Stefflus

We run cloth wheels on a highspeed, and I kind of prefer it because it feels firmer. Wire wheels scare me more than anything and I refuse to use them, not even a small 1" one in a battery drill.

Linseed oil without the siccative ("raw" linseedoil) is food safe. Could you do a burnt oil finish?

On another forum and on youtube I've seen the outer HC wrap method on new axes. My opinion is if I'm going to the trouble of making an axe, I'd want to be able to use it until it's all ground and honed away. However I do have an issue with internal HC in an axe, and especially those that have been tempered by drawing color. I would think these became softer and softer as you wear it. Then we have the single bevel (hewing and log cabin) axe with HC on one side and mild on the other.

Making makeshift tools to make better tools is in my opinion the funnest part of smithing. If you have some way of cutting the punch from it's parent stock you really shouldn't need tongs to make a punch. If coil spring is the parent stock, then this means you need to straighten a longer piece than you need for the punch. Also, in a pinch, you could make a makeshift punch from mild steel if it was intended for one time use, provided the workpiece was really hot and you were gentle with the punch. You could probably even make this as an angled tool at the end of the parent stock if you had no way of cutting it free.

I'm sorry that I'm not answering your question and instead going sort of off-topic, but my experience with dowel plates is not a very good one. I sometimes use it if I need a very small and short dowel, 4-6mm, but overall I think it gives crooked and rather too rough dowels. So I was hoping you would be ok with me suggesting a pencil sharpener type dowel maker, these can be easily made and gives the possibility of pilot holes.

There's a question in the OP that I don't see answered, and although I'm not going to go down that path, it tickled my interest: -Would it be feasible to sandwich or "laminate" a high carbon steel by laying down arc-welding beads on it's sides?

Yup, the point here should be to separate the snot from the mustaches (Norw. proverb), or the soot from the flame, so to speak. I don't think I've ever seen a flame that was anything other than blue unless it was polluted by soot or the flame was hot enough to ionize particles (like with borax in a forge, or the chemical flame color test). CO gas burns blue, Hydrogen burns blue, Sulphur, ethanol, the purified wood gas in the picture above, small flames on candles and matchsticks etc.. An entirely different matter is luminousity, which could make a blue flame look white to the human eye.

I thought -or at least hoped- that the excistence of people that actually believed that food (especially meat and fish) is made in the grocery store was a modern myth intended to poke fun at urbanity. But now I'm beginning to wonder if there's truth to this? How is that possible, I know you hunt and fish in the US, just like everywhere else? (except maybe the Netherlands (Holland), they are very anti-hunting, but I still think they know what a fish is and how to prepare it) And you have butcher's shops and fish stores? Or do these poor ignorant souls only have access to vacuum-packed, unidentifiable chunks of meat and fish? I'm glad to report that I have not been asked questions that raised my eyebrow yet. I have heard the "grandpa was a blacksmith", once , but over here it was really rare to find a specialist blacksmith, most farmers had their own forge in which they did just about everything that didn't involve too much skill. Few knew how to weld, and hardening and tempering was a closely guarded business secret which gave the few specialized smiths "their edge" so to speak, all the way into modern times. In the department of wood, however, it seems Norwegians have really lost much of the knowledge that once excisted. PVC windows, MDF interiors and copper-salt impregnated wood exteriors is where it's at..

It's gonna take me a while to get the grammar down.. :wacko:

Good to see you're up and running! Now, the elf-lady knife, does that translate to "álfakonuhníf"? We call them both "kvinnekniv" (women's knife) and konekniv (wife's knife, but this could be a norse heritage where kona=woman). And where does the elves enter into this? Our myths are a bit different than the Icelandic, we call these people "underjordiske" (subterraneans) or "huldrefolket", and they behave somewhat differently. But to call a knife elf-lady knife made me think about one particular myth concerning these people; -If you were lucky enough to spot them and their livestock, or someone who was taken by them, and wanted to break the spell to save the one that was taken, or to steal some of their cattle, you could throw steel over it -usually your knife. (Or a silver coin, but that has nothing to do with knives ;)

I don't know where to start, I'm always happy whenever I get to see beautiful woodworking tools like these! My favourite knives are the ones with filename "Ironhaw" and "Ironhorn", but that makes me realize I might be too much of a scandi-conservatist. Is it period correct to have the seam on the edge side on some of these? Our tradition is rather strict on hiding the seam so it's not cut by the blade, but if it was correct in Britain, it could have been here too, just that we have no evidence for it. What are welts? Decoration?

I'm from Helgeland, living in Telemark at the time (school)

Thanks alot, that was most helpful :) jmcustomknives: It is pretty much the same with: rasp/file sandwiched in mild, UHB15 or UHB20 in mild (these are very low alloy carbon steels with .70 and 1 % C)

The last year or so, I've attended a couple of classes, and at one occation forged with a very skilled "freestyle" smith (he prefers only hammer and anvil). He could make a knife in a couple of minutes, and it was flawless. Even so, most of my forging has been experimenting on my own. With slow but steady improvement. The latest forge weld-related improvements include: -Going charcoal, thus removing the variable that comes from me not knowing if the coal is good enough and me not being good enough tending the fire. -Making the hearth deeper. -"packing", that is fluxing and going to almost welding temperature and so doing an initial cleanup. Also the laminates come closer prior to the weld itself. So now it looks like I can make a quite consistent weld. But when I draw out a hidden tang on a knife, it almost always fails. My suspicion is that I'm not forging squarely enough, so when I see it starts to diamond and try to straighten it, it fails. So now I'm back to forging nails, practicing square. my question: -Should a welded tang withstand squaring up from a slight diamond, or would the shear forces always make the weld fail? Is the weld simply not good enough?

Is this the sort of thing that one uses for scraping?

Hi, haven't seen you around before :) Yes didn't cross my mind to call him.. is he still attending at Seljord every year?

http://i754.photobucket.com/albums/xx189/Stefflus2/P40500022_zpse30c33f0.jpg:original

The book doesn't say anything useful about it other than praising it. But yes, it is somewhat read between the lines (being a blacksmiths book) that it is made in a very traditional manner with non-alloyed steel. I was trying to keep the picture size down, but I sort of wish I didn't. The reason I was puzzled is these longitudal lines that run much more true, smooth and unbroken than I have ever seen with grinding. I'll post a full size one, but it's still a photo from a book, so it won't be great.

This is a picture of a "Stabburslås". A "Stabbur" is an outhouse set on stumps (stabbur) that are carved so that mice cannot climb them, where food and fine clothing was stored. It is made as an apprentice exam by locksmith Kjell Foldvik, in 1955. The key is typically around 5-6 inches long, so it is a rather large lock. What I'm wondering is how the near perfect finish is obtained? I do not think any sanding is used, power or not. and the baseplate is rather large to file, no? I've heard something about scraping. Is this somewhat like scraping wood? Or how does it work? Other possibilities?

How did this turn out? I'm reading a book called "Classical Ironsmithing" (Klassiskt Järnsmide), a Swedish book by Karl-Gunnar Norèn and Lars Enander. And it describes -among other things- Fineries as done by the Puddle-, German- and Walloon method. This caught my interest, and I rumaged thru some other books and internet articles hoping to find better illustrations. But no such luck. The Walloon method (which I think is what produced "Swedish Iron") is described in the book as sticking a 1000-2000lb beam of stock into the hearth, heating the end, and going at it with spikes until a 40lb piece was worked enough to be sent to the trip hammer for consolidation. But there is no real helpful illustrations of this, or of the other methods, so I'm left guessing how this really happened and how the hearth looked as to position of stock and tuyeres. Do you have some?

It was a piece of cut off tang from a thin storebought blade that someone made a sewing knife from. :) I blued the first attempt and burnt my fingers something bad. I shaped it on a 8" "low" speed grinder, holding it with pliers. Then shaped and sharpened on diamond hones.

Come to think about it, I actually made a complete knife last year, but it was stock removal so it doesn't count. Looks quite similar to the one above tho :

Preferably iron age, but to my knowledge viking needles were on the large side, and they still used alot of bone/antler/horn needles. I could say pre black death, or even pre industrialism, the point is rather how the local farmer would have gone about making the needles he needed, or even how the village smith would do it here in isolated Norway. If that broad timeframe also incorporates drawing done by such uneducated smiths, then I would love to know more about it. But this topic is posted in anvils, and since it is of interest for forging even cruder needles such as those on brooches, and maybe even small nails, I will keep this last bit on topic: -How about cast iron, say, a cannonball? Could that be used as a hot anvil?

Wayne: sewing needles rlbaker: Yes I've done this with silver, but how common was drawing wire in the iron ages? -Did they use it for chainmaille? -And I was under the impression that the stock for drawing should be quite perfect to begin with, how would they have done this in the iron age when the raw material was a bloom billet? To be honest if I could find a anvilstone that would tolerate red heat I would probably go that way, or another semi-"authentic" route. So carbide insert drawplate is out of the question (although we have some at school). If drawing was used for iron in those days, I shall have to make a steel one.

I have plans to make sewing needles from larger stock (bloomery steel, crucible steel) along the way, so wire stock is not the route I want to go in practicing. But I remember someone trying to make needles from 1/4" stock on an ordinary anvil last year, and they got maybe one hit before the anvil sucked the heat from it. So I'm thinking maybe a preheated piece of HSS for anvil, if so, what is the largest piece I can hope for, large drill bits? Or could there be some rock that can go red and still not crack? Other suggestions?