaps I need it explained?

Yes, forge weld some higher carbon steel to them to make a better edge!

*This* set of forums has not been much of a problem. It is another totally different site that causes me issues---I'm not a moderator over here!

You will probably need to fill it in some so the hot spot is not so deep in it.

There was the year that a fellow had taken a plastic traffic cone and cut off the base and painted it to look like a cast iron smithing cone. Or the balsa wood sledgehammer. And of course PTree's hats... MOB did a flaming anvil sign one year---anvil outline made from copper tubing and plumbed for propane---looked like a neon sign from across camp. Then we did the ASO propane stove.... Quite a bit of smithing "jokes" show up at Quad-State.

A bunch of S hooks are more multipurpose---I got out to an event once with all my camp cooking equipment and started hanging S hooks out---I had 50 of them and used them all over my camp: holding tarps, holding lanterns, holding cook pots bot on and off the fire, etc.

With the location issues perhaps it's best where folks who might be able to get it hang out.

I know that this will sound funny but you may be able to learn to forge blades FASTER by forging other things first. Certainly with less frustration. If you are going to go straight to blades well be prepared to waste your weight in "practice" blades. As for easily obtained scrap steels for knifemaking I would suggest you try automobile coil springs. See if you can find someone with O-A to cut down one side of a spring and you will have stock for a dozen plus blades. (You can cut them yourselves with a long hot cut and a hammer but if you are new to the craft you are a lot less likely to burn yourself just working with the rings.)