Chinobi

Ok, I haven't seen this come up yet so I'll toss my thought in the ring. Would it work to heat up some big bars of scrap and put them in the bucket and let it bake out from the inside? That way you dint need to involve the oven or ambient humidity etc. Depending on how tight your lid seals you may have continuing issues with moisture absorption in the future, I wonder if a largish sack of silica gel would survive being strapped to the underside of the lid. If it would be melted or damaged in place when hot metal is in the bucket you can always remove and replace when storing after use.

If velocity is constant then doubling mass will double energy, problem is most people can swing 2 pounds a lot faster (velocity, not swings per min) than a 4 lb, so getting a straight comparison is tough to do by hand

put it on a window ledge where it will be a silhouette and judge by how pale your kids get when they see it ;) id say that looks pretty good :)

Ausfire's 'shifty lizard' was the first concept that leapt to my mind, using a small wrench for the body and the business end already has the droopy face for a grasshopper. I thought I had seen a grasshopper come up in that thread but I guess I was imagining things :p

For those in range, one of the demonstrations at the CBA spring conference in San Diego coming up in two weeks will be Gary Brown teaching us how to make a similar compass utilizing the box joint. I intend to participate :) if I get any good pictures or manage to make one that doesn't look like total garbage I will share :)

It seems to be a prime candidate for making pattern welded knife billets, often paired with pallet strapping. Depending on the blade composition it could be used for that. Or at 25mm wide you might be able to make some thin kitchen knives straight out of the blade itself.

not for the first time caster, but you might be able to create some interesting patterned materials if you were to incorporate them (DRY, DEVOID OF WATER) into a batch of molten copper/silver/brass/(insert other non-ferrous metal here) shortly before pouring into an ingot mold. forge it out a bit and grind/file to reveal a hopefully speckled interior.

worth a shot =/ good luck! that is quite a conundrum...

shot in the dark here, are you running these one after another in a gasser? if you are placing stock that large sequentially into your forge at roughly the same place and immediately replacing them with the next as soon as the previous one comes up (or close to it) it is conceivable that the floor of your forge is developing a cold spot and while you may be allowing the bars to soak for what appears to be long enough, there is only fresh heat radiating onto it form 3 sides. if the twist seems lopsided or the straight lines you are observing seem to be more prominent on only one face and not the others that could be the case. try rotating the stock as it heats, or shim them up on a scrap of kiln shelving inside the forge or elevate them somehow off the floor. of course if you are already accounting for any of this please disregard :) that was the only thing I could think of that would cause the center to resist twisting more than the edges barring variance in alloy (which seems unlikely that it would show up in the same configuration in 5 different spots sequentially, that's too much coincidence)

boy that would be a scary moment to have an in progress blade, no matter how close or far to having an edge it is, get bound up in a drill press and start to spin like a propeller! I cant remember who provided this concept in what thread anymore, but somebody here recommended installing a bar on your press, I think bolted or clamped to the table, that would act like a stop to catch objects that seize up on the bit and prevent them from doing exactly what you just described. so relieved to hear you only required bandaids, while I was reading that I thought for sure it was going to say the drill bit caught and spun the knife and cut off 4 of my fingers! O.o

I stop in gilroy religiously any time I am that far north :-D love that place, also the gilroy festival is in July, so it's probably not the same one =\

relieved to hear that Glenn, thank you.

I have been thinking the same for some time now too Judson, I did see recent activity on his account not long ago (indeed it shows today right now), so I hope all is well.

I didn't see anything from a google search of the site for "garlic" that pertained to actually forging garlic shaped objects, plenty of recipes though :) stumbled onto a spread of work from Yves that has a lot of really nice hand forged kitchen products that would go well at a food festival like that IMO, even if they are not 'themed' '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> I have seen cast iron garlic roasters at places like crate and barrel, but I think with a little ingenuity you could come up with a way to forge one from pipe to make the upper dome and a bit of plate for the lower dish, fancy handles to taste. it would be kind of a lot of drilling but a hand forged garlic press would be pretty sweet! garlic themed hooks for people to hang garlic from would also likely sell (yves mentioned it as a use for a general hook rack which got me thinking about it), something like a J hook with a chiseled out sheet metal garlic clove (extra credit for adding dimension via repousse) riveted to the top or an outline 'drawn' with wire or a wood backer with something drawn in via woodburner etc etc. find ways to let the garlic be the inspiration rather than the target and I think you will find your list of projects growing faster than your time will allow you to pursue them. your customers will only buy one, maybe two garlic sculptures, maybe more if they want to gift them to someone else. but salt and pepper shakers come in pairs, and they might want a little garlic embellished fork to fetch pickled garlic from a mason jar, or a trivet base/hot pot holder in the shape of it.... you get the picture :) so don't forget to post some pic's of what you settle on, I love me some garlic so good luck with it!! :)

It makes a nifty spoon, and is convenient for adding useable mass to the end of a piece that might otherwise be too small or squirrely (or if you are insufficiently practiced at it, guilty) to efficiently upset and for whatever reason you did not or can not start with heavier stock and draw the rest down to leave a lump at the end that way. It's also a very fast, simple and very readily repeatable instruction/practice project that takes a lot of the mystery out of forge welding for beginners. I'm not proposing that it is a superior weld in terms of performance or overall utility, just that it exists, and I found it to be easier than welding up the poker. To hedge, I will clarify as well: When I said the goal was to bring the mass back to parent dimension I was referring to where the toe of the scarf joins the parent bar, not to reforge the doubled up mass entirely back to original dimension as if folding a billet. As opposed to the poker where you have to avoid unintentionally thinning the shaft and/or hook while consolidating the weld. sorry if that was muddy.

Dan, two words. Photo. Shop! Of course i jest! :) i think there may be an argument for an even simpler weld existing in the flux spoon type of faggot weld. there is no branch element to manage and no worries about thinning out stock and potential stress risers in the V of the weld. you only need to keep the folded stock on top of itself to prevent it from slipping past instead of welding, rotate it as you work to keep the spreading even, and the goal is to bring the mass back to parent dimension, so its a little more forgiving in terms of hammer control. at the very least i found the faggot weld for the spoon to be much more straightforward than the faggot weld with branch for the poker.

I really only use a 'heat' as a way to track my improvement as I learn. also my embarrassment when I watch the person doing the demo bang something out in one heat and im still puttering around with it at 5 and 6... gives us new people something to aspire too, if we were ok with accomplishing simple tasks in 5 heats we would never progress, and our products would always be hideously scaled and tortured with cracks (not that I would know anything about that.... :ph34r:) but it is highly rewarding to realize that the first few hand tool struck ends I did took 4 or 5 heats, and now I can do it in usually two, sometimes 1 if I didn't get sloppy. that would be exclusive of hot rasping too, just getting the struck end taper and the index forged. I am beginning to understand where Basher is coming from though (on the 5th reread...) and I have come to agree that you wouldn't want to invoice a project as a 12 heat item, but knowing that it took you a total of 12 heats to do it, and knowing the distribution of heats per task or element will give you a baseline that you can try to improve on (or extrapolate to other new projects that have elements in common). and if by chance you are able to streamline a process, or make a better tool that knocks off one or two heats you just saved yourself that much time by performing some portion of that project a little more efficiently. that time saved directly equates to a greater profit margin on that project.

He does address the thinning of the areas immediately adjacent to the weld, but in a different procedure because he is doing a walkthrough for a drop tong style weld, rather than a single bar faggot weld. concept remains the same though, you need additional mass at and adjacent to the weld in order to be able to shape and consolidate the weld without thinning out the parent stock on either side of the weld, be it from stray blows or scale losses.

Jim, I haven't stress tested it as it is the only poker I have made so far and is still subject to 'I know its beginner garbage, but im proud of it anyway' for the time being :P that said, I am reasonably certain that were I to pull it apart the very narrow section of weld just at the point of the V between the main shaft and the hook would likely split, but the hook itself would fail at the thin spot immediately after that. im not sure I would be able to split the main body of the weld, I went back over it at least 3 times at welding heat and tried to exercise a very thorough procedure, which thinned the hook, thus defeating the hopefully solid weld XD

heres the promised pic of mine, I believe it demonstrates exactly what brian just wrote above. in chasing the weld and trying to secure it I kept hitting the parts that were beyond the weld and inadvertently forged them down thinner than parent stock.

Kubiack I think that's a step in the right direction, but (insert salt here, this is just from my learning journey) there is an even more basic weld used as the 101 level. The first forge weld I ever did was in Aspery's Mastering the Fundamentals course, which was a faggot weld to make a flux spoon. Form up a blunt scarf on the end, knuckle it over onto itself about as tight as possible, brush/flux, weld. No divergent arm to worry about, little opportunity to create a thin spot in the process a well. That is the faggot weld as introduced to me as my first welding experience.

for what its worth I did the exact classroom weld brian mentioned a few months ago as part of my CBA 1 certificate, there was no scarf or pre-weld preparation called for, just nick, bend, weld, point. I know for a fact that in my efforts to try and assure a sound weld I ended up chasing the weld probably about an inch farther than needed and the actual weld section is considerably thinner than parent at the joint (3/8 round IIRC), so I am definitely concerned that the hook will fail if it sees a carelessly strong tug against a stubborn object. I don't have a picture of it handy right now, ill try to remember to snap one when I get home.

Congrats James! Good luck with the orders and may your marriage (ceremony and future) be blessed :)

I was thinking the Weygers style upsetting matrix/tube would work well if suspended over a block to act as a depth guide and anvil to avoid needing to either neck down below where you want the upset, or pre-upset to get the bar to seat itself without just falling through.

It's in the complete modern blacksmith(vs the making of tools or recycling use and repair of tools), chapter 5. Page 123 if you have the sort of triple book version. Looks useful for short upsets on bar ends, it's written as being for bolt heads so depending on your intent it may or may not be applicable.