matt87

Neat. Now I need to go find the other fork-making thread.

Vinegar does indeed do a nice job of scale/rust removal. Pretty far OT here, but you can also save the rusty vinegar to create a gray/black stain on woods that are high in tannins, such as oak.

/OT rambling

'Rusty vinegar' apparently has a similar effect on veg-tanned leather. I plan to try this soon.

Can someone convince Clinton, Feinstein, Schumer or other Constitution-basher to support this? 'It's for the children'. 'If it saves just one life surely it's worth it?' I understand American Rifleman has some excellent technical articles on medical malpractice, just like New England Journal Of Medicine contains some unbiased and well-informed articles on gun control.

Oh, and I definitely think we should restrict syringes that can hold more that 10 doses, they're designed for injecting from the hip into schools, penetrating police body armour and bringing down airliners from two miles away. Only the military and police have a need for them...

Who wants to laugh and perhaps cry at the same time? YouTube - Carolyn McCarthy

Right well you people call it that and we just do it so New Zealand is oviously different than america or where ever your from.i dont need to know fansy words like sub-con to weld properly

'Sub-con' is short for 'sub-contract', as in 'pay a professional weldor to do a professional welding job' -- John acknowledges that his welding capabilities are not up to scratch for such an application as a weld failure when it's under stress it's basically a bomb.

If that anvil could talk?

It would say 'ow'.

What was the previous owner's job, trapping roadrunners?

Electric motors work by spinning an axle. How do you intend to translate this into longitudinal (forward-and-backward) motion 'with only a motor no jack or cylanders or anything else just a motor'?

And here I thought that the sword in the stone was just Celtic mythology.
Finnr

A gentleman that does a lot of historical copper and bronze smelting and casting demos has a theory that the myth may have come about from a cast bronze sword getting stuck in a two-part stone mould...

pattern welding is as old as iron working!

A bloom straight from the furnace is a netrogenous mass of iron and varying carbon content steels. It is first consolidated and worked into a billet. That is going to show some pattern beyond that of simple wrought iron (which would be he soft bits of the bloom taken seperately).

Ah but here don't we get into the debate of what is pattern-welding as opposed to more general fire-welding?

hmmm, Lots of people think that a patternwelded blade will (can) cut better than a mono steel one, and Im inclined to agree with them, under certain circumsances.

If the pattern is forged in certain ways you can effectively have very small serrations along the cutting edge (or directly above the stropped cutting edge) of the blade, which is a definate advantage when cutting some things like meat.

When cutting somthing like cheese it can stick to the side of a monosteel blade, but wont stick to an etched patternwelded blade (as a decent % of the surface area of the blade face is relieved.)

Speaking to someone recently who is writing a post-grad paper on patterwelding they were telling me that quite a bit of research is currently being done on using combinations of metals for industrial guillotine baldes etc, with marked improvements in performance over the best mono's available. Unfortunatly I do not have a citation for this though.

Very interesting and I stand corrected. A similar situation occurs in traditional Scandinavian cross-country skis, where the dark and pale rings (or at least the straight lines in the side-grain) wear at different rates causing lower friction after a while.

The same reasons as for pattern-welded anything; it's pretty and because you can. Today we can produce, choose and heat-treat steels better than at any known point in history, there is no scientifically measurable or quantifiable advantage that pattern-welded steel has over mono steel.

Hi Matt, I am just outside Plymouth, attending Plymouth College of Art, formerly PCAD. Do I recognise you from the British Blades website ?

I only lurk on BB once in a while, haven't even registered. It would be good to meet up with you some point.

Welcome Silverclaws. Where are you to exactly?

I've seen your pipes here (I think?) before, very cool objects!

BCUK probably.

So the best things to make are anvils from rail.

Not in the typical way that people tend to (i.e. laid horizontally and probably various attempts at making it like a small London pattern anvil). The web is so thin that it springs if you hit on the top of it -- not so much as you're likely to see it but enough so you can feel the difference comparing it with a more suitable (dare I say, 'better') anvil. I have heard that it is designed to do this for its original purpose and this makes sense. At the very least weld or have someone weld extra braces between the 'foot' and 'top' of the anvil to reduce the springiness.

A better way to use a section of rail as an anvil is to mount it vertically. Not only does this reduce the springiness of the anvil but it places most of the mass under the hammer, again increasing its effectiveness. IMO the reason people don't typically do this is because a) there is a general understanding of what an anvil 'should' look like (think: Will E. Coyote) rather than what it needs to be and they're used to seeing rail laid horizontally.

A piece of rail mounted vertically doesn't give you as many features as, say, a London pattern anvil. That is not a problem; sophisticated modern anvil designs such as the London, American, Portsmouth, German, Italian, Styrian patterns and all the other designs that have been developed over they millenia are 'luxury' anvils compared with what was used for most of blacksmithing history and prehistory -- often a roughly 4 inch cube piece of bloomery iron or sometimes a boulder. Other features and tools can be added as you need them -- with a bickern, a hardy, a bending fork whatever you need. These can be held by a vise, held in a stake plate, stuck in a tree stump however you need to do it.

Since you have 12 feet of rail you're probably best off burying most of it in the ground if you can; it's free, produces a very secure yet adjustable mount and it means people are less likely to steal it. For more details see one of Glenn's entries to the 'adjustable anvil stand' competition. Alternatively Anvilfire has a number of excellent suggestions.

Smiths in Nepal often use scrap railway iron as stock for forging kukuris, and smiths from other parts of the 'developing' world often use it as stock for making various tools also. This is the result of a labour-rich material-poor society; the enormous amount of effort involved in turning a big hunk of rail into stock small enough for you to forge by hand is probably not worth it but that is for you to decide.

hmm i might have the wrong idea in what buggered means

As usual it's a matter of local dialect making communication 'interesting'. In this case, 'buggered' means something quite... unsuitable for posting on a 'family friendly' forum. Wikipedia will help you.

Steve, Vaughan's have hand-crank blowers and portable forges in their catalogue, but get ready for 'sticker shock'. Angele (German) has a hand-cranker also, a more reasonable price: - ANGELE Schmiedetechnik - ANGELE-SHOP

Most modern portable forges can be built by hand, to a greater satisfaction and lower material cost than buying one.

I avoid buying bottles of 'boiled' inseed oil as it has a reasonable probablility of containing heavy metal dryers; yes it may actually be just boiled linseed oil but I like to err on the side of caution with such things.

What does USP stand for in this context? I tried an acronym dictionary but nothing was appropriate.

Apologies if linseed oil is difficult to find or expensive over there, I can pick up a 250ml bottle of raw or 'boiled' for a couple of

What's wrong with raw linseed oil for food applications? It's quite commonly used on wooden worktops, carved spoons, bowls, cups etc. It'll dry if you leave it long enough. All my hammer handles are treated with several coats of it, as are several other wooden objects inside and outside the home, and I have made canvas oilcloth with it on many occasions. So-called 'boiled' linseed oil should of course be steered well clear of; it tends to contain heavy-metal dryers these days and polymerises a lot faster so is more likely to be a fire risk. If you're really worried get some 'flax-seed oil' from the supermarket or healthfood shop; it's exactly the same stuff but guaranteed to be food-grade. Heck linseed is a food; it's the seed of the linen (flax) plant. In general I much prefer a linseed finish to a varnish (especially a modern nitro varnish); it nourishes the wood, it allows the wood to 'breathe', it can be reapplied easily, it gives a much better tactility and looks so much better. Besides which it's 'natural' and has been used for millenia.

Can't you get pine tar from a pine tree? My observation is that it's not as dificult as obtaining maple sap - pine will exude tar if you look at it wrong!

Tar and sap (the 'blood' of the tree, which will often leak during Spring) are very different substances. Maple syrup is sap from the maple tree which has been concentrated by boiling. A similar product can be made from birch trees but the reduction ratio is much higher to get the same viscosity. Pine tar on the other hand is distilled from pine wood especially parts of the tree where it is highly concentrated such as the roots and stumps. This video YouTube - Ray Mears in Sweden part 3/7 shows a modern method which also produces high quality charcoal which is used by a smith to forge a laminated puuko!

Thankyou for your information Glenn and Brian.

What steel and heat-treatment would you recommend if I were to build a sheer or mild steel? As I recall Bealer recommends a plain 1% carbon with a straw temper (roughly 60RC).

You can make a hardy cutter from a flat piece of steel, say a piece 1" by 3" by 3/8". Instead of a square post you basically cut, grind or forge two shoulders onto the blunt end of the hardy so that it fits the hole diagonally. The cutting end is shaped just as you'd think. A piece of leaf-spring would be a good choice, though all sorts of pieces (scrap and new) could be used, such as an old chisel.

I am having a hard time finding this one, it doesn't link for me and when I look in the blueprints it stops a 200, I know I am missing something here. thanks for any help. kevin

The blueprints above the 200 series and below the 1000 series are currently not available, apparently to do with a technical issue. Glenn, Andrew and the rest of the IFI team are working on the issue and it will be resolved 'shortly'.

As Mike said, steel guitar strings are usually a fairly hard spring steel. They wear or break every now and then so perhaps you could get a few for trying out from a guitar-playing acquaintance or perhaps from a guitar shop's bin. They come in a variety of gauges though the larger ones are usually a wire wrapped around a separate wire core.

Yes oak will work to make charcoal. As a rule hardwood charcoal burns longer but a little colder than softwood charcoal, though it will be hot enough.

Judging from another thread, it seems you are interested in camping, hiking or some other outdoors activity. Is there any chance you can (morally and legally) collect wood from nature? A few bits of dead non-rotted roundwood will make for good whittle-tang knife handles, and if you're handy with a saw you can cut up scales. Letting it season before use is a good idea though.

'Drawing' is a technique whereby a smith reduce the cross-section of a piece of metal by stretching it in one or more other directions. That nugget alone (which could be found by actually reading a basic blacksmithing primer -- book, magazine or Internet article) should help you to find the information you are looking for.

If you take a piece of clay (plastacine/modelling or otherwise) you can work it like a piece of hot metal, but without the heat, mess and heat times. Plastacine moves a lot easier too. You can not only practise your hammer technique any time but also learn about different techniques by doing.