nonjic

Me and my father have known the owners of the scrappers we have used for the last 30 years, a couple of years ago I asked one of the yard monkeys if they ever have any anvils come through.... He muttered something, and then went to talk to the owner (these yards have tighter security than fort knox with all the druggies, tramps and thieves they get through every day, as a 'cash' business) So, he walks back out of the office and said 'yeah, coz its you boss said you can look at the anvils'.... we walk round the corner to where there is a pile of a couple of dozen huge anvils, stacked up behind the owners new benz, all growing moss! (a couple looked over 600lbs ) I gave them lumps of iron and steel a quick, slightly disinterested glance and walked back into the shed where the owner had appeared. Now I had the equivalent of about four thousand bucks in my hand, the foldy Benjamin type, from my copper weigh in, and a pick up truck parked near by..... this is gonna be good I thought I looked him square in the eye, casually dragging my thumb across the 3" thick bundle of notes in my hand which made a gentle murmur ,,,,, 'go on then I said' - cool as I could , Ill take a few of those off your hands.. He looked me in the eye, and I saw his eye flick momentarily down to my hands, gently leafing the notes that were his about 10 mins before... A hint of a smile in his eyes told me a deal was about to be struck, then he chuckled a bit.... then he said a line ill never forget " I said you could look at them, they aint for sale " cruel, so cruel !! fact was, he liked them, they represent the steel game, and the money I had in my hand meant about as much to him as a dollar meant to me... they are still there, ill grind him down one day My regular scrappers, and the others I use occasionally have all told me the same thing, in recent years they just don't get anvils in anymore (except on the very odd occasion). I think ebay has seen to that. The ones they do get they know the value of as a tool or easy resale, they diffidently don't get 'recycled' anymore.

you seem to be missing the point of what folks here are saying a bit.. People are just worried that if they go 'yeah dude, hammer away on the old spring, dont worry to much about it, sure it will be fine...' to a person with not much experience in metal work, ....and then that person trys chopping stuff in their front yard, it breaks, and half of it ends up stuck in their little sisters guts, its not very responsible to have said 'go for it dude' in the first place. Its not a secret order of swordsmiths :rolleyes:

Dr Jim, you are top of the tree with this stuff! dont feel you need to explain yourself. To those just getting started, show pictures of your work, and explain what you are doing, the experienced guys will be more than happy to point you towards the right path. The problem ive found is everytime I learn somthing about swords it just opens up another 5 unanswered quetions in my mind! There are far to many 'keyboard commandos' out there. I have respect for people who go and try, no matter how badly, and then ask questions. Theres no myth and mystery to making swords, its a lot of quite complicated sciency stuff, combined with very good manual dexterity. If you cant flat grind, and heat treat a 10" knife perfectly your wasting your time trying to make a decent sword.

Thought I had made a patternwelded sword once.... then handled some of owens and realised Id make a pretty looking piece of metal, not a sword another few dozen hours grinding and its sword 'like',. gotta keep plugging away at the skills, there are no short cuts other than having someone willing to share the knowledge, which can take years off the learning curve!

The power hammer base would make a wicked post anvil in its own right!

Looking good! I try not to do any work on the handle untill I have heat treated the blade now, just seems to tempt fate! (though I have started to work with high carbon water quench steels and my 'oops' rate is still pretty high )

Hey Dan, I got the lil old dear off ebay, about £30 directly on my route home from work so had to buy her! guessing about 3/4 cwt or so. I had to strip about 15 layers of paint off, she lives in the corner of my coke forge now (away from the fire a bit though), for the occasions when you have got to be really fast for a forge weld (consolodating medieval horse shoe scrap into workable iron etc) The face is steel, sparked up pretty high carbon with an angle grinder ( I took a couple of mm off as the poor little thing had been used as a cutting table ) Hope the workshop is getting a bit closer to completion!

yeah gotta be a couple or three hundred years old! (doesnt stop her getting used though _

heres the latest addition to the stable dont think shes a spring chicken, but has lovely rebound and character!

the biggest headache is getting the whole shebang up to an even heat for quenching !

Anderson, Am I reading it right that you have basically doubled the blow energy of the 2011 Blu hammers by adding a second valve to them?

In industry fabricated hammer frames, no matter how solidly built, have a much shorter service life than a comparible weight cast iron frame. Somthing to do with the way the different materials transmit vibration.

Should weld up easily enough, just make sure you hold it at a good welding heat for a while once its all stuck if you dont do many folds after welding it up. You want the carbon to equalise throughout the billet to get a decent blade (the nails will probably be nothing better than mild steel, and therefore wont harden without 'borrowing' some of the carbon from the file pieces)

Nice words, thanks guys, means a lot to me! Been playing with knifemaking for quite a while now and can feel it start to click into place, if that makes sense!

lovely knife. I appreciate a flat, flat grind. (I mean, errrm, really really flat ) . Now thats flat! I thought I could flat grind, then had a play with a Howard Clark bowie, and I realised what 'MS' quality really meant. And I realised I gotta practice, lots! Seamless transition between the guard and handle, now thats a tricky one to pull off when they sand at completly different rates! That knife looks like its doing 100 mph standing still!

This is my 3rd try at sheath making, Ive got to say I love leatherwork! its almost instant gratification compared to making the knife! I may have shown the knife before, but I have just given the handle a re-profile, so it wont hurt to show it again! handle is desert iron wood, the blade is a scrag end of damascus that would normally have just gone in the scrap!

Dont worry about overheating the steel, so long as its not burnt (sparkling) Take an old file, and grossly overheat it and quench in a bucket of cold water. Snap it (if its not already broken in 2) look how big the grain is, it will be like brown sugar. Now take the broken piece of file with the massive grain and heat it untill a magnet wont stick, and not much hotter. Let it cool slowly in still air. Repeat another couple of times. Then heat just above non magnetic, water quench and break again. The grain will be super fine. Forging a sword is dead easy. Heat treating is the important bit. (and grinding them well is a *****) :lol:

shot him a PM about the Massey a couple of days ago ! ;)

It would be worth you all phoning your local scrappers and telling them you will pay minimum 'tripple scrap price' for any blacksmithing stuff or power hammers, they may put it to one side if then dont have selling outlets already, they are business men ! Grant, the heavy scrap (would prob class as a bit lower grade than 'cylinder block scrap' ) will be paying about £gbp 220 a ton foldy cash price this week, so about $350 per 2200#, well worth a lift with a hiab (so $1600/ is not far off the mark) hope he gets it back edit, people are stealing drain covers in the UK at the moment scrap is that high! btw, if you put on a high Viz jacket you can do just about anything without people raising an eyebrow.

Ive done a bit, not an easy weld but satisfying! It does etch up nicely. Sadly no photos, it was a while ago!

your on the money with the bpm' thing grant! ive just bought a near perfect Massey 5cwt for pocket change, the firm just wanted it gone as it was to slow making the parts (4" bolster chisels) oh, yeah, their weapon of choice ? a 50 kg (or thereabouts) spring hammer running at about 350 blows a min horses for courses. edit, should the next power hammer test thread be ' hit it for 10 seconds / hit it for 20 seconds ' ? :D

:blink: a 155lb Blu can outwork a 700lb nazel ! test is good fun though B)

I did the week long class at 'Bashers' last year, enjoyed it very much, and it shaved a few years off the learning curve :D

Thats cool wondered about doing something similar myself in idle moments! its gonna get pretty hot pretty quick though! wonder how much better it would work if the cylinders were much closer together with shorter hoses connecting them ?

If im in a good working mood I can make a reasonable size 150+ layer straight laminate billet in a couple or 3 hours, using a hammer like an Anyang 55lb or 88lb. To be honest it takes me longer to prep all the starting stock for the first weld than it does to weld it, and draw it out to a very neat, almost scale free bar thats say, 24" long x 1.25" wide x .25" thick. I usually draw out as neat as I can ( which is within 2 mm or so on width, and dead right on thickness if I use a stop block (kiss block) on the bottom die ) , then waft an angle grinder over it when its one long bar (I do this when its cooling from drawing out, its much quicker than cleaning up lots of small pieces!) I then chop into say 10 pieces with a cutting disc in an angle grinder, restack it and weld. If ive started with 20 layers I would be a 200 after one 'restack' I used to weld and draw out under a hydraulic press, but find the hammer at least 3x quicker, neater and it blasts away all the glassy flux which is a real pain to grind off if you draw out under a press.