azIRonSmith

Hmmm, hand hammering a copper hemisphere takes a lot of practice and skill. Especially to make it look good. When you were hammering into the wooden form, were you just hammering mostly in the middle? Most coppersmiths will actually layout a spiral or concentric pattern to hammer the disc. This keeps the metal evenly stretched. This will keep you from thinning one area too much. Also don't forget to anneal (heat to red hot then immedately quench in water) often. Could you use something made of foam or wood and just paint it to look copper afterwards? If it has to be metal, could you would use metal bowls and then paint it copper? You could also copper plate them if you want a "real" copper look.

Nice sculpture. I'm sure the girls will love it. Divermike, "well done sir."? Might want to check her name (kate). ;-) Of course in this day and age, maybe I'm off the reservation. :-O

Naw, you don't want to be hitting hardened metal with hardened metal. You may get chipping as in metal flying at near bullet speeds. :-O If you do want to harden the fullers, then use a soft hammer. All of the spring fullers I've made have not been heat treated. They really don't need to be. You will be hitting hot iron anyway. Or should be ;-).

I don't know if you like the taste of coal/sulfur and other volatiles on your food, but I'm not too sure this coal forge/charcoal grill would turn out as well as you might think. You would have to clean out the grill when you want to cook with charcoal and then clean it out again to go back to coal. In theory, they would both heat what you want. Of course if you want to BBQ you would need some kind of top to contain the heat and a grill to go on top of the charcoal. Seems like a lot of work for a questionable combo. Especially for the cooking part. I would just get a good Weber charcoal grill for cooking. You can probably get a used one for under $40 bucks and a new one for about $80. Sometimes, us blacksmiths do too much thinking! ;-P

You can't beat making the wifey happy! Good job.

It sounds like you may want to go into the Guitar Hero type simulation than a realistic blacksmithing simulation. To do a decent job of making a true simulation of blacksmithing would involve lots of things that most people don't really want to learn. Not to mention the time involved in forging real or virtual things. And since it sounds like you would be making weapons and such for a role playing game, there would be the whole heat treating/tempering cycle also not to mention engraving etc. Most people don't want to/can't really spend the time learning a real guitar (i.e. chords, arpeggio, note reading, etc), when they can get the feeling of "playing" the guitar in a Guitar Hero game after just a few hours of play. There is more to blacksmithing than just hitting a piece of hot metal with a hammer against an anvil. There are all kinds of tools, tooling and techniques. There are many manipulations of the tongs and hammers against the anvil both fully on and partially on the anvil, not to mention the parts of the anvil (i.e. horn, anvil edges, etc). Hammers themselves come in various sizes and shapes, usually with different shapes on each end. My main hammer has a flat face on one end and a diagonal peened face on the other side. I also have rounding hammers (rounded at each end), ball peen, cross peen, straight peen, hot cutting hammers, and set hammers. There are punching, slitting, drifting operations, chiseling, hot cutting, cold cutting, forge welding, tapering, upsetting, and other methods. I don't want to discourage you, but most people don't really want that level of detail. If they did, they would be forging in real life and their final products would be real and not virtual. I'll take a real item I hand forged over a virtual item anytime. ;-) Like others have suggest, you really should get some hands on in real life to see what is involved even at a rudimentary level. Suggestions for a GH like simulation (Let's call it Blacksmith Hero!) would be as follows. 1) Fire control (i.e. air flow to heat metal but not too much or it burns the metal) Use the Wii controller to "pump" a bellows up and down. 2) Metal temperature indicated by color of item being forged (i.e. yellow hot, orange, red hot, cherry hot, black heat etc). Hitting too cold i.e below cherry red will crack metal. As the metal is being worked, the heat colors will fade thru the colors to down black. 3) Hammer face type. One will lengthen metal when hammered in one direction, one will widen metal in the other direction. One will stretch metal equally both ways. Make the striking of the metal relatively simple. All hammer blows will hit within an area or on an edge of an area. The harder you hit, the more metal moves. For example, you would start out with say this. Starting bar of metal = XXX. Each X is a segment of the metal. If I hit it on the 3rd X with the "lengthening" hammer face soft, it would then turn into this XXXX It adds an X to length. If I hit it on the 4th X with the "lengthening" hammer face hard, it would then turn into this XXXXXX This would add 2 lengths. If I then hit the 2nd X on the top edge soft with the "widening" hammer, it would then look like this X XXXXXX If I then hit the 2nd X on the bottom edge soft with the "widening" hammer, it would then look like this X XXXXXX X Beginning to look like a sword heh? Keep the metal movement in more of a 2 dimensional direction than a 3D. 4) Quenching/Heat treating. Here you would have to get to the right color (lets say yellow hot) and then quench before it cools down. If you quench it too hot, it would shatter, too cold then it would "bend". Not very realistic, but for a game, it would be just enough to give you the Conan effect of "properly quenching" a sword. You can imagine plunging your Wii remote into the magic quenchant and pulling out the new Excalibur!!! All of this done in about a 5 to 10 minute time period (real bladesmithing a sword could take weeks). One mistake in the "process" and the whole blade either shatters or bends in your virtual world, but it would be over in just a few minutes and another one could be started again. I think this would be a good start to give a person the "feel" of making a sword without all the hard work involved in real life. They would get the basic thought/feel about fire control, temperature control, metal movement and heat treating without all of the grunt work of real Blacksmithing. Let me know if this sounds more in line with what you might like. I can probably come up with more thoughts. Actually having described the above, I may have to get myself a Wii ;-P

More likely on an ASO, you would get crumbling before you would get much in the way of work hardening. In fact, that's what happens to most ASO anvils that are actually used. Cast Iron is what most ASOs are made of and will be too brittle be useful. I think work hardening an anvil is more of a salesmans pitch answer than an actual fact. Just like the used car saleman will tell you, "The squeaking brakes are just the sound of it wearing in the new brake pads." The actual work hardening would be minimal at best on a good anvil. If it were true, why heat treat an anvil? Just have a pneumatic planishing hammer beat on the face for a few hours for a few thousand blows and it would be work hardened right? Of course how long would it take for you to hand hammer enough blows to even be close to that? Let alone perfectly space the hits all over the anvil face. With that being with cold blows of the hammer? To achieve a consistent hardness and uniformity, the anvil face needs to be hardened and then tempered to the right hardness. Work hardening is not a viable alternative, if it were, we'd be making anvils that way. ;-)

Yes, you can forge the right kind of brass easily in your gas forge. You just have to keep an eye on the color and not let it get too hot or forge it too cold. Aluminum is a little harder since it kinda goes from aluminum to liquid aluminum rather quickly in a standard gas forge. You don't really see heat color like you do with steel. Of course the next thing you could do with liquid aluminum is to cast it into a hilt form but that gets into a whole other ballpark of issues. ;-) If you have a metal mill and lathe, you can machine aluminum and brass quite easily.

I assume you are worried about the boom factor? Just buy a brand new (i.e. never been fueled) tank from Sams club/Cost co etc. Then you can cut into one yourself once you remove the valve. A drill/jigsaw combo or a cutting angle grinder would do fine. I think I got mine at Sams for < $20. You would spend that much in gas let alone the cutting job by someone else. I also assume you are going to use this for a propane forge body? If so, you could also just use some sheetmetal rounded into a cylinder. The kaowool/firebrick is the insulation while the shell just holds it together. The metal for the shell doesn't get that hot (relatively speaking). Most people I know, over build the shell both in volume and in thickness.

When they say hole in the ground, it's not just a pit someone dug. More than likely an explosive splattering of molten aluminum would occur. Any moisture would cause an instant steam explosion. Those pig iron molds were done with very dry sand because of the heat of the giant furnaces being on well before the pour. For safety and speed, just go to your local metal dealer and buy some aluminum plate. You will get exactly what you want in the size you want very easily and safely. You can usually get remnant pieces of aluminum for less than $2 pound. I've even gotten it on sale for < $1 pound.

You don't need to cut the bandsaw blade, just put in in a vise and bend 90degrees one way. I use a hammer to bend it over at the top of the jaws. It will make a nice clean break at the vise jaw line. Use gloves cause those teeth are still sharp. If you don't have a vise handy, you can always bend it over itself and step on it to snap it. Of course, watch yer feet/legs/hands and other body parts. It's hard/brittle enough that it will break at that point rather than bend. Of course the high carbon is what you were looking for in the first place. If it simply just bends over easily and does break, you may have a bi-metal blade. The tips are carbide but the bandsaw body is mild steel. No need keeping that. ;-)

Definitely clay the pot. It's a lot cheaper to replace clay than it is to repair/replace the pot. I would stay away from cement. It tends to spall at high heat (i.e. explode). A better clay would be a cone 10 (ceramics term for high fired) clay from a ceramics supply store. You can get 25lbs bags for about $6-$10. I add some very dry sand and I also use vermiculite as a filler similar to the sawdust that philip suggested. Since this clay is meant to be fired at over 2000 degrees, it will stand up to the heat of your forge. Ground clay may contain anything and everything and you have no guarantee as to the heat rating. It may literally melt in your forge. You will want to let the clay air dry for quite a few days depending on your weather. Dry and hot = less days. Cold and wet = more days. This is to let the clay mix dry out slowly to keep it from cracking. Keep some extra clay mix in an air tight container to repair any cracks. Once you are ready to fire it up, do a small fire or even wood fire to allow the rest of the moisture to slowly dry out the rest of the moisture. This will help keep the clay from cracking a lot on the first fire. There is being frugal and then there is being down right crazy dangerous cheap. ;-P

Agreed on those #5 face shields. I wear prescription glasses and prefer the welding face shield for O/A welding. It also gives you a better overall view not to mention the added safety of a full face shield. Try it, you probably will like it.

Good idea Frosty! Of course the smell of burning rubber tires might also be a deterrent to having them at the foot of your anvil while in use. ;-P

I like to use mineral oil for my handles. I just use the food grade stuff for cutting boards. Keeps em from drying out and leaves no smells or residues or discoloration. About once a year I redo them just to be sure. This also keeps the handles themselves nice and smooth. No splinters and such. You definitely don't want to use water to soak em. This is just a quick fix with long term problems. Standard Anti-freeze is also poisonous and I don't know if you really want that sitting in your sweaty hands for hours on end. That epoxy for keeping the heads on sounds great, but even then I would still use mineral oil to keep the handles themselves nice and smooth. My 2cents.

Another thing that twisting does is make the material "larger". If you look at the square of a spike or any square material on edge, it is about 40% wider than when you look at it straight on. By twisting the square, you are making it "round". Your hand will touch the "round" edges and the handle will be "bigger". Just compare what a regular spike feels like in your hand versus a twisted spike and you will see what I am talking about. This is a good trick on how to make materials seem larger than the base stock you start with. That's also why people to who make leaves usual flatten it on the edge of the square taper rather than just on the flat.

In the software world, we call this a beta version. ;-). Good job on the first version. You will learn that you will probably need to do several tries at things until you get the one you like. And even then, as soon as you finish one you like, you will think of 5 more things you could have done to improve it. You will also start looking at other peoples projects and even commercial items and start thinking that way. "Oh, maybe if you changed this and did that..." That would be called blacksmithingitis. Have fun at this hobby.

Okay. I get what yer talking about now. You want a flat panel that has holes in it to simulate the 3D sculptures. I guess I watched the video thinking he just wanted to scale up the 3D sculptures with bigger mesh. When we say "holes", we really mean multi-shaped holes not just round holes. I can understand why the CNC cutting shops quoted so much. That's alot of intricate hole cutting on a very large panel(s). Another thought would be to not use metal as the base but a plastic or vinyl base cut with a vinyl cutting printer or even hand cut after laying out the design on the plastic sheet. Since the panels will be "supersized", the hand cutting may not be too difficult. Just time consuming. You could either use a metallic looking vinyl or paint a metallic paint on it to look like metal although I think a black paint/plastic maybe better for contrast. This of course means you will need your panel frame to do most of the structural holding. Assuming these panels are indoors (i.e. no wind/rain/weather), this might be an option. I have another thought which would involve liquid plastics that would be used as "ink" to "print" those panels too. Hmmm liquid JB weld as "ink"... If it's for an outside exhibit then you would probable need to do it in metal and have a strong framing system to boot. As I've heard before, you can have it cheap, good, or fast. Choose any two!!!

Hmmm. As a new smith you should be able to make your own hot chisels along with many other useful tools such as punches/slitters/drifts and what not. You can use coil springs or leaf springs to make them. You could also turn those cold chisels into hot chisels by forging them into shallower angles to make them hot chisels. This would then bring us to a proper heat treating. You would need to anneal/harden/temper them to finish them. Just because a tool is designed for a specific purpose doesn't mean that as a smith, you can't change them to suit your needs. You will find that most commerical tools are not really what you will need as is. Hammers are a good example. Most commercial hammers are sharp edged and need to be "dressed" to be useful for forging. This is a minor version of changing what you get versus what you want/need. All of my smithing hammers have started as either 3lb sledge hammer heads or drilling hammer heads. From these I turn them into diagonal cross pein hammers, rounding hammers, flatters etc. Another thought would also be a hot chisel with a handle attached. I prefer this over just the hot chisel. It makes things easier to control and see when you are doing the chisel work. I actually forged a slag chipping hammer head into a hot chisel hammer and it works great. Just forged/annealed the hammer head (after you cut off the handle of course) into the shape I wanted and then annealed/hardened and tempered the cutting tip. See there I go again, changing a tool into another tool ;-). You will need to harden/temp the cutting tip but you want the body and struck end soft so you don't have it chipping on you. This is true for the regular chisels/punches etc. because you will be a striking with a hardened hammer against hardened steel. This is not a good thing. If you don't soften the struck end of the tool it could cause chipping and send flying metal shrapnel into you or anybody close to you. Hope this helps.

I took a look at those videos/pictures and they have inspired me. Some good pictures there. Coincidently, I have some of that 2X2 square tubing that I was going to use as the frame for my mini-hydraulic press too. I got them to use as legs for a work table project but never got around to that project. Priorities have to be adjusted now. I'll have to measure it but I think I have enough for this project. This may end up costing me next to nothing (well time spent anyway) + the jack. ;-) Have you thought about a combo die that would have both the flat and the fullering on one set? That's how I was/am going to do the dies. It would keep from having to switch out the dies between the welding presses and the drawing presses. You would just need to make sure they are at the same height. Thanks for the info and pictures. This will help me get through this project in a hurry. Much appreciated post!!! Thank you.

Wow, what great timing. I just bought one of those 20ton hydraulic jacks to create a mini-hydraulic press out of to weld billets together. This is exactly what I had in mind when I started noodling on it about a month ago. Thinking about the project has taken more time that actually building it (don't all projects?). Of course the thinking is alot cooler than doing this time of year (100-110+ degree days here). Not to mention trying to figure out what I had for stock versus what I might need to buy has me slowed. Great minds think alike! Or at least the same needs/solutions seem to recur repeatedly. That's why I love this site!!!

Are they using the etching to actually do the cutting and not make the mesh itself? In the video it looks like regular hardware screen and the cutting was done via scissors. It sounds like for $$$ and time sake, laying out and cutting the larger material (i.e. expanded mesh/metal) with cutting discs/sheet metal sheers/hand plasma cutting maybe more cost effective and probably quicker for actual delivery. You could use the CAD plans and just print out the shapes as templates to lay on top of the mesh to show the lines. At the larger sizes, the exactness of the cut down to the mm is not as critical as those smaller sculptures he did. Using hammers with dollies as most sheet metal body shop pros have done for decades is probably how the shaping could be done. In the video, that's basically what the artist in the video is doing. He's just using his hands and small tools as hammers/benders and dollies. Add in an Oxy/Acetylene rosebud torch to heat areas on the big metal to help them bend/stretch/shrink and anneal the metal and you would have a fairly complete method. This is all fairly standard metal sculpture methodology. If you have ever looked at some of the bodywork (no pun intended, okay maybe a little) that guys like Ron Covell and others have done, the curves and shapes are very much like human forms. Intentionally so in many cases. Hope this gives you a few useful ideas.

Sounds like you have a lot of holes to punch (80+ pickets times 4 holes = 320+ holes). At 6 inch centers that would equate to about 40 feet of rail X 2 for top and bottom = 80 feet. If this is just a one time deal, you might be better off buying pre-punched railing from someplace like kingmetals.com or your local metal supplier. You can also get it pre-textured usually. I know kingmetals has punched C-channel that might be right. Below is a price they have for what seems to be about what you could use. You might end up paying more for tooling/fuel not to mention your precious time than buying the material pre-punched. Most people don't ask about how you made the holes when they look at a fence. They usually ask how you did the scrolls or other neat elements. Spend you time/effort on the things that really make the project interesting. Try to minimize the grunt work. :-) If you plan on doing this for more of a production run then yes, some of the other suggestions would be good and you could do it on square tubing. www.kingmetals.com Look under fence components. Punched Channel, 1" wide, 6" center, 1/2" square hole, 20 ft. Weight: 16.00 lbs Dimension: 20'-1"-1/2" $22.79