freeman

Absolutely gorgeous, I would love to have something like these in my kitchen.

here's mine.

Now that the Anvil's Ring is bringing back their gallery you should consider submitting photos of this project. Amazing work.

Frosty You make a good point. I guess when it comes down to it I don't know what my goal is at the moment beyond improving my skills as a blacksmith. I guess I don't have one yet.

I'll see about getting some photos together for a tutorial next time I fire up the forge. It's a fairly straightforward process but I'm not real sure how to describe it.

My pleasure, I hope it comes in handy.

Update: I haven't been able to get Fred Pugh on the phone lately and I'm running low on coal again. Does anyone know if he's still an active supplier of coal? If not I would sure appreciate any tips on a new local supplier. Thanks in advance.

Dunno if it's something in the water or what but I, too, have ventured into forging bottom tooling. One of the local smiths who is just starting out stopped by the shop yesterday morning with his anvil in tow. The last time we'd talked he had complained about not having a hot cut so I offered to help him get one together. After rummaging around in the scrap pile for a while we can up with some round stock that was beefy enough to fit the hardy hole on his anvil and fell to beating on it with hammers. Here are the results: While it's definitely not as pretty as the ones Mr. Brazeal makes it turned out better than anything I have for my own anvil. Another case of the cobbler's children I guess. Earlier that morning while I was heating up the forge and waiting for the other smith to show up I decided to experiment with a chunk of pavement breaker bar I picked up from a flea market a couple months ago. I had been dreading trying to work the material by hand with no striker but I got impatient once the forge was lit and decided to give it a go anyway. After hammering myself nearly senseless, I managed to hammer out what may be the weirdest looking v-block I have ever seen: I'm on the fence here. On the one hand it definitely functions as a v-block (no complaints there) the only straight lines on it are in the center channel. Definitely there is room for improvement. The way the sides flare out at the top is especially distressing. I'm thinking I probably should have knocked in the sides at the top of the block before hammering in the channel. Thoughts? Oh yeah, while we're on the topic, should I bother heat treating bottom tools that are made of tool steel?

15 minutes sounds about right, maybe a little faster than my way. I'll have to experiment.

Link for those interested: www.metalartistforum.com/maf/index.php?/topic/7396-new-work-bamboo-lotus-gingko-koi/ And yes, those are some very impressive ginkgo leaves.

Any idea how long it takes you to make one?

I appreciate the advice Frosty. I'm still on the fence on doing trade shows and the like. I patently dislike "production" work and they seem like quite a hassle for the $$$, but if I do decide to go down that road I'll definitely keep this in mind.

My pleasure, I hope it helps! By the way, round stock should work just as well, you might try either upsetting your bar or just go ahead and start working it same as above. I typically use round stock when I'm doing smaller leaves like towards the end of a branch.

Here's how I do them: Start by spreading the end of a bar by peening, then knock in the corners to begin defining the outer curve of my leaf: Then using my guillotine swage I isolate the body of the leaf from the rest of the bar. I then start drawing down the section of bar behind the leaf. This eventually becomes the stem. I repeat the steps listed until I've got the leaf fanned out to about 90 degrees and the stem necked down to about two or three times the thickness of the finished stem. At this point I start working the leaf in the vise. With the stem locked into the vise I start upsetting the outside edge of the leaf. This pushes down the "wings" and builds up enough material to continue spreading the leaf using a cross peen. While upsetting be sure to work both sides of your leaf evenly and keep an eye out the outside curvature of the leaf, you'll want to keep this roughly in line with what you want the finished product to look like. Also, be careful not to curl the leaf over on itself while upsetting. Now I take the upset leaf back to the anvil and spread it further with a cross peen, going back and forth between upsetting in the vise and spreading on the anvil until I have the overall leaf shape and thickness I'm after. Once the leaf shape is where I want it I isolate the stem from the rest of the bar and draw it out. At this point I'll finalize the veins on the leaf using the sharpest cross peen I've got. I go with a low heat and lots of light rapid blows while turning the material on the horn of the anvil. Then chisel out the center notch (some ginkos may have more than one notch) Last I take a low heat (medium red) and using the step of my anvil I add a little curvature to the leaf to give it a little life. I also typically brass brush mine but that's entirely optional.

I didn't take any pics of this batch unfortunately. I ground the billet on all sides looking for obvious delamination and didn't see anything and had worked it hot for a couple heats, again with no signs of delamination.

Albert, thanks for the link! I ran another test billet with the iron removed (brass + copper) and managed to get the stack to bond. This time around I used a vise to compress the stack instead of hitting it with a hammer. Unfortunately while I was experimenting with working the billet it sheared when I tried to work it cold. I speculate that I had not sufficiently consolidated the stack before I started tinkering with it. Differing working characteristics of the two metals used may also be to blame. In any case I'm slowly getting closer to success. If I come across anything else noteworthy I'll post here.

You are correct, 1/4" round.

That is a truly gorgeous leg vise. Your additions blend nicely with the original lines. Way to get the old girl back in service! Also, thank you so much for documenting the process. This is very valuable information for anyone considering refurbishing an old vise. Looking forward to your description of forging the replacement spring.

The maple accent on the handle is a very unexpected (and thus pleasing) touch. Keep up the good work.

What a delightful piece, I'm sure the boss will appreciate it.

While your rivets may not be domed they look cleanly done to me and they add a nice contrast. I've pretty much given up on brass at this point. Between it's irritating cold working characteristics (it work hardens very fast) and it's propensity to behave poorly under heat I'm thinking just copper and bronze from hear on out. Of course your mileage may vary. Have you tried making rivets with mild steel yet? The process is very similar to nail making,

I had to look up "courting candle". What a fascinating piece of history. It definitely looks like you nailed it. Well done, sir.

Nothing wrong with taking things slow. Slow is safe, safe is good. If you can run lesser wesser consistently with no flips or swims you should have no difficulties on the Ocoee provided your trip leader knows the "kinder gentler" lines. SYOTR.

Short form: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I'm basically mimicing two ukranian dudes I saw on youtube that welded up a mokume billet using a similar rig with no visible flux or any other obvious oxidation preventative. I (naively?) assumed they were banking on a seriously reducing atmosphere in their forge to pull it off but all of this is guess work on my part. My takeaway: mixing grossly different metals (iron, copper/brass) in a first attempt was clearly a mistake. it sounds like I may need to do something to help prevent oxidation in the billet I jumped the gun pulling the billet out of the fire I'll do another run maybe tomorrow night taking these points into account. Thanks for giving me something to go on!

So I just racked up another abject failure attempting to make a mokume billet from iron, copper, and brass. Here's the results: and a view of my torque plate: So here's what went down: I cut up a bunch of scrap stock I had lying around into 1 inch strips. Each strip was then thoroughly sanded, washed in a light detergent to remove any residual oils, and then rinsed thoroughly. Once rinsed each piece was dried with a paper towel and then stacked over by my wood stove for further drying. Once I'd gone through the entire stack I loaded them up into the torque plate and used a bench vise to compress the stack before tightening all of the bolts down. I then fired up my new (half finished) gas forge under the assumption that it should have no trouble reaching temps required for this kind of work and I tossed the plate in the fire. As soon as the plate started showing color (dull red) I started rotating it to try to keep temps even. I'd spin it 180 degrees on one turn and on the next I'd flip it. The entire time I'm eyeballing the stack waiting to see "sweat". When both plates and the stack had reached a medium orange color I saw the stack slip a bit. I figured surely the brass alone couldn't take much more of this and that had to be the sign I was waiting for so I took the plate out, set it on the anvil, and gave it a firm whack. Imagine my surprise when this resulted in an immediate (and spectacular) spray of molten metal all over the shop. Miraculously neither myself nor anything else was set on fire. I figured that was probably enough with the bashing so I fished the now cherry red stack out of the plate and tapped it a couple of the times on the anvil, at which point it crumbled into individual slabs. In celebration I threw my hammer across the shop, turned the forge off and stomped into the house. So, any ideas where I screwed up?