anvil

My grandfather was from Serbia when he was 12. Grandmother was from Croatia. They came to the US before WW1, met in Colorado in the 1920's and married. He was a coalminer. What kind of forge do you have. What kind of fuel. So, there are no garages(auto repair), general repair shops, welding shops, machine shops close? I've seen that vid before. He leaves a bit to the imagination, not to mention questions he can't answer. I'll stick to what I said. I thought that's what you meant. I call it forging on the diamond. You can forge it any way you want. It's still far easier to slit and drift or punch the eye before you forge the blade. You said you drilled and filed the eye. File two flat spots top and bottom on the diamond, then drill and file your eye. You just need to brace your square stock so you drill thru on center. You might drill half way thru from both sides. Hey, the bottom of the line is if you are having fun, do it however you want. The experience you gain, positive or negative is priceless.

Using rebar is a personal/esthetics choice. Use it if you like it. I don't and have none in my scrap pile, altho I do have rebar in my rebar stack for when I'm doing concrete/stone work. A long time ago I got the idea to make a set of tongs and forge weld on rebar reins. I thought it would look cool! A friend gave me his famous deadpan look and asked: "you know what you will have when you are done, don't you?" I bit and asked "what?" His response was classic: " a set of tongs with rebar reins". I thought for a minute and decided that a rebar finish was not what I wanted for my iron work. A purely personal esthetic choice. Now, as the local devil's advocate, here's my thoughts on why to/not to use rebar. Cost: all steel is cheap and all flavors are easy to come by for free. So cost is not an issue, it's an improper justification. Quality: no matter it's inconsistencies, it will harden and make a " good enough"workable tool. At it's worst, it beats mild steel. On the other hand mild steel will hold a better edge than wrought iron. Basically the quality you want to use or sell to your clients is based on your own morality and just what you decide is " good enough". What can I make with it?: What you can make with it is only limited by your imagination. But never forget,,, when you are done, all you will have is your imagination with a rebar finish.

Excellent decision! However as to the legal direction this thread has taken, well I believe that a Craftsman in particular should hold the moral imperative and strive to make the "best" product possible. This includes using the highest quality material and, most important not make any shortcuts that will jeprodize the ones who uses your product. Imagine the amount of lawyers that would have no business if we all followed this personal responsibility idea.

Sorry, this is confusing and I don't know what you mean. I would do it like I described Sorry, this won't work. You may mean case hardening, but this isn't the process. Case hardening is barely surface deep and the first time you sharpen your edge, it's gone.if you want an edge, you need to forge weld in a bit. Learn how to forge weld. It's a necessary tool. Basically your approach will not work and forge welding is the key. Steel is cheap and even easy to find for free. And like Charles said, punch or slit and drift the eye first. Yup, and it rarely works out for the better when you do step 2 before step 1

I'm "dead" serious about not using a bolt, other than like Latticino said above. Threads in the head will cause stress fractures. I've dealt with horses nearly all my life, raised, trained, show, shoe, and finally shue, and I will repeat, movement will pop these cold shuts. You are underplaying the " little" movement. When that horse is launching for a jump, that whole saddle is under max stress. When your saddle comes apart at the apex of the jump, due to a popped rivit, your client will be very unhappy. And, I suspect, after they pick themselves up and they figure out why it happened, you won't be a very happy camper either.

When you forge a taper, you always place your iron at an angle to the face of the anvil. And your hammer makes the same angle when it strikes your iron. That way you are making the same angle top side and bottom. The angle of the two equals the angle you want on your work. And, at least I, always forge the taper on the end first For what it's worth, many axes are not made from 1" square stock. They are made from wide flat stock(strap), mild steel, then folded over and forge welded. The eye Is not forge welded and a piece of tool steel, the bit, is forge welded into the end. Then the eye is drifted to shape and size. I believe you are doing it " the hard way". Making an axe is a great way to learn forge welding. No matter what, if your piece of 1" square isn't a tool steel, you will have to do something about a good cutting edge. Mild steel, you might say, just won't cut it.

When you make a set of tongs, the hinge area and the jaws are forged down to half thickness. If you forge half square to 3/8", the hinge is just too small, and the jaws are limited in width. 1/4" in these areas is just too thin for anything beyond very light work. If you want to work with light material for your tongs, I suggest you use coil spring, not mild steel. However, using coil spring has its own problems. Don't quench when hot because they will get brittle and break

Very cool. Your way of riviting is the same as we blacksmiths use when using multiple rivits. Bolt them all together, then remove one bolt and replace with a rivit and set the rivit. Using a bolt as a rivit has one problem and it is a serious structural one. When you peen it over, because of the threads, cold shuts are created inside each of the threads. A cold shut is, simply said,when there is a fold in the metal. Each of these folds will become a stress point and can break at that point. This particularly happens when there is movement. Movement and flex happen with every step your horse makes. Cold shuts are a problem we blacksmiths are continually on the lookout for. When they happen we remove them if possible or discard the piece. The go to solution is to use techniques that don't let this happen. I suggest that to verify what I'm saying do a search here for cold shuts and see what is said about them. There are joinery situations where a bolt will work as a rivit. Saddle making is not one of those places. useing a bolt as a rivit in your situation is not good! I believe it would be a serious problem that could cause saddle failure especially under stress of any riding situation. When I was a farrier I too was involved with dressage. Seems the popular horse breed were Trecaners(sp). But one of the special things about dressage is what the horse and rider could do is more important than breed.

When you thread a rivit and screw it into a hole in a bar it is called a blind rivit. There are a few things you need to do or it will not tighten when you set the head. You MUST use a bottoming tap after you first cut your inside threads. A "normal" tap is tapered because it's easier to start your threads. A bottoming tap is cut flat. This way you can cut threads all the way to the bottom of the hole. If you leave the bottom of the hole tapered, the rivit will not fill the space. Thus it can't stay tight. Cut your threads on your rivit so they end at the top of the hole. This is the best and strongest way. You can just cut the head off of a bolt and peen it over even if it's threaded. Realize doing it this way is expensive as a bolt is far more expensive than round stock or even manufactured rivits. I mean like pennies for a rivit vs the cost of a bolt. It doesn't matter where you are from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego, if you can't find material to make a rivit, you ain't looking hard enough

Half inch is too small. Great for miniature tongs for dioramas, no good in real life. 3/4" square makes a serviceable standard tong for any size stock you might use.

Very nice!

I think you mean fish mouth. That's when both edges starts to fold in onto each other. Fish tail is when it fans out, like the cutting edge on an axe. Splitting comes from forging at too low of a temperature. Fish mouth is a normal occurance you must watch for and correct as soon as you see it. When you see it happening, forge the edge back towards yourself . I start a forging like that with the other end of your cross peen. At a steep angle, forge both edges to a single centered edge. When you have done this, then use your cross peen to widen (fish tail) the piece to the desired length. This should prevent your fish mouth problem.

Very nice!

Feet her hot and if you get splits, forge weld them back together at a light welding heat on the next time out of the fire. Wrought is very forgiving.

For what it's worth, especially considering our strengths here, I'd be glad to give you advice on how to make and heat treat stone making tools to make your job a bit easier

Good on you for being a squirreled away some stuff. Me too. Alas I feel the prices are far more affected by fuel than supply.

Not to dwell on how easy it is to get steel for free, nor that a drift is a truly basic forging and not that big and not to mention there's more iron in an axe than in a simple drift, if your forge can't get hot enough to make a simple drift, , then how do you expect to forge or work an axe? Now the deal is, instead of trying to convince us you can't afford steel, why don't you just go ahead and make one out of stone and have fun. Let us know what happens, with pics or it's not real. Lol, why in the world would you come to a blacksmithing forum and ask about stone tools? To remind you, we are blacksmiths. We use iron. We use iron to make tools, often to make tools for other crafts. We use these tools to do our own work which is usually out of iron. It puzzles me why you would come to a site like this and ask about making stone tools.

Basically every time you forge something, there are actually two basics that you must do. The first I call forging to finish. This is where you are, in your case, changing the length whilst maintaining thickness. The second I call forging to correction. This is where in the same heat and at a proper temp, you take out the edge bend, twist, and in your case, forge out the flair. These two steps are always done. If not, what's called cumulative error will add up,,, just like your flair has done for your project and it will eat you up trying to fix it. Please note I said forg to correction is done at the proper heat. That's the same heat as you do the first step. Then put it back in the fire before you lose anymore heat and reheat. It takes far less time to being a hot iron to forging temp than from a colder temp. This is a great basic to get under your belt. Later there is plenty of time to learn just when you should forge at cooler temps.

To answer some of your questions. Yes I'd call you a difficult customer, not for what you want but because you have far too little knowledge to be making the conclusions you have made. Most important, iron restoration/reproduction in all of Europe including England is a good business. If you look hard enough, you should be able to find a Craftsman to satisfy your needs. A top and bottom horizontal rail is common throughout history. You will find this from Gothic to contemporary. However if you want all pickets set in stone, that's your choice as a client. Lead fasteners are not new. Been in common use at least since the 9th century. I'm going to put on my Thomas hat for a moment. So you want "traditional" iron but you want a contemporary finish? The use of cast iron is relatively new in architectural use. Roughly since the1850's. I think this was mentioned. It started out the molds were made from forged pieces. During the time when cast iron was most creative, the molds were a one off deal. Meaning one job, one set of molds. It didn't take long to figure the economics and the best use of molds was multiple uses. Thus endeth it's creativity and it's use today for architectural use. You will need very deep pockets if you want someone to make molds to match your design in our age. Primed and painted anywhere should be at least, if not longer a 10 year finish. A general rule is simple is more expensive. A "simple fleur"? One of my shop rules is when a client says "it should be pretty simple" ,,, time to stand up and take notice,,, and triple the price.

A day to remember those who never came home Navy '67-'71 two tours of duty in colorful Republic VN.

Nothing wrong with a good stone in it's proper place,,, whetstone, stone ground flower,,, etc, but at least wear good eye protection as stones tend to shatter when struck. Just curious, can you afford a hammer? Coal? Charcoal? Propane? I suspect if you can afford them, much less whatever you are using to connect to the internet, you can afford a piece of steel.

What Heelerau said. It's cheap and in my opinion beats all the commercial stuff hands down.

Yup,,, 3 years, 9 months, 27 days, 15 minutes and 32 seconds. Got an early out to go to college.

Even tho it went back in the fire, it wouldnt hurt to neutralize it with baking soda. Altho, sometimes its kinda fun to let a rust patina develop, then neutralize.

Lol, frankly, Im not much for the ole windmill swing under any conditions. Ive shod a lot of horses, split a lot of wood, and beat a lot of iron in my shop and i prefer putting in as much energy as the job requires and not an erg(or whatever its called) more.