rstegman

I said I would show pictures of the carving knives in process using the grinder methods. In this picture, I show an original file beside the knife blanks positioned as they would be found in the file.. I cut the tang of the second knife with the grinder, cutting in from top and bottom till it was thin enough. I have also ground off the file teeth. Now I have to create the knife profile so they will cut.

Neophyte Metal Diary - 1 this metal working diary started 07-07-07 07-08-07 Sunday My brother was welding up a wheeled car for his wife. I decided to stay out of his way in the morning and carve. Several months ago my brother built a powered hack saw. it is basically a hacksaw on a slide, attached to an arm on the powered shaft. The arm swings around and draws and pushes the hacksaw back and forth. He built it based on some plans he purchased, making changes based on his construction skills and needs. The best way to picture how the saw works, is that it is like the connecting arm on a steam engine running from the wheel to the cylinder at the front of the engine. The round motion of the wheel is converted to the back and forth motion on the saw. This machine is a dream. He had it cutting a slice off a four inch diameter shaft. Other than adding cutting oil periodically, it works without any attention. In about forty five minutes, it sliced off a slab of the shaft. My brother tried to cut it with a henrod torch and only went down a little bit. His cut off saw sat there sending sparks everywhere and not getting much of a cut. The power hacksaw, using a standard hack saw blade, worked its way down, with no sparks, no mess. He then had it cut another slice off just as easy as anything. He does not have the saw squared up. He needs to completely disassemble it, paint it, make some changes, square up everything and build a housing to keep fingers out of the wheels and belts. Already it is the best piece of equipment he has made so far. He will make one change. He has a metal arm that the saw shaft is attached to. He is going to turn it into a solid disk with sets of holes in it. He will be able to change the throw of the saw by how close or far away from the center, the arm is attached to the disk. Later in the day, I got onto the grinder and started shaping the knives I started with yesterday. I had a second file with me so I could take a "before and after" picture. I noticed that the second file was wedge shaped like a knife. It was too much. I had to make that into knives. after a bit more careful measuring than yesterday, I ground in the rat tail in the middle of the metal. This time I left the two pieces connected simply for ease of handling it. I can hang onto one entire blade while grinding on the other. I will change that later. I ground off the file teeth and then did a little shaping on all four knives. I decided to stop and will do the rest of my grinding on a water stone grinder, which cuts slower, has more surface on the wheel and with the water, I won't have to worry about losing the temper. When I finish the knives, I might carve a couple handles, depending on my mood at the time, or just leave them as working knives. I had made two knives at the beginning of the year, and gave one away back in April, and today, gave the second one away. I like having extra knives. when heavy carving, they get dull, and it is easier to swap knives than to sharpen. It is also nice to have spare knives in other locations other than my carving box. My brother is in the process of building a lathe for a sewing machine treadle I picked up. He has the bearings and is about to make the shaft. He picked up a center finder tool and found it way off, at least on something that small. He decided to make it out of a larger diameter shaft, and machine it into size so that the center being just a fraction off won't make that big a difference. It will be centered to the machine center. Other than my knife making, it may be a month or so before I get another chance to do serious metal working. It was fun this weekend.

Neophyte Metal Diary - 1 This is a place where you can brag about your success, cry about your failures, or otherwise tell what you are doing in your life. I am experiencing the beginnings of metal working, and not on a regular basis either. I mainly work wood. I decided I would tell about my metal working experiences in case someone else is considering following the same adventures. They can see my mistakes and try to avoid them. Advanced people can make suggestions if they want, or just sit and laugh at my mistakes. I will post these even if no one reads them, as they are kind of fun to write. I will mention that elsewhere, I have written a woodworking diary since 2000. I wood carve and wood turn as my main hobbies. Several years ago, my brother found the Gingery instruction books, and have purchased possibly a hundred books on how to do many things, mostly metalworking. He had taught himself how to weld over the years to make his job more profitable. He was going to build his own lathe from scratch and even purchased the metal to do it. A couple years ago, he had the opportunity to get a SMITHY, which is a metal working lathe and a milling machine combination. He has since learned how to use it, made or picked up tooling, and made things with it. I picked up an old Craftsman metal lathe with back gears and thread cutter. My brother stripped it down and cleaned it up and we finally have it useful for use. Most of my metal working has been where my brother set up a piece of metal in the lathe and the cutters in the tool holder, and I turn the wheels on the tool rest to face the metal, or remove metal on the perimeter to bring it to size, or eat metal inside the piece to open it up. I basically do his drudgery work so he can do something else. On the Forth, he set me up to make some centering punches used to locate the center of drilled holes in the metal below. He drilled a set of holes in an angle iron to show me the sizes he needed, and had me match the diameter of the punches to the holes. This was basically the first time to have such a "critical" job. I had four of them to make, and did well on the first two, but on the third, I went too small, making a too sloppy fit, so I made it fit the smallest hole, then remade the second smallest. lucky I had that other size to do. I read that one just needs a camp fire and a couple of rocks to work metal. Since we had the Bar-B-Q going, we stuck a piece of all-thread into the fire. I took it out and saw that the end was a little red. I took a heavy hammer and pounded on it, flattening it somewhat. I stuck it back in the fire. I did it a few times. While we were packing up, my brother squared the end with the last heat. This is not much of an experiment, but it is a proof of concept. We saw that we can do some black smithing with very little. A little blower to drive oxygen into the fire would really get it hot. Shape the fire right and we would get better kind of heat. What it did do is to get us excited about some real metal smithing. We were working toward it, but this showed us it can be done. We just had to have patience while the fire heated the metal. I do see that when you hit the metal right with the hammer, it flattens more effectively than when not. Luckily, I never missed a single stroke, which was something I half expected. One cannot form the metal if you miss. While we have an anvil, It is stored away right now. We did our "smithing" on the flat of a vise since it was available. We eventually want to get into metal casting, and black smithing. I mainly want to be able to say I can work metal. I am a writer (unpublishable but I do write), and would like to write believable scenes involving blacksmiths and metal working, but being able to actually work metal would be kind of fun. My brother wants to build a working scale steam locomotive. He is learning what it takes to be able to do it, and building the tooling to make it happen. Today, I started making two new carving knives. My dad taught me how to make carving knives. I changed his design slightly to fit my preferences and experiences. I no longer have a sharp point on the end. My ends are squared off, as if broken there. It cuts more like a wedge than slicing. I found this is more effective, and it is harder get that point through carving gloves to stab your hands. Anyway, I finally found my half inch wide rat-tailed files. They were not where I thought they were. I had put them were I would easily find them. NEVER DO THAT!!! One file makes two knives. Remembering the mistakes in my last set of knives, I planned ahead. The last time, I was making the entire file into a single carving knife, then realized it was way too long even for me. I like my carving knives long as I can reach deep into holes and carve out the wood really nicely. I changed my mind half way through the process and finally broke the knife in half and made too small a tenon on the second knife. It just did not work right, though that second knife ended up better than the first. I started by placing the edge of the file, were I figured the rat tail of the second knife would be, against the grinding wheel and cut it in. I quenched the file in water, then ground on the other side until I had what I considered a good rat tail. I ground the sides at the tail end, placed the file in a vise, and wearing a glove, I snapped the file in half. I ground the file ridges off, quenching often, until the metal was clean. At this point, I quenched often, but nothing I was dong was really critical. I have loads of metal to remove. From this point on, I have to use more care. The proper practice for grinding a knife, is to place your fingers on the backside of the blade while you grind. When the metal gets too hot to hold your hand against it, quench it. You won't lose any temper that way. I have not do that so far, but have not really heated it up too much in the blade area. I will work on both blades at the same time, and will try to take pictures of some of the stages as I go. Tomorrow, I go to my brother's house and see what trouble I will get into. I will have my carving stuff with me, but may do nothing but metal working. will see. Most diaries will not be this extensive, but I thought some background would be good to understand where I am starting from.

I got my brother some Bed rails. He has since found they are extremely hard to cut. What kinds of projects is the bed rails used for? Could they work for tool steel such as for working with wood? Thanks

The material should ALWAYS come DOWN into the tool, so the tool rest or tool holder keeps the tool from moving. It takes a lot more engineering or energy to hold a tool in place when it is being pulled up from the lathe bed or tool rest. With metal working, many lathes will also reverse. One use of that is that you can put the tool inside the work. Running the lathe backwards allows you to cut the inside of your work and still see what you are doing. Otherwise you have to go through contortions to see what you are doing, as you do in wood turning.

Learning wood turning. I never had time to really practice as I worked only on weekends, and usually only half a day. Instead, I did projects each and every time. I always had something to show for my lack of skills, bkut did get results. If I had all day long, several days a week, I would do things differently. When I actually start forging, I will simply start on projects and see how they come out...

Another thing to consider. A beginner might take all day to do something that a master does in half an hour. Pricing when started, based on hours, is difficult because of the speed a master can apply for the same quality job. In my wood working, my sales essentually pays for tools and some supplies. Anything more is pure luck.

My brother does a lot of welding fabrication as part of his job. He has a six foot tall rack with about six pairs of shelves, each a filled half with steel. None of it is the right stuff for any project he is after. I do mostly wood carving and wood turning, though I am learning metal working from my brother. I used to decide on a project, then try and find stock to fit it. I used to never have the right stock for the project I was after. I made a decision this year to choose the stock first, and then figure out what project would fit it. I also am trying not to add to my stock. I suddenly went from having almost no stock, to having more than five years worth of stock. What makes it worse, is that I am still gathering stock faster than I am using it up, and this is with my avoiding gathering stock when possible. I guess I am going to have to quit my job because it is interfearing with my hobbies......

I've been involved in many hobbies and know others in crafts. One always has more stock than you can ever use. 1) How much stock do you keep on hand? (rough guess of some sort) 2 ) Do you pick the project, then look for the right material? 3 )Do you have to get more regularly? or 4 ) Do you look at your stock and pick a project to do with it? 5 ) How many years of project could you make out of your stock if you picked the material first? Thanks. In my wood working, when I chose the project first, I had no stock. when I decided to choose the material first, I ended up with five years worth of stock, all over a weekend......

Some files are only case harden, while others are harden all the way through. I have no idea which is which on my knives and cannot tell the difference. They all need to be sharpened about the same amount. Fully hardened files are generally better for knives of this kind.

Remove all the teeth first. The metal should be smooth before you really start shaping. My method is to hold my fingers on the other side of the blade while grinding. The instant it gets too hot for me to keep my bare fingers on the metal, I quench it. It takes a lot longer that way than forging it and rehardening it. It is a good way to make a knife when you have no blacksmithing facilities. My knives are working knives, not show knives, so they don't look spectacular. I usually make a sheath for the knife by splitting a piece of wood of the right size plus a little extra, trace around the blade, then carve out the minimum wood to fit the blade on one side. I then glue the pieces back together. After they dry, I shape the sheith to something smoothe, possibly following the shape of the knife slightly. On two of my sheiths, I carved them into an animal. The friction of the other side of the wood holds the knife in place, and generally we jam the blade in so it won't come out. Some carvers will carve their knife handles into something. My dad carved his into alligators. I cannot carve with those knives as the handles dig into my hand. My handles are broader than normal carving handles as it fits into my hands a lot better.

Talking out of my ear, but the sand absorbs vibrations, not act as mass. The small grains give way individually with each vibration, absorbing them. Where I work in south Florida, Thuds on the streets such as when they were compacting the road bed during construction, is felt though the solid concrete floor of the building. One can also feel when someone drops a pry bar or some other heavy metal onto the ground outside. What is transferring the vibrations is the solid mass.

I make my carving knives from files. Right now, I am using grinders to shape it. The handles are generally Bishop wood or mohogany, or whatever wood happens to be at hand. I shape my knives with a continuous angle from the back to the edge and sharpen them for carving by laying them flat on the grind stones and on the strop.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt. Using grinders to shape and cut turning tools is comonly used. The bowl gouge and roughing gouge can be made from rod stock. Shape the grinding wheel for the flute profile you are after, and simply grind and grind, and grind. One type of turning tool set one can use is where is is basically a rod with a hole in the end and a set screw to hold metal cutting bits. One then has the handle with a set screw to fit the other end of the rod. One can make a whole set of interchangeable turning tools, with whatever shape bit one needs, whatever type handle suites the needs, even outrigers for stability. All that is needed is a bit of imagination. Welding skills help a lot. The great thing about using the grinder to shape the metal, is that one does not need to heat treat it if it starts that way.