Chinobi

Good question, iv always meant to ask for your method James :) and now I have another reason to want a can of 105. Been thinking about trying my hand at 'MyCarta' recently too :) Thanks for the writeup!

Registration for this one is open now too btw, head over to www.calsmith.org and hit the link from the home page. $95 for both days if you register before September 17, $105 afterwards and I think that has to be paid at the door. Jay Kidwell is an amazing demonstrator and who doesn't like making Damascus? This is coming up REAL soon so if you are interested get on it ASAP! You must also be a current CBA member to attend, it will give you the option to register or renew if you need to. See you there!

get some multicolored thread and use that to make a wrap for the hilt, 'seal' with superglue :) nails pressed into service as rivets seem to be an international solution to the riveting question, see if you can find that video of Haitian (IIRC) metalworkers making stoves from sheet metal, they were cutting the heads off nails to rivet the structure together and using nuts as bolsters for hole punching and the like. really interesting video! its been posted up here at least once in the last couple of years.

Great chatting with you James, and a pleasure to meet your wife Allie :) hope the drive home was pleasant and uneventful!

Welcome aboard! As stated you would be well served to look into and join the CBA, we recently opened up a subforum here on IFI and the organization itself can be found at calsmith.org You should also check out Adam's Forge in Griffith park, adamsforge.org they offer a great spread of intro and intermediate courses and are reasonably priced. Their staff is experienced and friendly too :) There will be an event coming up near the end of the month in the riverside area called Waynes World that you might want to get in on, I'm planning to attend myself :) There is also the antique steam and gas engine museum (AKA Vista) down by San Diego that offers the more advanced curriculum and runs coal forges (Adams forge is all gas). Pack a lunch and start reading up on everything that you find interesting here, there is an overwhelming amount of info to skim at first, but if you just keep pecking at it it becomes more manageable :) Good luck and keep us posted!

I'm still on my first set of bolts(I don't think they were SS, I didn't ask for anything specific, I think my only concern at the time was to not use galv), so long as you don't hit them instead of the plates you should be fine for many runs. It will probably be an optimization issue, how much more expensive is SD than regular, versus how much does it extend the service life?

you definitely need a friend to help if you plan to hammer consolidate right out of the forge after bonding, mine just about went down my pants trying to juggle it solo once, I had to grab a buddy to hold the improvised set hammer. for smaller billets if you plan ahead and make your plates such that the gap between the bolt heads will permit the jaws of your post vise you can use the vise to gradually consolidate the stack. DO be careful with any method if you see liquid metal sweating out of your billet, if you smack it with a hammer and some of the metals have liquefied, your crotch (depending on how tall you are) will have front row seats to a liquid metal supernova :) or you will watch your billet leak out from between the plates as you squeeze in the vise.

yep, ill be there :) less than a week now!

take good pictures, and better notes! it REALLY stinks to try and remember what you did when and why if you have a lot of time between attempts

Been wondering what happened to you James, sorry to hear you got nailed with such a gnarly bug :( I look forward to getting to actually hold some of your knifework in person in Vegas! Hit me if you need anything or help at your table. Good luck getting your stuff prepared, but don't compromise your health pushing too hard in the heat!

That is such an awesome kit dude! I love the minimalist traveling setup :) really cool Swiss army ASO too!

id start with the book IMO, there are plenty of credible videos on youtube from guys like Aspery, Brazeal and many of the members here that have been quite valuable learning tools for me, and you can watch them on your phone at the forge :) if you find that you need a more indepth explanation or demonstration of the stuff being discussed in the book after having read it two or three times then definitely pick up the DVD's. If you have not already I would also recommend directing your efforts to getting some actual time with other smiths, be it a classroom or even just linking up with another member here that is nearby.

is that arrowhead made from hardenable steel or just mild? it looks really good :)

small chisels and punches suitable for a chasing and repousse kit? or the same for face tools? could you fit sucker rod in and bring it up to temp and make larger tools? small knives can be made in small forges like one brick's, the 'viking' style knives are fun to make and don't require a large forge to work. edit: also engraving chisels, but that might be more grinder work than forging...

Mokume is what actually led me here and is ultimately my goal to master :) I found some pics of my plates on my phone, so you can see the first set before they were ever fired the same plates after having been used a few times while they are being compressed and tightened and their successor prior to their first run the first set was just made from 1/8" junk steel from lowes, you can see the progression of that on pages 6 and 7 of Fe-Wood's thread called "Mokume Gane". They lasted for maybe 4 runs(max) before they just started to get too bent and scaled up to be worth re-using. Im not much of a machinist so knowing that I would never be able to get things cut exactly square and drilled symmetrically I used my hacksaw to cut in matching X's across the two plates (and again on the second version) in different places, so no matter what side you are looking at you can immediately tell if they are face up/down and rotated correctly for the bolt holes to line up on top of each other. the second set was a slight improvement over the first in that I used 1/4" steel which has proved to have much greater longevity, but is still consumable, I will likely need to replace them soon, though I haven been one hiatus for most of the year so they haven't been getting that much exercise. I also found that it was somewhat difficult to manipulate the first set of plates with tongs as there really wasn't much protrusion to grab onto and when you are forced to stand off some 2-3 feet to avoid the dragon trying to tease a grip on a tiny little lip or the head of a bolt before you roast is quite trying. so the second version I left myself a little handling tab that can be readily grabbed with whatever tongs you happen to be using. version 3 will have a second tab on the other plate facing the other direction. some recommend 3/8" all the way up to 3/4" for the plates, so you may have to find a balance between cost, ease of machining the replacements, and how frequently they need replacing, as well as how badly you damage them in the process (my first set was wrecked, #2 is not so bad...) Jay Burnham-Kidwell taught a class that I was fortunate enough to attend and he advocated using a poker with a 90 degree L at the hot end to reach in and grab and flip with and that worked very well too, though it was a different style of plate setup that was very compact and held together with wire, so there was zero purchase for tongs. as for materials, I have been working primarily with QSO's because I want to spend more of my time on the bonding and patterning processes than cutting cleaning and flattening... though I have used copper and brass sheet as well. I bought some precut circular disks of copper, red brass, nickel, and sterling from Thunderbird Supply (IIRC) a while ago but I haven't had the opportunity to cook them yet :(

looks pretty nice :) I think if you intend to continue to make it using torque plates you would be well served to fab up a dedicated set that is closer to the correct size and utilizes 4 bolts. pressure from all four corners will keep the stack in better alignment and evenly squeezed, with just two it is difficult to get the whole pile centered in the same line as the bolts. plus there will be less extraneous metal attached to it that is sucking away your heat. white vinegar will do the job, though I tend to use my jewelry pickle (Skaylex) more. unless you are going for something like a topographic relief I would probably leave the stronger acids on the shelf. unless you have some serious stock removal to do on the patterned surface I wouldn't use anything as aggressive as 80 grit on that plane. go nuts on the edges with it if you need to chase out some bad welds but as you can see you end up fighting yourself more trying to get those big scratches out and can end up losing your entire top layer. keep your hammers free from pits if not all the way to mirror, and make sure you keep your anvil free from scale (from the plates), that way you can forge it as flat as possible with your hammer and significantly reduce the amount of removal needed on the patterned face, then into the acid and I like to give it a rub down starting with 220. from the angle of the pics it looks like most of the 80 grit leftovers are concentrated around the outer perimeter, you could put a radius or bevel on the outermost 1/8" or so of the circle to knock the scratches out and revel a series of concentric circles leading to the edge. consider also varying the surface texture of the finished piece. if you have a patterned metal surface, but you shine the bejeezus out of it on the buffer, the only thing you will see is the reflection across the uniformly shiny surface under most conditions (its also hell to photograph). but if you shine it up and then put it back in your pickle for a few minutes you can etch up the copper layer and let the nickel keep most of the shine, which really helps the contrasting materials pop. a little texture on mokume typically goes farther than mirror in general because it lets the patterns show more, and hides scratches from wear better. keep it up and lets have some more pics :) Good luck!

shop around on craigslist for a used one at a better price, new is do-able, but if this is your grand entrance to the field that's a lot of digits to eat in startup! read up on the thread covering TPAAAT and start talking to people, im willing to bet that you will be able to find a sizeable pre-owned anvil for significantly better than what new steel costs, and minus tax and shipping to boot :)

Up a couple of headings in "tool and carbon blade steel" they describe how they operate: " A few of these steels come to us in 36" length (O1, CPMD2, W2). The rest come in 48" bars. You may wish to add instructions in the customer notes area for your order. Keep in mind that any parcel over a meter (think max steel length 36") will incurr an additional charge (canada Post) of $7.50). The store doesn't automatically calculate this because it can't read your notes about cutting instructions. It is helpful, if you acknowledge in your notes that it's OK to add this surcharge to your total. That saves us all the extra time involved in contacting you for approval. All of our blade steel is sold by the linear inch, so you don't have to buy a whole bar to make a 9" knife. The exception is 6" width which is only sold as 6 x 36" sheets. "

Wax would probably be the way to go. I took a workshop on raising and some minor chasing/repousse details and we used pie tins filled with wax as our student version pitch pots. I recall discussing the different types of wax with the instructors but I can't recall what the names were. The cost for something like pitch and wax might be a little high to start with, but don't overlook the service life of what you are buying. You probably won't need to buy more for a very long time unless you are really using it every day.

I had to order some parts for my HF drill press because they were missing from the factory. Took some time to study the paperwork to figure out exactly what was missing and how many but I eventually figured it out. It was kind of a laborious phone call to explain even with the manual and part numbers laid out in front of me. Eventually I got a package that had about half of the hardware I ordered and another phone call revealed that they were out of stock and had to order more in from china for the rest. I think it was about a month before the rest arrived, and ultimately I ended up with some extra nuts that they included too many of. But now I finally have a depth stop/gauge! :)

I believe in Riverside CA, near Lake Mathews. Still haven't seen any registration info go up for it yet but I'm definitely planning to attend! :-D

I know a few, my fridge can manage ;)

Take pictures of the effects and write down what it was so you can start making a sort of photo recipe book for future reference :)

Iv seen that pattern in the woodcraft shop near home, IIRC the guy said it was for really hogging out a lot of material and the open space allows the cuttings to fall free better than a solid rasp. Bingo; Shinto saw rasp, courtesy of woodcraft.com http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2082430/36868/Shinto-Saw-Rasp-11.aspx?MobileOptOut=1 I'm not sure the link will play nicely, but go to the site and search for the item and you will see it " Product Information: The 11" Shinto Saw Rasp is a flat rasp made from 10 hardened teeth saw blades held together by rivets, featuring both coarse and fine sides, with the teeth oriented to cut on the push stroke. The teeth are designed to help prevent clogging, but they can also be easily cleaned should the need arise. While the tool may seem odd to someone more used to traditional rasps, it works so well it will soon be one of your favorite tools. Suitable for any shaping task. Hardened steel teeth Teeth designed to prevent clogging Double- sided: coarse and fine "

I looked up the cratex wheels and it doesn't seem to be treated with anything, if you think the rubber is transferring that would leave uneven color in blotches or streaks. Wash the piece down with soap(like dawn or anything that doesn't have moisturizers in it, that will just deposit a fresh film of crud after you strip the original!) and water and scrub it with a soft toothbrush if necessary. Dry with a lint free towel and try to avoid touching it with your bare hands until you get it into your patina. Fingerprints can show up sometimes :)