billyO

Hello all. As I find more of my forge time devoted to playing with Damascus and making billets, I’m not liking the fact that I’m heating up 1413 cubic inches of space for approx. 36 cubic inches of material. So I’ve decided I’ve got too much time on my hands and I need another project. I want to make a dedicated, small forge-welding forge. Here’re my options: 1.) Complete my original plan with my current forge (an 18″ length of 14″ diameter 1/4″ steel pipe with 2″ castable refractory for insulation and a 4″x10″ ribbon burner) and cast removable inserts out of Greencast to both shrink the current forge cavity and catch the flux to help preserve the outer layer of cement. Or; 2.) Recast and fix a smaller, atmospheric forge I’ve got. My only concern is the potential hot spot in the middle of the atmospheric forger burning some material. Thanks for the input

Ok, I'll bite.... Damascus cheese cleavers and butter knives for my family/friends.....(as I gingerly dip my toe in the knifemaking pool)

Nice designs! You must know of Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe's ideas: "Less is more". I've been thinking about doing a chess set for my brother's 50th (last year) and was going to do either 1 side square and one side round or one side with straight Damascus pattern and one with a pool and eye design. But again, well done. I wish I had the idea.....

As some of you know, I've been a Physical Therapist for the past 20+years, so here's some free PT for ya: You probably would be in the same place today if you would have used ice/cold packs for ~ 20-30 minutes, a few times a day on the inflamed soft tissues. Any time you have pain/soreness/ache in soft tissues involved in the musculoskeletal system when that art is not moving or at rest, that pain is telling you something is inflamed or swollen (same thing). And what do we do for swelling? R.I.C.E. = Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate. (sometimes we'll add anti-inflammatories like aspirin (Bayer), ibuprofen (Advil), naproxen (Aleve). These are NSAIDs = Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drugs. (As an aside, when you get a steroid (cortisone) injection for pain relief, this is a steroid, which is a stronger anti-inflammatory). There's a lot of soft tissue in the low back, and as you've found out, and anyone who's had a back injury will confirm, and the low back muscles/ligaments (what we PTs refer to sometimes as the thoraco/lumbopelvic stabilizers) are actively stabilizing the trunk during ANY movement you do. Resting the back, should be easy, but for most people not very. Icing the back is easy. Compressing the back, quite difficult Elevating the back, pretty much impossible. To sum up: If possible, when you have a back strain, take a few days off and spend a lot of time icing. Stay as mobile as possible, if it hurts, don't do it. Most inflammation will last for only 2-3 days if taken care of, and most people will resume normal activities within a few days. If you continue to push it, muscles that are injured won't work as well, which will force you to move differently, which will put added strain on nearby muscles/ligaments that are now doing double duty, fatiguing them quicker and risking further strains which will exacerbate the cycle until the pain forces you to stop for a much longer time than a few days.

neat looking setup, Damion. my comment (you asked, remember). hardy hole for....? are you going to have small hardy tools? after all, "form follows function", no? PS - or is the hardy hole you're talking about for the stand?

ian - yeah, "wow" was my thought all day. Still today, even. He's a really nice guy. I recommend searching out pics of his work if you haven't seen it. He's done busts of famous smiths, he is a truly gifted artist and smith. As far as what I'm making? The chantrelles are out so I'm still playing with small Damascus mushrooming knives. And the holiday season is steadily marching closer, and (at risk of being crass) it seems as if my folks liked the springtime because all of my siblings were born in November and December, so this year is going to be the year of the Damascus gifts. ausfire - It started as a 3"+/- length of 1 1/4" square.

Hello all. Not sure if I should have posted this in the weird shop animal thread, but had a surprise chance to spend a good part of a day meeting and working with an extremely talented smith from Bolivia, Freddy Rodriguez. And as to help me remember, I managed to get one of his pure iron elephant heads. If you've never seen any of his work, do a google, he's got skills!

Nice, and I agree with ausfire, well done!

Sorry if I haven't been clear. The blade size I'm looking for is about 4" long, 1/2 in wide and ~ 1/8" thick at the spine. A little aside: As I was making my folds on a few of the 5 billets I made out of the saw blades last night, this was the last one, and I was kind of excited because this was the billet with the longest pieces from the middle of the blade and I was anticipating getting at least a foot of 1/2" square to twist and play with. The billet after the first weld was 11" long and when I went to cold chisel the line where to make the split, my math told me that 1/2 of 11 inches is 6.5, (remember, this was the end of the night and the last weld and it was at leas an hour after bedtime....and I'm getting older....) which is where I marked, cut, and imagine my surprise when I folded the billet and had an inch sticking out..... So here's what I came up with today. My patient load has been a bit slow (typical this time of year) and I forged/twisted/filed/sanded and quickly etched for 15 min this prototype from the one inch +/- stub of 11 layers that you can see I cut off the billet in the pictures (shows up really good in the first picture where you can see the flux line on the handle.) (The little biscuit was approximately 1 3/8 square by 1/2" thick) Not sure if I'll do more work on this and try to turn this into a folder...

Thomas - Gotcha. Final/finished blade size will be approx. 4" x 1/2"

Thanks for the reply. I'm playing with mystery steel that I had on hand while I wait. May as well learn on free material, no? I used 7 layers of saw blade at ~ .090 and 6 layers of .125 mild steel. The blade that gave me this disease was basically the same materials (7 initial layers folded 4 times for approx. 98 layers) that hardened fine. Again, this is playing/learning so may as well learn how manipulating layers changes the pattern. Thanks again.

Hello all. After finishing my mushroom knife, I'm afraid I've come down with a severe case of damasc-itis, and maybe my Smithing focus is shifting. As I wait for my 15N20 and 1095 to arrive, I found some old saw blades I've had around and cut them up and started 5 four to six inch billets; 3 with 11 layers and 2 with 13. Is there a minimum number of layers needed to ensure that the blade will hold an edge? I'm thinking this may be a good chance to experiment with different layer counts and see what the difference in the patterns are, but I do want each blade to be useful. Thanks in advance.

Good question, KRS. Looked fun, David. I'm wondering how neat it would look like with a light bulb behind it (a lit one, of course... ;) )

I'll second what Mr Wooldridge said.

Hello all. Finished the shroom knife and what a fun learning experience. Quick question: Does ebony ever get compeletely smooth like glass or will you always see some tiny grain lines? I went to 1200 grit. I made at least a few rookie mistakes: Etched too long and lost color, but got some neat topography. Knicked the tip of the blade when roughing out the handle, that one hurt!

Looks good. Fun to see it come together at the final twist, eh? Not a critique, but a suggestion that I figured out when I was doing a number of these. Every how-to I've read about these says something to the effect of: "cut the cubes with a hacksaw...", but I found that if you lay out all the cuts with a cold chisel prior to heating the bar (even the longitudinal cut), then with a good hot cut chisel, after you walk the long line down the bar on all 4 sides, with the bar on the diamond set the cubes where the cold chisel marked on the corner cutting down to the longitudinal line, and after you've cut the cubes on the diamond hot, you go back to the anvil and finish the cubes on the flats. Oh yeah, make sure your hot cut chisel has an even grind on both sides. Doing the cubes hot gives a bevel on them and feels a little better in the hand. PS - If you do a better job cutting the cubes evenly than I did on this test piece it'll look better.

Here's what the blade looks like so far. This isn't etched, but this is after the quench in 130 degree oil, followed immediately by ~ 1 1/2 hours at 350+/- deg. There was a nice oil patina that started to flake off, so I used my fingernail to scrape off as much burned oil as possible. Tomorrow I start filing/grinding the tang and then the handle. Light or dark wood for the handle?

Hello all. Yesterday I took what may be the first step on the slippery slope of changing my forging focus to blades (something I thought I'd NEVER do when I first started out). After taking a couple of weeks out of the forge dealing with vehicle issues and avoiding the 90+ degree heat, I fired up the forge yesterday and decided to try my hand at damascus. I had a few old 6 TPI long sawzall blades that are approx 1/16" thick. I ground the teeth off and sandwiched 3 pieces of 1/8" mild steel between 4 sawzall blades. Folded 4 times for approx 100 layers, used a sharp hot cut to make a ladder pattern and after 4-5 hours of forgework made myself a little mushrooming blade. Did a 30 minute etch in muriatic and am pretty tickled with the pattern (I'll try pics when finished), so I now want to actually treat this blade well, so I need to know how to HEAT treat it. I couldn't find out what type of steel these are, so any suggestions on a heat treat? I was thinking quenching in oil (I've got a 5 gal bucket of veggie oil I've been using for my other tool making) but should I heat the oil? And, what temperature should I plan on using for tempering? Or should I do something else?

I thought, just like smallbpox, we defeated the vapors back in the '30s. Hopefully it's not on the comeback. I learned the common cure was to sit down. If you have to lie down it might have evolved (apologies to those who don't believe) into a more severe bug.

Careful John, I tried this once and got an a$$ chewing.... ;)

Well, I managed to remember. This week I decided that nature did her part on the final piece of seaweed so all is now clearcoated. The color looks better in real life. Almost like copper.

Pretty well summed up rockstar. Especially the above part. Digital Mechanic, when I first started smithing, I had a similar thought, in fact a search may find that I posted similar requests in the past. (A bit about my background: I've been a Physical Therapist for the past 20+ years with an undergraduate degree in biomechanics.) I followed the line of thinking that if I (we) can come up with a "proper", or perhaps more accurately, a "biomechanically correct" way to do any number of tasks, such as lifting an object off the floor, then we should be able to have a "proper" way to hammer, no? However, as you've no doubt heard, ask 10 blacksmiths a question on how to do something and you'll get 12 or more answers on the right way. At first, I bristled at this, there HAS to be a right answer. As experience might teach some, there IS a right answer, and each smith had one. IMO we can, and should, correct problems when they arise, and you'll recognize them when they show up (read: Pain) but, due to the perhaps infinite variables, it is impossible to say "this is the ...(posture, grip, swing, stance, handle diameter, handle length, hammer weight, anvil height, etc) that EVERYONE should use. I'd repeat the suggestions that before worrying about the details, swing a hammer regularly for a few months to build up the strength in your muscles, ligaments and tendons (stop when sore, preferably when tired). Then you'll know better what issues you're having and we'll be better able to give useful guidance.

The only thing I'd disagree with from what Glenn said was the first, at the forge. I don't wear gloves if I don't have to, but larger stock can soak up a lot of heat and sometimes gloves are needed because the stock is to big/long for tongs.

I guess that'd be me ;) (for those who don't know, my paying profession has been a Physical Therapist for the past 20 years) Most of what Frosty said is solid advice. (hmmm....should that be taken as a general statement????) You can ice 20-30 min an hour all day if you want. After my knee surgery I iced pretty much continuously for 2-3 days until my post operative swelling went down. A few times a day is usually plenty for most overuse injuries. In general, when you have pain in a muscle, and you're not using or stretching that muscle, that tells you it's inflammed. And you should R.I.C.E. inflammation as necessary: R est I ce C ompress E levate The last two are usually only necessary in the more severe injuries.

I've got a few: How long have you been forging? What's a while? How many days a week? How many hours a day? It could easily take 6+ months for your body to adapt to a new task. Suggestions: Ice and rest as necessary.