Chinobi

the other key difference is that the recommendation is against leading in with 'hi, I know squat, and I want to make a katana folded 1000 times!' and you came in with an actual finished product of overall good quality and self diagnosed its flaws. so id say you are good :)

heh, I hate to say it but im willing to bet that the guy who told you it was 'tool steel' wouldn't know the difference if he was chewing on it. at least that's been my experience with the quality level of HD staff, and at least in southern CA iv never seen anything other than that 'weld steel' junk being sold there. so results may vary :) but it looks like it worked out well for a practice piece. did you attempt to heat treat it at all, or just let it cool after the last forging heat and then on to finish/polish? you are in good company up there, CBA membership seems denser towards that area so you should be able to make a lot of good connections within reasonable distance. hands on instruction and critique will advance you so much faster than you ever could without it.

Hello from Ventura! Always happy to see more people from California on board, though I sense you are not terribly close by. Speaking of which, over on the top right of the page, click on your username and update your profile with your general location so we have some clue where you are hiding! As you are already slated for a Calsmith course I suppose it would be redundant to recommend you join the California Blacksmith Association, but cant hurt to throw it out there just the same, check them out at calsmith.org I like the blade, got a pleasing curve to it. Is it made from a proper blade steel or just mild or mystery meat? Not a bad effort for your first swing, put some more time in at the anvil to develop your hammer control and you will see a marked reduction in the amount of grinding and finishing you have to do to clear the surface of dings and dents. im also going to assume that the scaly fellow in the pics is a friend of yours and not just a passerby? he'll make for good company, you might even be able to use him to control rats in your shop! :) anyway, welcome again, there is a beyond boggling amount of information available to you here that is already written and even more advice and critique available from the seasoned smiths that haunt the pages. looking forward to more pics of your work, perhaps we will cross paths at some CBA event in the future :)

Happy to help :) Rich, Tony states and shows that he does it via heat treat, at 4:00 he says hes going to temper it to blue and the clip shows him putting it into the kiln and pulling it out electric blue. then he starts cutting stuff up with it :)

not sure if thats just a terminology error or not, but no, no annealing. look up anneal in the forum search for a more detailed explanation than i can readily provide, especially for blade steels, but thats not where you want to be going for this. you are effectively exploiting a side effect of the tempering process. you just want to apply a controlled low heat to cause the formation of a very thin layer of oxidation on the surface of the steel. you will probably be at 400 deg F or less, if you see the steel beginning to glow you are far beyond the correct temperature and will need to grind or otherwise reclean the surface back to bare metal. if you use a torch you can watch the colors develop as you heat the piece but its harder to get it even across the whole surface. you can put it in the oven to get a more even finish, but its a little more difficult to control until you have some experience with it. after you have achieved a pleasing color then you can apply whatever surface treatment you have available, hit up the alchemy section if you need some inspiration on that front.

the blue oxide layer (and therefore color) remains on the surface of the steel until it is: thickened by continued application of heat(also known as running the colors); removed by chemical action (vinegar, etc); removed by mechanical abrasion (wire wheel/grinder); or altered slightly by application of a surface protectant (wax, clear coat, etc.) you can also achieve a similar blue finish by application of something like a gun blueing chemical treatment. the blue color is not a transient color like cherry red heat or yellow heat etc that are the result of heat radiating off the piece rather than a permanent change to the surface of the steel. edit: think of it like toasting white bread, put it in the toaster and watch the surface change from white, through shades of tan and golden brown, to dark brown, to black. at any point if you take the toast(steel) out of the toaster (forge/tempering oven) the surface has been altered permanently and will not return to being white when it cools, the toasted/burnt (oxidized) layer has to be mechanically removed by scraping it off with a knife to reveal the original material color again.

That takes a lot of the uncertainty out of it! Thank you!

That is definitely what it feels like at times! Thank you for the info on nickel and silver behavior and the link to the copper alloy page, I will definitely be spending some time there in the near future :) If I may seize the opportunity of your advise, have you observed any undesired eutectic low temperature phases between zinc bearing nickel silver(or brass for that matter) and sterling/fine silver stacks? I did a limited experiment with zinc bearing brass and silver but it was inconclusive (operator error <_< ) as to the extent of the interaction.

Thank you James, I thought it looked extremely similar to your CS1E000-6 Canyon Pattern, I just never connected the dots to point it out. Your work is inspiring and humbling all at the same time :) I hope I can raise my craft to a fraction of what you have achieved some day.

Very interesting, I had never seen photos of the original troll. There is however a neat article in the October issue of the CBA magazine covering the construction and installation of the new troll :) maybe one of the officers from northern California that frequent these boards can share a link or a copy with us here for the non-members in the house?

that's good stuff John, thank you! been looking at engraving tip geometry for a while now and im using Tremont cut steel masonry nails (called their office, they said they use 1035) rather than the wire style as shown in the document, but point geometry can be generated on either just as easily. fair warning to people on less than fantastic connections, the PDF in question is just shy of 4 meg's and took about 3 minutes to download on a professional grade T1 connection, so be patient, its worth the wait :)

good luck, post pics of your tooling and process, be interesting to see what you come up with :)

if its an item intended for sale or trade in return for real goods, currency, or services from others you want your craftsmanship to be clean and consistent, or risk running out of customers in a hurry. so it behooves you to streamline your tooling and processes to produce the most precise and consistent output, which often requires a lot more forethought than just grabbing a nail and eyeballing it.

you may have trouble holding a hardened cutting edge on your punch if you solder the pieces together as the temperature needed to solder may push the temper on the edge too far. you will need to consult with one of the knife guru's or the knife making section for accurate information relating to heat treating and preservation (look for info relating to soldering on guards and habaki without affecting heat treatments) because i have only a fairly basic experience with the process on tooling, iv just read up on applications to bladesmithing (technically you are making a circular knife) but have no practice in the shop. if by weld you mean along the lines of mig/tig you can hit up the welding subforum for specifics, but i think the response is usually along the lines of make sure you pre and post heat correctly to avoid the weld cracking. consider utilizing the mild steel block as a guide rather than a base and shape the shank of the punch to fit in a certain orientation, think square peg square hole. that way you can hammer directly on the tool steel (make sure the struck end is softened, or use an annealed or brass hammer to strike it) and not have to worry about any joinery, and you can recycle the same guide block with any number of different punches for varied shape/size holes. you can also reduce the bulk of the mild steel portion as it will not be subject to impact, it just needs to keep the punch straight and lined up internally and in the same place relative to the indexing stud. if you are so inclined you can also install wings (or equal) on the side that are the same width as the band to keep everything restrained horizontally too.

second thought while i was finishing the dishes, drill it out, turn the edge down almost to final thickness on the lathe, take a heat on the tip and forge it lightly to collapse the circle down to oval. i also forgot to ask why you are tapping threads as well as soldering? if your drift is tearing the edge when you attempt to reshape the hole you might consider leaving the edge thicker and sharpening it afterwards, that way it will have more resistance during the drifting process. it could also be that your drift is oversized to the hole you are drilling, causing the perimeter to stretch and therefore crack.

The holes in your example photo are pill or lozenge shaped, not a true ellipse. So you can do the geometry on paper for that rather easily, because that shape is a rectangle with two half circles scanned onto each side. So perimeter of lozenge= 2x*(length of rect.) plus pi*(height of rect.) From there you just need to find a drill bit that will produce a hole with a circumference close to but less than the perimeter you just calculated. Not having a lathe myself I would be inclined to forge the end down a little, drill/drift to the correct shape, and finish edging it on a grinder or with a hand file. Using the same methodology you could drill two smaller holes the desired distance apart and use a burr of some sort (or any other method) to chew out the sliver of metal in between the two holes to machine the correct aperture, then continue to grind or file the edge to taste. As to indexing and the number of punches, I would make one actual punch and make one punch shaped peg at the correct distance that can maybe be detachable so you can start it easily. Then you can set your peg in the previous hole to index, punch the next one, reset peg, rinse/repeat/profit. I'm not going to fight my phone, there may or may not be undesired autocorrect influence in the above =\

I have no idea what I was looking for when I found this thread, but it is well worth the investment in your time to read through it. he also addresses the use of the ubiquitous 'weld steel' that I believe you are referring to. '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

I have been thinking about doing something similar. I don't have any trouble keeping my frame tight, but the wingnuts beat my fingers silly under the right (wrong?) circumstances, so eliminating them would go a ways towards making it more user friendly and accurate on some cuts.

You could weld two pieces together to double the height. That will reduce any jackknifing and bring the die height closer to the top of you guide so you won't have to cut it down so much.

Are you planning to use that stock in the photos as your die stock? It seems like having your die wider than it is tall may make it unstable in operation. For instance, an off centered blow that impacts on the right side (for instance) will cause the right side to experience more force and will drop more than the left. This is compounded by the stock which acts as a fulcrum and can force the upper die to rotate in the channel rather than just sliding up and down. If your die is taller than it is wide it will be supported on a longer length and cannot jackknife in the groove. Seems like that stock would lend itself more to the construction of a swing are fuller, where one side is pinned rather than the freely traveling guillotine. Other than that looks like a good tool, and very serviceable once you get the top knocked down or the die built up so you have clearance for your hammer to not clip the rails.

The blacksmithing school I attend held a team striking class a few months ago and for a primer we practiced beating the daylights out of some scrap lumber and using top tools against lumber. I second going over your commands/language beforehand too. It's really frustrating if you are not on the same page as your striker or master and can lead to injury if your striker has to check a blow mid swing.

I don't know exactly what the make/model of my stuff is because I bought it at the gem fair and it wasn't really well marked (not to mention probably 10 years ago) what are you using now that you dislike? my frame is functionally identical to this one (I see rio grande has a similar one for 2$ less, but it DOES look like the part of an 'economy' model...) http://www.amazon.com/Zona-Tool-Company-35750-Adjustable/dp/B000BRESRI/ref=sr_1_6/191-7051317-8514669?ie=UTF8&qid=1383944560&sr=8-6&keywords=jewelers+saw I haven't had any problems with it, but as a right handed person holding the work with my left hand the wingnuts tend to beat the tops of my fingers if im not actively monitoring my depth of stroke. and I think this is the blade pack that I have, I don't have any problems with them unless im getting rushed, tired, sloppy, or all of the above. http://www.amazon.com/SE-815JSB-144pc-Jewelers-Blades/dp/B002Q8886C/ref=sr_1_2/191-7051317-8514669?ie=UTF8&qid=1383944560&sr=8-2&keywords=jewelers+saw get yourself a chunk of beeswax to use as lube and when you start to notice the work heating up to where its uncomfortable put some more wax on because you are generating too much friction. if you don't have one already I would also recommend you pick up or make yourself a bench pin to work off of, makes piercing a lot easier when you have a good flat surface to work on that has good clearance all around.

IDK if this is available in the UK or if there is an equivalent, but CLR (calcium, lime, rust) is billed to do something along the lines of what you are asking. just google CLR, manufacturer is Jelmar heres the MSDS, primarily lactic acid (after water) http://www.jelmar.com/msds/CLR_MSDS_eng.pdf im not sure if any of the chemical etchants will bring back a 'bright sheen' though, I recall a discussion about that a while ago that basically concluded that some form of mechanical polishing or cleaning was required to bring back the shine to a piece. and I know that a vinegar soak just leaves my steel at a kind of matte gunmetal grey and needs a good once over with steel wool to get some shine back on it. could you staple some steel wool to a board and use it like a big sanding block? or mount it on a pushbroom handle and have at it from there?

DSW is correct, the pin is actually resisting shear forces generated by the moment from the door's weight being supported out of line from its center of gravity.

foot, meet mouth. mouth, foot. now play nicely! :wacko: my apologies, some part of me knew that was going to happen <_<