Chinobi

I vote for a shortened description of the emotions that the process evokes in the practitioner :)

Better to have [insert tool here] and not need, than need [insert tool here] and not have. Otherwise, make one! :) I won't claim the quote about only getting one chance to over-design something because it's not mine, but that one should definitely be on this list!

Wait, stormtroopers wouldn't be able to actually hit the horse, so does that still work? :)

As they say, it's not proper blade material, but it can still harden enough to make it more difficult to file than un hardened. That hardened layer is also pretty thin so if you put a traditional bevel on it from both sides you might end up grinding off the hardened exterior and exposing the softer core as your actual edge (think reverse san mai). A single sided bevel will ensure that the working edge will always fall within the marginally harder skin of the opposite side. Results may vary with the exact makeup of that spike and the actual blade thickness. These are just some of my observations/notes/advice I have received from classes in rail spike cutlery and the ubiquitous 'viking' style belt knife, utilizing A36 and superquench. YMMV :)

interesting method of repurposing a handheld portaband as an upright bandsaw '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> similar discussion about chop saw replacement '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> I cant for the life of me find the schematic im looking for of a way to cut, bend and weld angle iron or other flat bar into a frame/housing for an angle grinder that will let you use it like a table saw though =/ sorry

Ah! Many thanks for the clarification :)

I'm with maille, is it some form of can opener like for cans of paint? Plz enlighten us :)

perfect world? a real shop, with well insulated walls and roof so no noise escapes from inside (sufficient ventilation a must as well) and plenty of work space :) somebody (or several people) really loves me? chili habanero twin burner forge and a big enough propane tank to feed it without freezing realistic? right now id go for a nice set of big sharp files =/ (I just got a leather apron for my birthday :D)

Thanks John, I have only used my half round chisel (same bevel as yours, would that be considered exterior?) to take advantage of the vertical plane of the cut so far. just wanted to check if the chisel bevel alone was sufficient to get that effect or if you needed to 'scoop' it at an angle, for lack of a better word.

I have a couple of questions and thoughts on this. one, that's the third time you have posted that link after moderators have removed it twice before, I cant imagine they are thrilled about that. leave a detailed description of how to find the thread IMO; go to ABS website, hit the forums, look for [Dry Forge Welding Damascus (Without Flux Or Kerosene) - Topic For December 2013 Former title " Today's Damascus Foibles"] im also a bit unclear as to the sales pitch part, except that it could be interpreted as aggressively pushing that thread to bump up views or some such. hard to sell a box of no flux to not apply to your forge welding projects... the main thread advocates taking the steel up to 2330, per my copy of Aspery's Mastering the Fundamentals: he points to roughly 2250 or thereabouts as 'forge welding range' and the upper practical forging range, in between lemon at 2200F and white at about 2500F (I couldn't find the chart/list I was looking for here with temperature colors of steel but I remembered Mark had one in MTF) the process is described as running your forge up to temperature with a balanced fire and then choking it to run reducing when you put the billet in. is this not similar to running up the blast in a coal/coke forge and then killing the air supply when you get up to temperature to starve the fire of oxygen? the sparking of tool steel in a too hot fire (burning) is the carbon burning out of the surface layer right? it seems like the offsite OP is proposing that the reducing atmosphere is so starved of oxygen that there is no available supply to burn out the carbon in the steel. if the intent is to de-oxygenate any scale on the surfaces being welded, would that not leave a layer of pure-ish iron included in the weld seam after the oxygen has been removed? does that affect the final composition of the billet? beyond that im way out of my league here, I just wanted to see if I was understanding things correctly.

here are some pic's of the pin I mentioned, you can see how much mass is in the pin side and how much is in the handle side, and where that puts the balance point. print out a flat view of your model tape it to some cardboard and cut it out and you can approximate how it will balance in use. it wont be hugely accurate because it represents a flat version, while yours will have a thicker body than the taper, so the real thing will balance more towards the end of the 'handle'. I bring up the point about balance because the farther the center of mass gets from where the pin is actually held within the hair the more it will want to rotate and fall out, especially if it is being bounced around with normal wear.

Side question for John B regarding that chiseling technique: is the chisel hammered in perpendicular to the stock, or at an angle to produce such a uniform cutout and bevel? The first pic shows the chisel inclined but I can't tell if that is for clarity or usage. I think a spring fuller or guillotine could get you symmetric points after a few practice runs on a flat bar. You could also try starting with something like 3/8" round and fullering in a groove around the entire bar on either side of where you would want points (leave the center shorter than you want the final length, it will stretch out in a minute). This will isolate the long taper, the center body, and give you a good place to line up a hot cut hardie to cut the end and start your handle end taper for you. Then you can carefully draw out the center (without mashing the ridges you just forged in) to a uniform diameter and to the design length. You can also draw out your pin taper and finish as desired. Now you have a 3 dimensional version of your pin, take another heat on the handle and lay it flat on the anvil and flatten out the protruding ribs (from one side only! Or 90 degrees to each other if you want to get fancy) that you left high with the spring fuller until they are flush with the rest of the stock. Your call if you want to knock the center part to oval or flat or just leave it as forged, and how you want to finish the transition from the pin to the first set of points. For what it's worth though, I think steel is going to be too heavy to be practical with those dimensions (relative mass of 'handle' to pin, regardless of actual length). I recently sheared a twist trying to make a hook and repurposed it into just such a hair pin, and with about 2 inches of handle and 4.25 inches of pin (parent stock 1/4" square, which is what the handle still reflects, pin is round taper at a sloppy 400 grit finish) it falls out of my fiancé's hair within a minute of her sitting still and not moving. And thats considerably more heavily weighted towards the pin end than your proposed design, YMMV As always, love to see pics of what you end up developing :) Edited for klutz premature incomplete phone post =\

Job well done!! Those look great :) I am thoroughly impressed with what you have accomplished. Consider yourself warned though, it's a slippery slope, you might be on the hook for a matching necklace and earrings and other stuff for anniversaries :p

Ah nuts, that's a bummer = keep at it though, you'll get there :)

Yea they got crazy busy the last few months, and there was a crossed wire between the staff and paypal so I know at least one discovery day got massively double booked and a second class was added on the day after. Get your slot about a month ahead of time and you should be good, they have a limited number they can fit safely (12ish?) so it books up fairly quick. Have you looked into trying to make one of the discovery *nights* on Thursday night? If that doesn't wildly conflict with work that would be another option. Get yourself a copy of Aspery's Mastering the Fundamentals Vol 1, Lorelei Simm's The Backyard Blacksmith or skim the book review section if you want some reading material to practice from too. Sounds like you are off to a good start! it would be fun to link up with other southern California people at some point too :)

Welcome! I can't actually see profile location on my phone so disregard if you beat me to it, but put your general location (Ventura, downtown LA, woodland hills, that level of detail) in your profile so we can narrow it down. As you can see I'm up in Ventura, if you are looking for some classroom level instruction you would do very well to hit up Adam's Forge in Griffith Park, LA. That's the advice I got, and I have been taking classes from them for a little over a year. Great staff and good equipment to learn on. You JUST missed Mark Aspery teaching his 5 day Mastering the Fundamentals course at the end of October, but he should be coming back next year around the same time. Taking that class was probably the best money I have invested in smithing to date. Gotta go be sociable, but welcome aboard again, hope to cross hammers with you sometime in the near future!

hot spots? as in areas of increased temperature of sufficient magnitude to affect the temper of the blade resulting from using some part of the knife as your striking steel? pretty sure you are ok on that count. Don't plan to use the blade as your striking edge though, use the spine. this will prevent unnecessary physical wear on your cutting edge. personally I wouldn't go out of my way to attach a second piece of medium carbon steel to the handle of an existing piece of medium to high carbon steel to facilitate striking. plus, if you are striking on part of the handle, what are you holding onto while you perform said striking :blink:?

im not going to bother with a link, but the Swedish knife manufacturer Mora has partnered with Light My Fire and beat you to it =/ google up 'mora light my fire' or something containing any combination of those names and check it out. It has a 3.75" blade with a removable flint inserted into the pommel such that the knife is still comfortably useable even with the flint detached. used the spine of the blade (intentionally designed thick and with sharp corners) as the steel. I bought two and have used them camping and have not been disappointed. with respect to your intent to put paracord on/around the handle, if you feel that one layer of paracord is too thin try doubling it up, or putting down a base layer (cord or otherwise) and then a decorative second layer (I don't know the correct terminology but the archetypical open diamond shaped wrapping popularized on Japanese sword and knife handles comes to mind). I would also refer you to check out Stormcrow's (member here) website, specifically his article from May 7 2012: Why I build what I build the way I build it. and head down to the 'post heat treat' part of the article about 2/3 down where he discusses handle treatments. I also used to think that it was a good idea to keep cord on the handle in case of emergency, but it does make more sense to keep the handle permanent and solid on something that you are preparing to depend on to keep you alive in an actual survival scenario. no sense planning to change your nice comfortable easy to hold knife grip to be smaller and have a different surface texture when you actually really need to use it!

id go mechanical personally, build yourself a sliding gate/choke. I think if you search for 'air gate' or something like that (you will need to use "air gate site:iforgeiron.com" in the search bar of google minus the quotation marks, as the in house forum search will not accept 3 letter words) you can find any one of several very interesting threads regarding multiple different methods of choking, restricting, or otherwise redirecting variable amounts of a fixed volume blast source such as a hair dryer or electric blower with no electronic speed control.

i have observed this happening on brand new chili habaneros (twin burner model, that might not be the right name) when running both burners off a single 20lb tank. not a problem with the forge at all, the things are incredible, but the twin burners were consuming too much propane causing the tank to freeze up and drop pressure. so that could be a contributing factor in both instances. empty bottle is easy to diagnose by lifting it, if you can see a frost line developing on the bottom it might be freezing up instead. you might try elevating the intake end of the burner off the firebrick with a spacer so there is clear space for unimpeded airflow around the entire inlet as well. that could restrict airflow and mess with your combustion. thats about all im good for, sorry :)

Something like these? http://m.lowes.com/pd_208677-930-324615C_?PL=1&productId=1207413 Task force brand 6" midget hacksaw blades listed as alloy tool steel for metal cutting. I have a pack but I realized that 'small jobs in small shop' does NOT equate to small saw and I upgraded to a 12" frame before I even opened that blade pack.

Haha, that's pretty much par for the course :) you watch that first taper being drawn and think 'oh that's nothing, this class is way too long for that project', little do we know 10 heats and 45 minutes later we barely have a point on it and are starting to work on length :p Were you able to enjoy yourself I hope? :)

I know what you mean, a rolling mill would be so amazing XD The canyon pattern is formed by using a burr tool to carve out pits and depressions in the surface to expose the layers in a way that looks like topography. I think that process was described in more detail in the longer thread just titled 'Mokume gane' I think fe-wood started it, look on page 2 IIRC. I'm not certain about the exact process James used to set it up to be seamless, but I would form it into a flat sheet about 3/16" thick and punch, drill or pierce a hole and cut a circle around it to form a washer shape. Then you can form it into a ring on a mandrel by hammering with a soft face hammer. It's next to impossible to describe cleanly in text, I know i referenced a YouTube video about the process using quarters at some point before, its called 'Tutorial: Turn a quarter into a ring!', check that out. Edit: missed the part about cut depth, don't cut more than 1/3 of the current thickness of your stack/billet/sheet. Edit 2: make sure you keep an eye on your cut geometry as well, don't leave a share V in the bottom to prevent developing a stress riser that can cause cracking, you want a rounded bottom. Also avoid ending up with vertical or undercut side walls to prevent them from folding over when you flatten and creating cold shuts that can disrupt patterning, cause sharp flaps in the finished product, and can propagate oxide inclusions that can spread into adjacent layer seams and cause them to fail as well. This is all moot of course if you are practicing the canyon pattern, but will be useful for general Mokume development

If you are near a ready source of water you could try building a water bellows, put that in the forum search at the top right and see what you can see. There was a good discussion about that some six months ago or so covering the same subject, might be a good starting point for you.

Give it a whack, your bit is pretty close and erring on the small side so you should be in good shape. If trying to drift it fails (are you doing this hot or cold btw? Inquiring minds want to know) just drill it out and lightly forge it to an oval cross section. I highly doubt anyone will be able to tell what size you were shooting for. Just use the same process if you make duplicate punches in the future.