Stephen Olivo

well deepening on metal and how your using it will change the answers. I have mild steel hammers and more or less curves on some of my hammers. It all depends on what your doing.

Thanks for the inspiration. :D

your welcome. Always fun to have something work out. Good luck on your touch mark. Looking forward to seeing it.

Welcome from the twin cities. What got you interested in smith work? I am lucky my wife met me when the garage was already filled with steel and tools so she already accepts that state of things :D

I have had really good luck using mild steel for bodes of tools and welding on leaf spring for the edge. I have found and been told that leaf spring often doesn't weld to itself but It loves to weld to mild steel. So just try to keep any leaf spring from itself with mild steel. Works for pattern weld that way or as bits welded in for the cutting edge.

looking good.

Well I can only speak for mine but it rocks. I love it. I know someone else whose friend loves his vulcan as well and managed to get I think it was a 300 lb vulcan that he loves also.

All my anvils. :D I love my vulcan.

perfect for forging some clay :D Nice job love them.

lol yeah just one of the wonders of being a part of a group. I enjoy getting to be a part of all the fun :D Thanks I like the photos but never know how useful they will be for others.

oh and on floors. 2 smithies I know including one that shows up on the woodwrights shop frequently have end grain floors and it works very well. That might be an option as you could place several 4x4 pieces that take up the empty space and buts up to the concrete…hmmm let me see…. http://www.thirteen.org/programs/the-woodwrights-shop/field-gate-hinges/ there it is.

Personally I am against paint. I use used up vegetable oil on them frequently with my punches hot cuts in heat treatment and as a finish. Works great and the only place rust has ever poped up at all was on the face and one to two heats of work and it was gone. There are a couple of other smiths who have pink anvils. I need to spend some time repainting my stump into a companion cube.

Eat broccoli use rubber bands from broccoli to exorcise your hand opening muscles. The cross section of your hammer is more likely the culprit. The oval and round handles allow the head to spin on you there by requiring you to have a death grip on it. I make my handles rectangular with 2 opposing corners removed. Depending on wether it is right or left handed intended use. My top tooling have just rectangular handles with corners ever so slightly rounded. This type of handle works with the way your hand is made to stop the head from rotating allowing you to hold it with just your pointer and thumb while forging. I can't go back to swinging other peoples handles they just hurt my hands way to much. It also helps to remove any finish from the wood. Also make sure your thumb is on the side of your hammer all the time and not along its back. The vibrations will travel up your thumb and into your elbow. you want the rebound to pivot the hammer in your hand not be absorbed by the tendons and muscles in your arms. those 4 things should help you :D Just my experience try them. The size of the rectangular handle will be the rectangle of space between thumb and forefinger when your hand is relaxed.

welcome to this crazy craft.

thanks for the update

I made my wife a ring and roses. She accepts anything shiny also. She really did like a very simple snake I made once. Anything you spend time to make her is romantic because it means your thinking of her.

Thank you patrick that answered my question. Heavy use and cold cutting.

I love my vulcan. I have heard they are cast with a steel face proprietarily welded in the casting. I would love to have one like that for my bench inside. I saw one very much like that at persons candy where I was working this last week. Not in as good a shape as the one your sharing but man I would have loved to have that. I hope you put it to good use. :D

I understand that. I meant as before stated just forge and use and then there he adds for those things tempering them so I was just curious as to why the choice to temper some and not others with h13.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/108205902509248083781/albums/5954067773768733809/5975193543198906450?pid=5975193543198906450&oid=108205902509248083781

just curious after reading all that why with the cut off would you choose to temper?

looks like a nice use of some steel. Looks like you'll enjoy your new table.

I have made several and although some water will spin away the surface tension will keep enough water holding onto the piece and holding the shavings. The diamond bits are the only ones of quite a few bits I have tried that worked well enough to use. You can also submerge the punch under water and then use the bit just under the water. Harder to see what your doing though. I have annealed car/truck/other springs and found that although I could file it down only abrasive rotary bits worked on them in the annealed state I was able to get them in the ash with several large bars heated and sunk in first sorounding the ash that the punch blank then went into. Try a bad file on it and see if you can do anything to it. If not then probably not annealed. Lol carbide burs. I tried one once just for giggles on my annealed punch blank for my first one and wore a nice flat spot in it even though I could file the blank. Good luck.

nice job! They can be verry addictive. :D