To look like the picture you would need a punch close to the size of the hole. If you use the method you describe you will either have more material around your hole than the pic or a lot more work bringing the piece back to size. Remember this is only one blacksmith's opinion.
Thanks guys, I was happy that I could come up with a design that required no welding and grinding and the client was very happy with the end result. :D
Pretty good for an ornamental shop but doesn't have a lot for an industrial shop like knowing how to set up an upset forging machine or about material calculations
The apprenticeship itself was good you had to work with every machine and different operation in the shop but but the testing was only open book tests on booklets sent by the ARA Educational Bureau so you could either look up answers to specific questions or study the material and know the answers, either way you passed or rewrote it until you did.
I have been certified as a journeyman blacksmith by the American Railway Association along with the 20 plus blacksmiths in the shop I used to work at, that said some of them were excellent blacksmiths and others not so much. I suppose if the testing had been more rigorous not as many would have become journeyman but really it mostly just certified that you had done your time.
I agree, that said, when I was an industrial smith everything was one heat. If a piece required more it was another operation and I find myself thinking through a job that way especially when I'm pricing out a larger job.
That is the results from a Jominy end quench test which is done with water, that said, in practice a steel with as high hardenability as 4150 should be quenched in oil.
I too am interested in the possibilities of hydrogen or Brown's gas as fuel for forging but haven't been able to figure out how big a eletrolysis set-up one would need. I really don't see that (with proper handling) hydrogen would be any more dangerous than propane.