MOblacksmith0530

I presume "ht" means "heat treat" not "hat tip" <_< Like I said before since you are using it for a hot cut any other heat treat will be wasted effort since you will remove the temper when it goes into hot steel, so normalize alone should be good enough. If you have a concern about the struck end getting too hard then after the second normalize, heat just the struck end and put it in a bucket of wood ash or vermiculite overnight. I usually do this with the cutting end out in the air so it doesn't anneal.

I am with you on using the known steel. I like the 1040 to 1050 range steels and 1045 is the preference if I can get it. I was able to obtain a lot of the 4140 a few years back and it heat treats the same for me in hammer size chunks. You can use mystery steels and sometimes have good result but you never know until you finish a piece if it will work. I still like the hammer shape.

Nice looking hammer, I would have some concern with the weight of that hammer causing damage to the floor under heavy use. When I put my shop in I poured an isolation pad where the pad the hammers (biggest is 53kg) sit on is separate from the rest of the building. The isolation pad is 35cm thick or a little more and has about 50cm of packed gravel underneath. I think the rummer matting will help but may not be enough. Would it be possible to cut the floor around where the hammer sits? All you would need to do is to cut the area around the hammer so that it does not connect to the rest of the floor and I think it would be okay. Yu coule fill the crack with silicone caulk to keep it water tight if necessary. Merry Christmas

In my opinion the 1045 and or 1050 should be good for the anvils. I have had a lot of luck with hand hammers up to 5 pounds made of 4140 quenched in water. I put the peen into the slack tub and pour onto the face until the face and peen are cool and then use the residual heat around the eye to draw the temper. I have also tried the same with about 6 0r 7 pound chunk for a power hammer die fail completely with a one face quench, it had steps in it though and i think the water spash caused inconsistent cooling on both sides of the step. I have made several hand hammers out of 1040 and 1045 and have fully quenched in water and used the dragons breath from a gas forge through the eye of the hammer to draw the temper and they have not failed yet. I think one thing to watch out for would be to make sure the edges are not too sharp so that they allow water to flow around them so aid in not over hardening the edges. I wonder if the large chunk could be immersed into a tub and water flowed onto the face would cause that side to harden more than what was just sitting int he tub. The larger mass of an anvil should slow the cooling and it wouldn't be as hard as a smaller piece. Having said that I am not a metallurgist so have only learned from my failures. I would be very interested in your results if you can afford to experiment. I have a fairly large chunk of shaft material Most likely 4140 that I want to make into a medieval type anvil one day.

:D It is an Ozark pattern. It is the pattern Hofi and Tom Clark came up with and were selling until Tom passed on. So yes.

I own an oxy/propane I cut and weld with, I own a 225 amp Mig I make lots of money with, I own a cheap tig setup that pays for itself, I on a miller true blue gold stick that has paid for itself in the repair of anvils alone. I am a blacksmith and welder and do a lot of general repair and fabricating. I use them to make money and I do enjoy it as well. I LOVE the art of blacksmithing and when I blacksmith I tend to stay traditional with forge welding and all the other types of joinery I have mastered. Do what interests you and that may include include welding in your future.

jump it up until it is about 7/8" in the area you want the handle which I usually make about 2/3 along the length of the bar. Punch and drift the hole for the handle. Index your cutting edge the way you want it to be and round the striking end. Since it is 1060 and you are making a hot cut normalize it a couple of times after you have forged it and TADA you have a hot cut.

Here is a pic of a couple of rounding hammers I have come to use most of the time. I find that I can do most things with the round or flat sides sing the different radius's to achieve many different things. I also still use cross peens and they are always near for specific uses.

Hmmm I need to reread the posts here it almost sounds as if us colonials might have gotten a nod or something..... :D Seriously for a lot of forging the shorter stouter hammers can definitely have some advantages when using the edges. Some even have the faces narrowed slightly from the eye/body area to enhance this effect. I will try and remember to get a couple of pics of some rounding hammers I have made in the last couple years that I am starting to favor for this reason.

Looks good I believe you have made yourself a very nice hammer.

Very nice, I appreciate you sharing your process.

Cool, I pretty much do mint the same way except I use standard drawing dies and after it is flattened I put the whole leaf parallel to the long axis of the die and offset to each side for a few blows to form the center ridge then draw down the edges. You have pretty good control of the leaf and it looks real good. Do you ever add any veins to the aspen leaves? Not having aspen around here I haven't studied them enough to be sure how they look.

Francis I agree with the extra material for the handle but it is hard to get enough for them then to justify the extra work. The other plus that if you use the high carbon spikes (really a medium carbon IMO) it is easier to weld to the high carbon since the welding temps are closer together.

Thomas has it right. the only difference in the way I do it is to use the round and just forge it into the bottom swage so it ends up with a flat back and spreads to fill the bottom swage. the rest is file work (or belt sander) an heat treat. I did a few with teh hollow back and it is more work and in a one man shop no striker is a pain.

Interesting, need forging video's now.

Pexto plate definitely. Good score.

Nice

Can full? Must be a garbage can! I couldn't possibly keep them in a can, over a little over 15 years I have probably accumulated a couple of hundred punches, chisels and drifts and about 3/4 are made either by modifying an original or made from scratch from spring or sucker rod etc. Make a shadow box you can mount on the wall with different depth holes and you can put the punches in business end out so you can see what you are grabbing. Seriously you can never have too many punches etc.

I gotta pipe in here a wee bit. First of all Simon Thank you, I watched your video the other day and I just had to go out and weld some in the fire. It was a real struggle for me about 10 or more years ago and now it is second nature with the practice. It is just fun! I generally use a flux and mostly it is borax. When you are welding fire management is the most important part of it. If your fire is proper flux is not critical. I think I get cleaner prettier welds if I use flux because I get less burnt metal in the finished weld. Having said that I do like Simon does. I heat the piece slowly until I see a spark or two. I then kill the blast and count to 5 or so (depends on the size of the material being welded) pull it from the fire and "sling" the pieces to throw off the scale and then tap them together. Then back i the fire to finish the weld. All of my welds take two heats for the weld portion at least one to stick and one to clean it up. If I am welding rounds into bundles I may take more heats than that since it will take longer to get them all to come together (like for a basket twist).

Got an email from a guy I demo'd for this year they were cleaning up an old farm lot and had a bunch of iron/steel and wanted to know if I wanted to look at it. I did mostly old farm machinery pieces and equipment pieces. I figure close to 1200 lbs plow points, shafts, axles, coil and leaf spings. Some wrought iron. The cost is one tomahawk and some flint strikers.

It doesn't look like it has a steel face and that means mild steel will dent it easily. I would say no even to the 35 dollars myself and wait for one with a steel face. Just my .02

You will definitely use the mallet. I find the ones at flea markets that have a cast iron clamping head with the leather or rubber/plastic inserts and unclamp them and turn a piece of wood to fit and clamp it in so I can replace it regularly. I go through a set of faces a few times a year on a couple of different sizes. I have one that is about a 6 lb head on a sledge hammer handle.

I have not "built" one myself but have extensive experience with air cylinders in machinery and I would say your cylinder is too big. It will take too much air/time to exhaust one end of the cylinder and fill the other end and it is just cycling without force. I have seen hammers with 1.5 inch cylinders with an 8 inch stroke that will really move the metal. I dont understand the "controller" reference you state so I don't know what effect it will have on your hammer. Air flow is king! you need to move volumes of air quickly to make a hammer work so think about that. The only other thing I would mention is to make sure you don't have a friction binding somewhere.

I like the base forms you made. I make a lot of leaves under a 115lb air hammer out of anything from 1/2 to 1" plus bar. I spent some time learning how to move the metal and shape it under the dies. I use pretty flat drawing dies like the ones Tom Clark used to put on his hammers. If you take the time to do things like this you can learn a lot and also have them around for display to potential clients. Making a small grill out of it is a good way to have it for display. I have a couple of buckets of leaves of different styles in my shop that were made for practice and to learn how to move the metal. Some are singles but many are forge welded into bundles. I plan on one day making a tree to display all these.

I was thinking along the scythe lines myself