basher

Have you punched the guard yet, its a great shape.

Day 3 continued. As the blades normalise we take a break, in this case an axe break, well apparently a hair down Axe break..... er no not that kind of axe....... anyhow, back the the serious job of quenching. by the end of the day we have 3 blades quenched and in temper, so 3 students are holding the heptiseaqx in the end of day photo

Day 3 the students are introduced to the grinders, Like I mentioned the swords are born in the fire but they grow up on the grinder. We do one normalising after forging and before the sword goes to the grinder, I do 3 in total and save the other two for straightening, sword making is a job of straightening, forge it straighten it , normalise it straighten it , grind it straighten it ad infinitum.... the forged blanks are scraped clean with an angle grinder. and then the grinding begins....... Before I started teaching swordmaking I thought that it would be the forging people would find hard......but its not. freehand grinding is an incredibly subtle thing....luckily the human body is pretty clever. so to the grinders we go....... The En45 steel I use is deep hardening so the grinding pre hardening is about getting the sword blank even, even bevels , even edges, even thickness. the blades are then normalised to a total of 3 times, some were renormalised to straighten during grinding. into the Fogg furnace at 900C (En45 has a high austenising temp). I have an electronic furnace but prefer the Fogg furnace as I can allow the blades to straighten up under gravity if needed.

I added metal as well as Weld.....I will re weigh it to see how much.

Thanks for the comments, I will update later today. The green machine may well need a motor asap ( I have one for it) as my sahinla stopped working 2 days ago.......buzzing motor so either blown or lose phase Ill see tomorow.

Well..... sword Smiths are few and far between and you have to be very well set up to run a class like this..... I am very lucky in that I worked on scrap heap challenge as an engineer for 3 years , the UK pre-curser to the American Junk yard wars...My Job there was to guide people through doing an impossible engineering build in a day.....It taught me a lot about what people are capable of if given the chance..... Day 2:- Another long day of Bashing steel, most of the blades are forged out, 2 days in and we are nearly done with the forging... such is the reality of sword smithing. Swords are born in the forge but they come to age on the grinder..... Gabriel forging some fine bevels... Jet and Ian contemplating where to hit next Me doing a little tweaking... the blades at the end of Day 2 The class at the end of the day buoyant but a little more tired than after day 1....

and the whole thing , it looks like a 200lb anvil......

Hi , yes we pre heated before welding... here is the anvil pre grind.....

I am currently 5 days into a 7 Day sword smithing class . I have been photographing the progress for Facebook and thought it ,may well be interesting for here as well. The class has 7 students and we will be making a single handed double edged sword, we forge , normalise , grind, normalise, straighten, normalise , harden and temper ..... Then straighten, grind , re-temper and polish the blade before punching out the guard and forging it and then fitting the guard to blade.....we then insett the blade in the guard , burn in handles . I have pre punched the pommels as I have found that punching a very thin hole through 60mm steel is not something that can be taught to beginners..... all the fittings are polished before the blade is sharpened and the sword finally assembled, glued up and peened over........... The students will end up with a finished and " Real" sword over the 7 days , This is my 15th sword class and I have taken nearly 100 students now ( I think I am at 98 at end of this class) through the process of making a sword....Most of the students are complete beginners. I have a very well equipped workshop with one grinder per student and numerous forges and anvils as well as my own tooling to speed things along if necessary. Sword making is a specialist field of smithing and it has its specific challenges....and frustrations.....and its hard work.....But................ It is possible to make a good sword on a one week class if you are willing to put the work in ............. I have not managed to capture all of what has been going on....of course as I am mostly busy trying to teach the class, but I hope that this gives a good idea. Day 1:- We start the class by forging a dagger blade, this is our test piece and gives the students a good chance to try out forging and grinding on a sacrificial piece before committing to forging out their sword blade. unfortunately I was too busy to capture this ... The sword blades are forged from EN45 a silicone spring steel that I am very familiar with, It is tough as old boots and its closest US equivalent is 5160. I use it for mono steel swords and crossbow prods (up to 1400 lb so far)..... I pre form the sword tang and a little distal taper on the power hammer, this saves students around a days hard bashing..... students forge the sword point:- and then move on to forging the bevels...I was lucky enough to be taught sword smithing by Don Fogg and whilst my own smithing is a little more free style than Don's exacting forging, his method of Bevel forging is something that I am grateful to be passing on to students. Don was a great influence on me and understood meticulous forging techniques..... I am careful to make sure that I mention that the bevel forging is HIS method of forging...I see no loss of face in giving credit to some of the great Makers who have taught me so much, keeps the ball rolling so to speak...I have been lucky with the people I have managed to learn from. Its a hard days work but at the end of it everybody is pretty pumped. one day down 6 to go .....more later........

As far as the psi vs pump volume goes it kind of depends upon what you want to do with the press. I changed my press from a 2500 psi press to a 1500 and increased the ram speed accordingly it punches a lot better and moves hot steel better but does not have the same grunt as before. For my use it was an improvement. I also feel a lot better about working a home made press at lower pressure.

Post blast furnace a lot of cast iron was refined into wrought steel in a finery . But I only know of very few modern smelters who do this (in-fact only one comes to mind) But as Thomas mentioned above puddling would be the way to go. I do not believe that small scale puddling would be that complicated a task and it is defiantly on my list of things to do.

I have a 50 KG sahinla and it is now my go to hammer for nearly all my forging. I set mine up in a friends workshop and then eventually bought it off of him, they are not the hardest hitting hammer in the world but as long as you keep the belt tension up they are so very predictable.

well the nose job is coming along and the rough welding up complete, bit by bit in off time. certainly over a days welding and a lot of rods. I'll get a picture when its upright again.

It is worth considering that a lot of original sword fullers are scraped in or ground , not all but a large % of them I have a selection of small grinding wheels and matching large thin ones to clean up fullers. In my experience putting a fuller into a sword blade before heat treatment can lead to all sorts of problems with warping as it is near impossible to get it perfectly central if you are making a double edged sword. Swords are more of an exercise in grinding and straightening than forging, they may be born in the fire but they come into the sword they always wanted to be on the grinder. Other peoples experience may vary.

I have watched this a few times , that guy really has the moves.

Thats all quite wonderful. simple perfection through repetition.

massey half hundredweight . running 4hp motor. 5 blows 0.745 10 blows..558 so about what i would expect. looking at the hammers I have and their BPM I think the goliath at 240 bpm would get more work done than the sahinla at 220. I would love to see a chart that contained HP and bpm. I used to run a Goliath on 1hp , the one I have now is 5hp and runs rings around the one horse machine . anyhow .....

I finaly got round to doing this, gas forge and different distances between hammers (the goliath is 20 meters away....... sahinla 50kg (112lb) air 0.720 and 0.499 goliath 60lb mechanical 0.739 and 0.500 so I guess my sahinla is under performing and the little Goliath is doing fine. I'll add that although It would seem that I am getting about the same power from both of these hammers the versitility of the sahinla means that I seem to use it all the time. I'll have a go on the alldays when I have the switch fixed.

......cut it , fold it back, Job jobbed. the reason its done is because its simple.

looking at Alec S"s pictorials in plasticine. One:- is what we are talking over... I think its fine if done well. two:- is the same weld as one but with a lot more material, to get the same hook as on "one"you are going to have to do a great deal more work . Either by upsetting material or a ridiculous amount of work drawing down Material . You would then have to cut material away to get the same sizes poker tip as in "one"and besides I see no benefit in it as a better weld . if you are looking to get more welding done then simply weld gently multiple times using method "One" and there is not an awful lot of section wastage if its done well. You can even take a couple of upsetting (jumping back) welding heats to bring more girth to the faggot and allow another welding heat or two if you feel that is needed . I do this a lot with wrapped sword tips where I am welding in all 3 dimentions by drawing out a little (forging both the edge and flat of the blade) and then jumping up a little to bring back to starting size and then doing it all again, normally 3 times when I do it. Three:- yeh sure thats gonna be stronger ( I wonder how much though) but a lot more work and are you really suggesting that a collared wrap around a faggot weld is a better weld to teach as a first forge weld. I always teach the rams head as a first weld and its basicaly the same as the fold back faggot weld. The reasons I teach it are that its a simple two handed weld, one hand on one bit of metal and one on yer hammer. it also has a great finished product in a Rams head. Making a first rams head really is one of those cool blacksmithing moments , especially the welding. I think in general these kinds of weld are easily done badly in a coke or coal forge and easier to do well in a gas forge for a few reasons , less wastage (less heat) and better visuals of the material in the forge ( so less wastage) less heat at the point of welding so that more force from your hammer blow goes into welding rather than plasticly deforming your metal. this is one of the reasons steel is a lot easier to weld up without excess material reductions its red (or in this case orange)hardness is an advantage. I like to teach these welds in a coke forge as there are bigger lessons that can be learned from using a coke forge , like fire control keeping a clean fire and not burning the steel. but the more time I spend welding steel and iron the more I am running nearly 100% on gas.

Clean brooks anvils are fetching a good price at the moment on ebay UK (that is a high price for the UK)

On my sahinla you can adjust the pedal to ground level by moving the pin on the bar from pedal to valve actuator. my pedal is off the ground but is a heel on the ground movement throughout the range that engages and hits metal.

or just set up a brake cable, bowden cable or push pull cable to do the same. I have seen german hammers set up with this should be very simple.

There are elements of the cut an folded back "faggot weld " that do make it useful as a teaching tool. I will be teaching it tomorrow for making Rams heads. As a weld that can easily be done badly or well there is a lot of instructional value to it, more so with the poker point than a rams head. I weld all sorts of stuff in all sorts of ways, this weld is the same (in principle) as that of a simple bow tie welded axe head and as Dan has said many other examples of un scarfed (I consider a scarf to be the thinning transitional part of a weld not the upset part) and unupset welding that are very viable. The more techniques we have at hand the better off we are, and aside from this I think there is merit in teaching traditional techniques (from the known past) just for the tradition that they impart, aside for the fact that they are normally good and useful .

Of the 50 tongs or so I own the failure has always been at the point where the reigns meet the hinge plate normally because of the sharp (read too sharp) transition or where the hinge plate meets the jaws. I have not had one fail at the forge weld. There are good reasons to have some tongs that have very long reigns, especially if you work large heat radiating section or use a power hammer with both hands on the tongs. I also like the balance of having more weight behind my hand upon occasion.