POZ

I have little forging experience, but your question was interesting so I googled it, "forging a hand" and found this from Central Virginia Blacksmith Guild. chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/http://cvbg.org/assets/CVBG_Newsletter_July_17-_Web.pdf If you use quotation marks in your search it searches for the exact phrase. Edit: I missed that other people had already replied, the link has a brief overview of how Lee Sauder makes his hands

I don't have much to add to this as I don't have nearly the experience that most of the other posters have. If you can price this job so that you can not loose, and hear back on your quote before you have to tell the company that you are planning on going back to that you have changed your plans you should be alright.

Nice to see a reproduction of a mainland seax rather than the typical broken back seaxs that you see so often, well done.

I'm pretty sure that it is a dual bevel hewing axe, they aren't as common as the single bevel axes but they were produced. as JHCC pointed out the eye and blade are fairly symmetrical, not the typical flat side that you would expect, but the profile in the second picture has hewing axe written all over it.

I do have a question though, if you had to make the leaves on the end of the 1/2x1 how would you go about it? How I made them is I butchered half way through from the top and forged the "leaf" from that, after I was "happy" with the leaf I bent it down and upset it under the end of the bar so that it would sit flat against the brick. I found that I was getting stress cracking around the bend though, so I tried to reinforce the back with some weld. It seems to work but I wouldn't want to do it that way again. Thanks,

You got it KRS, not while drifting but before, I overheated the bar and instead of turning the air off and letting it sit, we pulled it out and pulled it apart. Sadly I can't take credit for how neat most of the rivets are, my buddy did most of them.

I finally installed a wood box on our stove today, it's been in the works for way to long. I had another young guy help me on it a fair bit, it's definitely better for his help, but it's still a bit of a mess, the rest of the family seems to like it though. Any way, see if you can spot the arc welding.

I don't have much to say regarding making framing chisels, but I do use them every day, both new and old. The tool steel plate on my antique chisels are a little more than an 1/8" thick, probably more like 3/16" or a hair more and and roughly 3/4 the length of the blade. 1/4" sound to thin for the blade as well, maybe tapering down to 1/4" before the bevel at the cutting edge, you might also want to consider a central ridge so that the chisel blade has a nearly triangular cross section but roughly 1/8" at the edges, this makes it much easier to remove it when it's jammed. I would also strongly recommend a socket handle, more time forging, but much easier to rehandle and much less likely to break the handle. Just my 2 cents, let me know if you want me to take some pics and actual measurements.

I don't actually know anything about the sword that you have, but I will throw out a few ideas. The first thing that strikes me is that the tip looks like it has been cut or broken off and reshaped at some point, does the rate of change of the thickness of the blade change suddenly near the tip? that might be a clue. Does the blade get wider a few inches away from the hilt? or is that just an optical illusion? I assume you have already looked for any stamps or marks on it. other than that I can only guess that it is something of 19th century vintage. Good luck,

I'm not as concerned as which finish I use use initially, from what I've read here there are many finishes that will work well. But as this is my own home and we will probably be living here for a rather long time, I think that whatever finish I use it will have to be redone, or at least touched up, so I'd like to use something that I'll still be able to find in 10 years and is easy to touch up without taking the whole railing down.

So I did a couple of tests today on my carpentry hammer using a candle and a heat gun, it seemed to work alright rubbing the candle on the hammer and then heating it up with the heat gun and rubbing it with a rag while still warm. So if I do use a wax finish I think it could be touched up like this.

So I am making spindles for our stairs, and am looking at how to finish them, I've done a lot of reading here on it but I still have a couple questions that I cant find the answers to. First, are there any wax/oil finishes that can be applied cold? Secondly, I haven't found anything on what is needed to refinish a wax/oil finish, so in 5 years when its starting to get old and worn through would I have to take all the spindles out to re-heat and refinish them? Sorry if I've missed this in my searches.

Well I'm here for a few months at least so I'll throw my name down too. Peter from Canada, currently in Cairns, but I hope to travel the east coast at least, and maybe get out to the west coast too. New to blacksmithing, but love making things out of metal and wood. Hoping that while I'm here I'll be able to meet a few smiths.

Thanks for the suggestions, I am currently in Cairns, but I am planning on getting a car and driving down the east coast. Last night I also noticed the "get hammer" page, so if I am in the area I will try to come to that, but I don't have a schedule yet.

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I've been traveling for a bit and I just got to Australia and I saw that there is a blacksmith group in Queensland, I also notices that I got here just to late. For a hammer-in, but it got me thinking that it would be cool to meet some blacksmiths over here and see what you guys are doing.