Chinobi

i wonder if it would be possible to rig up that bow-flex looking thing into some kind of trip/treadle hammer? :D as for the layout, i agree with JM, the canopy is going to capture heat and could possibly melt if not vented. if you work under the overhang could you not fabricate a sheet metal chimney that vents out under the side of the roof? that would keep the smoke from possibly flowing into those windows if they were left open too, it would also allow you to make the chimney taller which might help in clearing the smoke over your neighbors heads. if you are buying a free standing canopy anyway (easy-up style?) why not set yourself up on that detached pad where the fire pit is? clear out the old rocks in the pit and use that footprint to keep the forge in and take the canopy down when you are going to be working.

can you give an example of some of the types/shapes of things you are forging? i have done about as much small scale forging as i have large scale, and as i dont have very much in the way of personal equipment i have had to make do with standard scrolling tongs for the most part. the reins are long enough to navigate the dragon and the tip is small enough that it can pick up and at least give a good show of holding the piece. i have used this to re-forge 20d cut steel nails, little bits of steel into skulls about or less than an inch long, and small stacks of quarter mokume (12 stack or less). the quarters were actually the hardest to forge because i need to flatten them evenly, which is not conducive to shuffling the piece around with tongs to rotate. i eventually ended up using a plate that was about 3/8" thick and had a series of increasingly large pentagons cut into it, locked that to the anvil with a hold down and then just plucked the quarter stack from the fire, dropped it into one of the holes and went to town on it with a small diameter top tool. i have also tried the long nosed vice grips and decided to seek better means because they are indeed very aggressive and the leverage generated can easily mar your piece. if you are going to be doing a lot of the same/similar projects you could file off the teeth and/or file in a center groove to hold round or otherwise reform the end to be a tiny wolf jaw. otherwise it just sounds like a job for some purpose built mini tongs, or a set with long reins and transfer to your shorter forging tongs on the way to the anvil.

what rivet layout do you use, just the 4 corners? does that area end up getting cut off/worked out or do they just kinda blend into the overall look and not show up as a big copper dot?

redid the eyeballs on the little one again, drilled out the eye sockets, then used my rotary tool to undercut the hole a little. bent two pieces of 12 gauge copper ground wire into a tight U and hammered them into the eyes to wedge them in. put it in the forge until the copper melted. soaked in vinegar overnight, wire brushed, torched a little more than i had intended to get some oxide on it, wire brushed the steel again while trying to avoid the copper.

batteries not included :) i kid the fork on the end is a handheld prybar tip for dealing with staples found in heavier packaging, the straight side is filed to an edge, but as it is low carbon its no blade, but that side is a generic letter opener for paper and tape. the serrated side works pretty much as you would expect it would, for tearing through cardboard and heavier materials than paper. see the OP for the shortcomings of the tooth geometry. the scroll on the end of the guard can be wedged beneath the cap of your favorite frosty bottled beverage and used as a lever to free the contents therein.

pretty slick Fe, i like it :) how long is it nose to tail? i wouldnt cut it in half, i would do like you said, set it part way in the lower half of the mold, set the top part, then pack the rest of the sand. split and remove your model. i cant add anything meaningful regarding the particulars of soaking the plaster or the specific mix (though i have seen it come up here before several times) when you say modeling clay, do you mean pottery clay (fired in the thousands of degrees F) or like femo/scupty craft type clay (fired around 200-300 F IIRC). in either case, if you use malleable clay that is left workable you will need to reform it around your MDF prototype after every time you make a new wax model, which is why i recommended using silicone, it is elastic and will return to its original shape after every use, though you may want to back it inside a rigid frame to prevent it from sagging under its own weight and distorting the wax model.

not a pro but im seeing a few 'easy' ones so ill toss in my 2C 1. you have a model of what you want, and you want to create a two part plaster shell to generate consumable wax models. have you considered using a silicone mold to create a flexible mold shell to pour wax into and not have it stick? i think plaster is too porous to be able to extract a wax model from without destroying one or both. you could try oiling or otherwise finishing the inside of the plaster, but i still think you would be better served with the silicone. 2. i dont have enough experience with casting anything that large to be able to provide any technical insights on the shrinkage at that size, i was instructed to create the wax model larger than you need so with shrinkage and cleanup/finishing you wont end up undersized 3. if you have the option of doing a sand mold (oil sand? greensand? delft clay?) you can skip the wax part entirely. make a two part frame and set your MDF model into the sand/clay/whatever, then you can open it up again, remove the model, and cast directly. even better, you can turn around immediately after that one, reset the mold and do it *again*. no curing, no burnout. you can find a lot of good videos on youtube and good info here too, search youtube for 'sand casting' or similar searches and skim through the related videos after you finish the first. i remember seeing a couple of good photo heavy sand casting threads here as well. http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/27618-casting-in-the-form-of-sand/ 4. you want to 'pour out' the wax and it sounds like your teacher is advocating leaving the wax in to pour? i really hope im reading that wrong. if the wax is solid then the mold is cold, and you risk your pour freezing in the sprue, or being riddled with bubbles and inclusions, plus that volume of solid wax will severely impede (if not outright block) pouring and make for a dangerous situation to be in. more importantly you want to achieve burnout not meltout. there is another thread in here not too deep that describes casting into plaster with and without burning out the remaining wax and the effects it had on the mold and ammount of final cleanup after the cast. you want the wax to actually be burned out of the mold to prevent it from vaporizing (read EXPANDING, and quickly!) which can crack molds and leaves the potential for molten metal to get sprayed around (extreme case) again, if you are using a sand mold i really dont see the point of using a wax model. actually, the thread i was going to reference for burnout/vs meltout is one you started as well about casting brass for a sword, read Bentiron's post at the bottom http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/28793-casting-brass/ 5. yep, thats pretty much the last step consider carefully how you orient the model with respect to gravity and where you will be pouring to reduce the potential for bubbles and allow you to add vents to let the air out during the pour. maybe try your hand at a smaller version before you commit the time and resources to the full size to flush out any rough spots in your plan and execution. definitely read through the sticky at the top of the sub-forum if you haven't already as well. sounds like a cool project, casting is very fun, and if you screw it up you can always melt it again for the next attempt! Good luck and doccument the process well :)

would it be possible to build it up in two halves? start with the outer shell (call it left and right) and weld (or solder at that scale) that all together from the inside, then if you want to add more to make it solid instead of just a shell you can continue to attach layers (probably as panels or chunks rather than individual items), then maybe leave some rings fixed to each side that line up when the two halves are put together and slide a rod through to tie the sides together, said rod could be threaded into the face and flush riveted into the base from underneath or any number of other connection types. what materials you thinking of making your cast parts from? you can get miniature nuts, bolts, rivets, lag screws, nails, and the like from MicroMark in primarily brass, but might be others if you dig. they are not cheap though, food for thought. sounds like a fun project :) good luck! edit: brainwave after i hit post! build it up in layers from the bottom up, leave plenty of dangly bits up and down to blur the strata, you could vary the materials as well to give it a stripy look too, and install 2-4 rings in the same location through the waist on all of them to give it some frame, pick a connection style for the rods that will allow you to clamp it down and compress the stacks a bit to get them to bite into each other and prevent any movement.

thanks Chuck :) , i lost a lot of the raked angle on the teeth when i cleaned them up with the file, im going to test a few different methods and types of chisel on the next one, as well as a much smaller tooth.

those were chiseled in, put the blade in the post vice with just the tapered edge protruding and struck in the teeth vertically with a hot cut. i was thinking as i was driving home that i should try cutting them from alternating sides to make them somewhat smaller/thinner. or do you mean just nick them in maybe 1/32 deep and go for small bite high TPI?

This is actually a few months late, but i have some time and i figured i would share. you can see my execution of the original letter opener design in this thread, its the entry level project numero uno at Adam's Forge: http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/28631-new-from-southern-california/ i wanted to try my hand at designing a heavier version for cardboard and staples, as well as attempt a pattern on the twist. the piece functions as it should, however because its so short with only 4 cutting teeth it is very slow and you need to really saw it through to make any headway. the parameters were, using the same starting stock size as the original letter opener, have a straight side for paper and tape, serrated side for cardboard and possibly twine, blunt forked tip for those big copper staples, and the scroll on the guard as the obligatory bottle opener :) the pattern didnt come out as well as i had hoped, but thats why we test things. i was trying to get a vertical line running through the twisted pattern by laying out chisel cuts in the opposite direction before twisting the handle. you may be able to see also some cracking where the guard bends back on the handle, is that from burning the metal or from bending too cold? potential improvements for a MK III could be: drop the integral guard entirely and use the savings in stock length to make the blade longer try a pineapple pattern to make it a little more grippy, maybe split the 'pommel' area or just a really short return curve on the end to give something to catch on while pulling different tooth geometry, not sure which alteration will have the most benefit, depth, TPI, some combination of the two (for a personal/demo model) upgraded steel id like to be able to offer it back to the school as an additional blueprint for their course (or as a level 2 version) so i want to keep the material the same i welcome any comments and criticism, this was i think only the 3rd or 4th item i forged, ever, so its fairly rough :) thanks for looking!

they have a good enough face to be used as an anvil, much like forklift tines? i think that would be a better use than chopping them up for tool blanks. but without a good picture of what they actually look like that may not apply.

any thoughts on why the old version is reviewed so highly and the new version so blandly? http://www.amazon.com/Metal-Techniques-Craftsmen-Methods-Decorating/dp/0709107234/ref=rec_dp_2 do you have a copy? is it something worth pursuing?

for an alternate method i suppose you could make a sort of butcher or set hammer (dont kill me if im calling it the wrong thing please!). that way you can leave the stock flat on the anvil and manually place your indent and really be able to keep an eye one where it end up. Taking a stab at what could be contributing to the line: it looks like you might be punching the eye sockets a little deeper than they need to be, which means you have to chase your nose down further and you end up pushing up a large ridge around the outside of the eyes mostly based on the first one, and it could just be a trick of the light, it looks like you raised the angle up when you hammered in the nose transition, seems like theres a steeper groove right under the nose than a little ways down the beard here are 3 of my first 4 wizards that i made in Mark's mastering the fundamentals class last november, didnt get a pic of the 4th. i actually have the opposite problem, i tended to set my nose too low, leaving a wide flat schnozz. you can also see the brassed one in progress and the very first (incomplete) one i started. i wish i had my copy of Mark's book with me but i swapped it out so i cant check. try and aim to eliminate the little raised triangular 'cheek bone', for lack of a better description, by varying the angle and placement of your socket punching. that little triangle is difficult to chase down when flattening for the nose and contributes heavily to the appearance of a well defined nose line. good luck! edit: you can see also i ended up with a more defined nose line on the shined up one, notice also the presence of those triangular 'cheek bones'

very nice work colorblind! what are you using for a heat source? sounds like a kiln?

I gravitate towards a double horn euroanvil at the blacksmithing school, im not 100% sure but i dont think its larger than 150, probably about 125. i think i prefer it mostly for the round/square horn availability and its set at the right height for me. it feels pretty good to work sucker rod into tools on it, so the weight seems right for not having to work too hard. my anvil at home is a 55lb ASO that has only seen some light non ferrous work.

awsome, i started a blank from a hardened masonry nail on saturday, needs to spend some quality time getting friendly with a grinder still though =/ did a bit of forging to get it flattened out and put some curve to it, but beyond that its going to be stock removal to refine the shape and put in the correct cross section and tang.

ah nuts, now i gotta add one of those to the ol' to do list XD those look really nice Stefflus, what kind of steel did you start with for the micro?

you want a softer surface underneath the tag so the letter will sink and have enough relief, but still stiff enough to provide enough support to prevent the stamp from just cratering the tag. i have used a piece of wood, a rotary cutter mat (kinda rubberized), and stiff leather to punch letters and designs into soft thin metal. separately though, not all stacked on itself. once you figure out what your metal will be you can test it against a few types of surface to really get the process refined. if the metal for the tags is thicker than the punch relief is deep you might be better served on the proper anvil, as i think the mechanics change from bending to dividing, for which you need actual resistance behind it, much like a touchmark.

I found a similar solution for my setup; i clamp my little 13lb bench vice in the integral bench vice on the side of my harbor freight work bench so i can hold stock horizontally for hacksawing and for other angles not possible with the built in vice.

I started with plastic models as a kid and worked up from there to wood and small stock brass tubing to make miniatures of things. in high school i started taking jewelry classes to learn how to solder and get to use bigger tools in the shop, i ended up loving silver work and put together enough kit at home to be able to do my own work after graduation. my metalwork stayed pretty much within the silversmithing and small scale mechanical stuff until i flipped through a metalsmithing book that had a (woefully inadequate) section on Mokume Gane, which after some preliminary testing and research it became aparent that i had neither the skill nor equipment for the job. several days of googling left me a member here on IFI knowing i would need to learn how to swing a hammer on an anvil and a reference to Adam's Forge out of los angeles, where the bug found me and took a bite :)

spring swage may be the way to go, or set up your guillotine dies (if you have one) with a stud sticking out somewhere and set up a compression spring underneath it so your die will stay raised up between strikes, that or make the dies with enough angle on the edges so you can just pull/push the stock through and have everything slide. or, even simpler :) the pattern has a rib left down the length of both sides, leave the dies at a steep angle, forget any kind of spring return, just strike to set that groove, give it a quarter turn (the rib on the side will push the die back up) slide forward, quarter turn back, strike, repeat.

I would be more inclined to make a set of swages rather than try to involve gears, drums and framework for a rolling mill, maybe even a set of faux rebar dies for a guillotine :)

do you think the advantage comes from the hot iron warming the acid, or the quenching action of dropping a hot piece into liquid? i definitely miss having a crock pot of hot scalex for cleaning up silver work!

there have been a few recent threads regarding hold downs, and a number of videos on youtube regarding their construction. search 'hold down' or 'holddown' at the forum home for a more comprehensive list than i could ever hope to compile.