metalmangeler

Sell it. If an item is of good quality and is presented in good locations and priced fair it will sell sometimes the item will see more  realestate than I plan then it becomes an item that is not going to be a production item.

Vulcans are not the top anvil but it is a useable tool and this one is in good shape if you got it up here for a reasonable price you did good. tools made in your anvil will fit your anvil better than tools made some other way. there is some debate of the advisability of making stem tools in a hardy hole, I do it, I think the main thing is make sure the tool you are forging is really hot and do not miss the hot steel and make direct hits to the tail with a sledge hammer.

Lots of good ideas. I would recommend you have a soft hammer for striking hard hammers safely, then if you have a selection of hammers you also have a selection of top tools. using a ball pien or rounding hammer and a correct sized block of steel a ball swedge should be easy to make you do not need the hardy stem just strike straight down and it should stay on you anvil. (the stem is good but might be more than you would want to make for a relatively small project.) remember your top tool does not need to match the shape you are wanting, you can over lap your forging to get the shape in the block you are looking for.

As you likely know Jim Poor was very involved in horseshoe forging and shoeing competitions. A lot of these competitors use a 2# hammer as their light and as their heavy forging hammer by gripping the handle farther back. I would bet that the handle your hammer came with is what Jim would want on his own hammer, not that he would want to shorten it to fit.

I use one sometimes, I like a rounding hammer most, but there are jobs where a cross pien is the best tool and other times where a diagnal is the way to go and still other times where a straight is the way to go, I think you need all of these.

To make an assortment of twists on these you do not need to go to square, 2 flat sides will work, I often make a wide round flat area in the center leaving a ridge down the center as you often see on leaves, starting with a c shape then 1/2 twist to make an S hook. I like to bring my rat tails clear around to meet the original stock so there is not a hook on the end to catch things.

Your hooks are really nice and consistant.

As has been suggested the easy thing at this point and what I would do is rasp the handle into alignment. As far as future tool eyes I tend to try to forge quickly on most things, but I try to really take my time when starting an eye as this is a very easy thing to goof up that is why we all seem to know about rasping handles. As for Tom Clark I watched him make hammers  a couple times when I watched him his were not predrilled, I don't know if he did that as a practice himself or not at some point in time, but I did see a blank that he had discarded after just starting a hole as it was slightly out of allignment. I would have been temped to try salvaging it had I done it, he had made a lot more hammers than I likely ever will so discarding it at least if it is a seller was no doubt the right choice.

I will be doing the gun show in Wasilla Jan.23 - 24. I talked to Pat and plan to do a demo on hinge making at his shop on Friday the 15th of Jan. at 7:00 pm should be late enough for anyone from Anc. who would like to come. We expect to be finished by 9:00. I will be only working on the version of strap hinge I normally make, if someone wants to demo a different type if they are efficent there should be time. Mark

After you learn to make a burner from Tristan load his anvil in your truck while he is distracted and you can get 2 things done at the same stop. If he sees this you may have to work on getting him distracted.

be sure to come to our January meeting at Pat's .

This is a difficult place to find an anvil most of the time. One does pop up from time to time. You would do well to learn what you are willing to pay and how to evaluate the possible anvil so you are ready when you find one so you do not buy junk or wait to long and someone else gets it. until then a large scrap would be a usable plan and if you really like smithing you could decide to buy new, but don't really want to do that if you are not sure you will stick with it long term. Many here do not believe in buying new, of course we all would like cheap or free, but if you are not old and you consider the life of the anvil even new ones are not that expensive on per day of use basis.

There was a time when Jay Sharp hammers were pretty common in the farrier community. Some people did not like the really flat face but what I discribed it did really well. I don't have a cavalry hammer I had started making my own by the time I heard of them and being cheap and apparently stupid I never saw the need.

One thing flat faces work pretty well for is the outside of a radius say a horseshoe they don't leave as many hammer marks there. really need to stir the pot.

Charles try boxing heels on the horn with a really flat face as opposed to a what you are using, I think you might like the results.

I think the blade shape and size look pretty useful for a hunting knife.

When the question is has anyone ever made... the answer is almost always yes. Whether it was worth making is another matter.

I would say for me the powerhammer is the tool i am most missing when it is down. Possibly as I have more backups of other stuff

If you punch and drift round you might have less material in your cheeks than you want. Most good eye punches are long and thin in a cross section, for this reason.

As far as your tool quest which is really the minor deal here, this guy likely has more people offer him tools than you ever will, if you are on his radar when someone wants to sell an anvil or vice or hot set and they ask him he might send them to you. This is a valuable contact in a number of ways.

I am impressed with how fast you are progressing.

They are recommending the high tempering temps for hot work, and a lower tempering temp for cold work. I of course do not know how you will use your hammer. I hit  a lot of tooling with mine, I want my dies slightly harder than my tools as the tools are cheaper to replace. In the past I left a lot of my tooling in a normalized state on the struck end just for this reason. tooling like this will give out fairly quickly. Now I am making many of my struck tools from 4140 and tempered in to the 600 range. I think these tools would likely mar the dies tempered to 1000 made from S7. Hopefully you made the dies a little proud so you will be able to dress them and keep using them for years. The data sheet that I had been using had a tempering graph showing the rockwell curve at different tempertures. If you can find one of those before you heat treat that might be helpful.

On a side note I have used S7 for tooling but never in larger sizes like you are doing.

Opperating only from memory I think you are tempering to high, I think for S7 you might want 700, or less. H13 was like 1000. You would do well to look this up rather than trust what you find on the internet forums.

I am planning to do the tong class so that it will have 2-3 sub classes at the same time so it should be good for different skill levels. A true beginner class. A class for those who have made tongs before and want to work on say bolt tongs or offset V jaw tongs. and a class for those who have made tongs and have a powerhammer in their shop. Just to clarify this is not just a beginner thing. Mark

Frosty he tore it off that is why his hand is in the picture.

I also think that for a knife that you are selling you should use a steel of known material. For personal use just depends, I would use a steel I thought I could heat treat without much trouble. Find out by heat treating a scrap and then try a destructive test. I use quite a bit of scrap for my forging tools, dies, hammers, tongs. I also use known tool steels for these same tools, it depends on the value of the tool and the time I expect it to last, or I expect it to take to make. You don't want to spend lots of time making something that self destructs in the final stage, or when you first try to use it.

If you want a flat surface you can weld a bar on the end so you can use the rail upside down. then you can have both the flat surface and the rail surface as you desire.

If you want a flat surface you can weld a bar on the end so you can use the rail upside down. then you can have both the flat surface and the rail surface as you desire.