basher

This is an interesting thread. I have owned an anvil much like this one and I got rid of it in preference for a more modern anvil.. they come up for sale regularly and would normally not fetch as much as a more conventional anvil. what time period are you all referring to with "colonial" and does that make this anvil valuable on your side of the pond. all the best Owen P.S where are you all getting your in-depth anvil knowledge from? as there really isnt much in the UK I can find. cheers Owen

unless you are serving industry then pretty much everything you make is going to be a luxury and priced as such. Dont fight it. Make the most of it. One of the biggest problems with beginning blacksmiths is that they imagine that they are selling to them selves. People still have money and have a need to spend some of it to feel good about themselves. Have a trip to Selfridges or liberties and see exactly how much things do cost in the real world. underpricing as well as overpricing will put people off of buying something. Its taken me a long time to work out pricing for myself, if you can get this sorted early on it makes it easier in the long run.

It may be worth your while trying to find a commercial ore for your first few smelts. Having a fixed grade of ore means that you are a lot more likly to have sucess and therefore more likly to be able to smelt your local ore when you find some.

I have had quite a few Peter wrights and only one that was heavily stamped where I was able to read all the writing.

If you have ground mushrooming off of the hammer then make sure that you have ground the splits/ cracks away as well. Some of my favourite hammers are old re dressed hammers for 50p or less. all the best Owen

Hi Geoff, Good to ave another bladesmith here. There is a great lad of diverse info here . I have learned a lot. See you around. Cheers Owen

or if you would like some specific information rather than be linked to a general HT page with pretty much no info to help the poster with his request.....:- I use a steel that is equivalent to 1050 but have used 1045 equivalent although I find that the 1045 does not keep an edge like I would require from one of my axes , the small bit of difference in C makes a big difference in reality. I temper at 250C 482F for two one hour periods, this will leave you with a tough and easy to sharpen axe, you can temper lower for a little more hardness say 230C , 446F . the temper of an axe depends upon specific use and on the edge geometry. I use a converted domestic oven or a proper ht oven depending upon size of axe... good luck and post pictures. cheers Owen

I am looking for an assistant in London / Kent UK. Currently for 1 or 2 days a week with possibly leading to a formal apprenticeship. duties will include tidying up , blade polishing , grinding, workshop maintenance and just lending a hand. Must be local and have means of transport to my forge at DA163DA UK please contact me at owen@owenbush.co.uk. all the best Owen

Well as much as I do like a nice bit of concrete....... I prefer a hammer. Especialy one of these. I have a kHz controls kit on my agenda in the next couple of years.....

I wouldn't have a clue on that one. I only noticed that my coke was "bad" after reading about it on the internet, its really not a problem , just not as good as it could be.

over here its 450 a tonne for the " bad" stuff and £550 for the (apparently) better eastern european stuff. we have a problem with poor quality coke, it forms a lot of ash and poor clinker. If its ok stuff you are quids (or euro ) in.

I have been making arrow heads..... and getting back into archery again, this time with the long bow. I will be going for an informal assessment at the guild of traditional bowyers and fletchers at the end of the month, with the aim to (hopefully) become a master arrow smith next year ....all being well. They are tricky little buggers to make and I am finally getting there (I think).....Defiantly a back to school kind of thing..... Here are a few swallow tail arrow heads. 3 finished and 2 in the rough. 4 of them are bloomery material and one is twisted damascus. cheers.

I am working on arrow heads at the moment , the scale, finesse and finikityness of these tiny pieces means that I have done more wrong arrow heads than any other kind of smithing, I have a big fail pile but am getting the routines I need and they are coming out well now . I have had to change or make most of the tooling to adapt to the scale differences... I have an inlayed patternwelded ingelery sword coming up and I think that will be a similar learning curve.

I have used many masseys in other peoples workshops , and never seen one used like that. nor did I know they would do that kind of work. that would go a long way to explain why they are so sought after.

Hi Gareth , lots of good info here. It sounds like you will be bitten by the bug .good luck , Im 20 years in and still enjoying the craft and learning new stuff all the time. If you find yourself in SE london... drop in.

thanks for the posts. Moony, If I am ever over your way I would love to visit, and you would be most welcome here if you are ever on this side of the planet. as an update. I did have someone here for what I would call long term work experience, it worked out ok . they left to continue their craft at Hereford doing an artist blacksmithing degree. when the blacksmithing apprentice ship scheme comes back to life I will look again for another apprentice and do it properly (possibly) I found the whole experience a mixed blessing and defiantly lost out on a great deal of my work time and all of my at work private space (where I do my best work, free of other things to pull me away) I think what I need is a part time person ...? my version of bladesmithing is so personal and specific that a trained blacksmith was really not a lot of use to me.

It looks like a good hammer. I have no idea about the availability of hammers over there. in the uk I believe a working hammer like that would cost between £800 and £1500 pounds although they can go for a lot less and if you needed it its worth paying more for a hammer. I hope you strike a good deal.

I am wondering what you are going to measure temp with? A standard type K thermocouple will be eaten up in a welding forge in no time at all. as perviously stated my welding forge gets to 1350C (2460F) to 1400C (2550F) and will successfully weld carbon steel to mild steel using borax a s a flux . I only have one gas forge that happily welds mild steel to mild steel again with flux) and that runs up to a temp that will melt pure iron so over 1535C (2800F) forges do not last long at this temp. As an aside a coke forge will get to 2000C (3630F) and charcoal a lot hotter up to 2700C 4890F. If you are looking to dry weld (ie without flux) then you will need a very hot gas forge which is in the neutral to reducing range . In general excessive oxidisation is one of the main problems in a gas forge and is the worst ememy of forge welding.

if you are looking for indicators I use 2 .as colours are a really random way of transferring information (especially when jupiter aligns with Mars, that red peripheral glow really throws you off!!). I weld with borax as a flux and I am looking for it to be bubbling around crazily (allegedly like kids running around in a play ground) I am also looking for it to smoke when pulled from the fire. If your borax dries up the fire is too oxidising. sparksas an indication are too hot for almost all the materials I use. I have had a typr R thermometer in my welding forge and it read between 1350C and 1400C.

Solid state fusion is a process where time , temperature and pressure are all factors ( as is absence of oxides). In industry some roll welding applications are done a low as 350C however the pressures are huge (10's of thousands of tonnes). there is also the surface plate phenomenon of welding at room temperature over a long time. In practical smithing terms you are looking to weld the material at a temperature where it still has integrity (ie before you burn it or turn it to cheese) so carbon steels are welded at a lower temp than mild or wrought iron, which have higher melting points and can be worked hotter. I have heard tales of smiths welding in the red range and must admit that I am sceptical of this whilst not denying that it is certainly a possibility. My take on it is that I like to weld at a temp that is as high as possible without damaging the materials, so carbon steel is welded lower than wrought etc.

I love the feeling I get when i eventually empty out the pile and take a few hundred kg to the scrappy.

all in all this was a satisfying and very busy week..... Watching the rock turn into bloom , and then the bloom turn into steel bar and then the bar turn into knives . .....But all good things must come to an end and this was no exception. the last day was spent busy , sharpening blades and burning in and shaping handles. The handles were glued on with hot cutlers resin (which I use a lot) . The students made very different knives from one another and I hope they went away with a realisation of what they had achieved during the week. Defiantly a journey of discovery on many levels. Here is the class after 7 days hard work. and their blades and finished knives , everybody opted for a knife shape they would use after the class. From rock to ....... and some close ups of the hada... I would like to thank my students for a great class, It was a real pleasure to help you all along with this week. Personally I have emerged from it with a new eye to the material and a fiercer flame kindled as a result.

And so we continue... 4/12 days in to the class and we are at what would normally be the beginning of the bladesmithing process... we have taken ore (magnetite and hematite) and smelted it into 2 bloom one high carbon steel and the other lower. those two blooms were processes into bar stock with the high carbon steel as core material in a san mai (3 layer) billet. From this point on my photos get a little more spare as I was concentrating on making sure that we got knives made in the time allotted! The bloomery material is lovely to forge and grind almost as if it is rewarding you for all the hard work getting it to that state. so we started forging..... Bashing out tangs.... and blades There were a few de laminations but the great joy of this material is that it loves to weld to itself....... When the forging was done we did one normalisation. My normal practice is to do 3 but I did not want to reduce the herdenability of the material too much .so I stuck with just the one. and then the grinding began, its a common misconception that forging is the most important part of being a bladesmith and in this case its certainly true, our blades were a nebulous blob of bloomery iron a couple of days ago..... However it is my experience that its the grinding that makes a lump of hammered steel into a blade. and so the grinding began... It is my practice to grind blades to an even shape that has an edge thickness that will be thin enough to harden but is still thick enough to grind out warps. in this case the blades were ground a little thinner to make sure the bloomery steel would harden in oil. so more grinding when the blades were an even shape and had an edge thickness of 1.5mm or less they were hardened. unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of this... The blades were hardened from 800 DEG C into a commercial fast oil at 100DEG C . All the blades skated a file and a couple through hardened . I then tempered the blades at 200DEG C..... so far so good... Back the grinders to thin blades down before final sharpening. All the blades were sharpened on the belt grinder on the slack belt. It was quite possible to get this material to shave hairs, I love the crackl ping of a thin blade shaving hairs.

I think Frosty just about has it. I made a bunch of sword tips before I managed to get a sword tip wrap done, or more realistically I failed a couple of times (wasting days of work) and then approached it in a more systematic methodical way. it was the same with welded socket axes. certainly 5 or 6 times before it worked to my satisfaction. when approaching a piece of work with a very technical high failure rate process I always try and get the possible fail out of the way as soon a s possible . that way if it doesn't work I have not wasted too much time.

As I said correcting is quite easy . however if you are working damascus by the time you are correcting you have smeared the pattern from one side over the other 90deg face . and squaring dies help prevent this a little. Im always happy to see videos of how other people work.........lots to learn.