viking-sword

Well dang! I was really hoping someone would have actually given an idea as too answer the op's original question. I have  done so much reading I can no longer get my eyes uncrossed. I've been forging for 34 yrs making knives and ornamental ironwork and at present, my damascus forge has an interior dimension of 16x9, and very well insulated, using T-rex burners and does very well, but does go through the propane, and have been looking into making a ribbon burner for it hoping to eliminate hot spots, and save on propane. In the last few years the billets I've been making have increased in size so going smaller is not in the cards. Didn't mean to hijack a thread, my apologize to the op, but if anyone could help me out, and maybe the op, I'd be most greatful! I thought I'd also mention that I'm absolutely awful at math, so figuring formulas is a serious issue for me. Wes  

Yep! My bad, meant Maganese rather than Magnesium.

Do a check on Gloc quench, I've used it for the last 5+ years and love it! Warmed to 125 degrees it works flawlessly, extremely consistent. I use primarily 52100 but also the more common simple high carbon steels. After 29 years of this I'm only just now making my first Japanese sword using Aldo's 1074/low magnesium so I'm anxious to see how it treats this steel. As a side note, I probably only harden about 50 blades a year (never figured out how to do this any faster),and I've only needed to do and oil change once in that time.  

JPH is absolutely correct! This is a result of your differential heat treatment. The reason you don't see this line on many of the damascus blades out there is because those blades were fully hardened before tempering.

An issue you mentioned of you "over priced it and it sold anyway" I suggest that perhaps you are not charging enough for your work in the first place. You should seriously reconsider your pricing modes for future work, why sell yourself short?

 

 Lovely piece.

Thanks Steve, that's something that has always haunted me, I'm a better craftsman than a businessman. I've been to only one knife show in my life(Blade show 2000) to get my JS rating, and never been to a hammer-in of any kind (though I'd love to sometime) so experimenting with the market is something I've never done and am told quite often that I'm underpriced, which is why I'm 50 plus orders behind and I go into work with my head spinning each day. Guess I've always been more afraid of being to overpriced and not moving my work but I suppose bumping it up a little might slow things down a bit so I can catch up some. Wes    

That's what I call this knife because made it for myself, as I do every year, and I was determined I was gonna keep this one no matter what, so what did I do? I priced it so folks would KNOW I really didn't want to part with this knife. Well, it's gone. Has a new home in California,. 26 years of making knives, one for myself each of those years, and all I have are photo's of each, oh well. This one I really liked the profile on, and I now have eight new custom orders for this blade design going on now, so what do I call this design,,,MY Knife!

    Blade is forged 52100

    Guard is of deeply etched wrought iron from wagon wheel

     Handle is of a nice grade of walnut, with silverwire inlay

      I make wood lined sheaths for all my knives these days

     Wes

Is the fork tine 'U' where it joins to shank one piece?

Yes it is, I split the rod(38 square) and then forged each tine. Of course in the finishing stage a slight amount of whitesmithing was done. Wes  

I've started making a lot of these sets and usually don't get them finished before there spoken for. The toughest one by far, and the most time consuming, was the spatula, which actually started out as a RR spring clip, thank goodness for the LG powerhamer for the initial drawing down. This also gave me opportunity to make use of the cutoffs from elk and deer that were not suitable for knife handles. Wes 

Something that may help in teaching yourself how the metal will move under your hammer is to aquire some modeling clay, shape it similar to your work piece and put your hammer to it(only lighter) and it will give you a great overview how your metal will move. You can practice different blows till get the response you want without screwing up your workpiece. Hammer control is one of the most important elements of this craft. Wes

I have often thought about slitting a spike, spreading it to insert a HC bar and forge welding it up but never tried, but it's in the works. Glad it worked out! One thought I had is that 300 seems a tad low for a temper, I mean, yes it will hold a great edge, but at that hardness I would think the edge would chip on you? Let us know how well it holds up. Nice work. Wes

I would also be inclined to ask about the type of heating method used. The reason is that by looking at the texture of this blade it looks like maybe a very oxygen rich fire was used and that also alot of low temp finish forging was done at the end. The excess oxygen will cause a great deal of pitting as well as scaling, at lower temps these pits and pock marks can be forged over not to be seen until you clean grind after forging and thus causing you to grind away more of the blade than intended to give a good clean surface. Low temp forging is okay but a majority of the benifits gained by it can also be gained by proper normalizing to reduce grain structure, something very necessary for good heat treatment any way. By forging in a reduced oxygen atmoshere and good finish forging on a good clean anvil face you can forge much closer to dimensions. There is also another way to forge for scale free finish that some smith employ nowadays, and that is to to wet forge, and what this is, is forging on a wet anvil face and periodically dunking yor hammer face in water just before forging. The water turns to steam as the hot blade comes in contact and litterally blows the scale off as you forge leaving a cleaner blade surface, just something to consider looking into. Wes

Thanks for the comments. Actually I do forge knives, as I am by trade a custom knife maker and I've had my Journeymans rating with the ABS since 2000. I make custom knives, blacksmithing(ornamental ironwork) and sharpening and repair services; keeps me really busy but it's a xxxx hard way to pay the bills and put food on the table, but it's all I have and I'm greatful for it. Yes a good many spikes are marked with the HC stamp, but even with this designation they still do not have enough carbon to make a knife with a long holding edge. Wes

OH but don't ya know they scraped the building for the nails Actually, I hope they did save those nails(probably not). Wes

My table vise is heavy duty and is marked Rock Island, Ill.

My 6 inch post vise is affixed to my swage block stand, it has a large C stamped on it and a date of 1913.


And finally I have 4 1/2 incher affixed to the forging table and stamped 248.

Now thats what I would call using your creative juices, I like that a lot, for sure I will never look at another pitchfork in discouragement for lack of ideas for it, thanks. Wes

Nice shop! I know this is not a real current topic but I just wanted to comment on something I noticed in the pics, and that is the placement of the electrical plug directly behind the wheel of the grinder. I did this once and had a great many problems once the metal dust began acumulating in and around the plug receptical(short outs and sparks type of problems), did this once(at the same time) with the plug in line with my small lathe chuck(small OILY metal particals flying into the plug...OH what a show). Just thought I'd through this in as food for thought...something to consider if you hadn't already. Wes

Sure,these spikes are not completed or cleaned up with the wire wheel but they will give a good idea of how they will look anyway,Wes.

I have to say that I agree that in OUR world, it's not worth that much, and the seller may even know this too, but the way things are right now it's not surprising that anyone will try to test the market, it may seem rediculous to us but there may be(probably is) someone out there who will give him what he ask for it, and the seller will walk away with the cash. Hell, if I had an old truck worth a few hundred buck and I had a choice of selling it for that down at the small town lot or taking it to the world exposed market and asking a few thousand with a good chance of getting it, well you get the picture. I don't like it either and it's caused me to lose out on good usable equipment to some collector with more money more than once, and hey, I use one of those hand crank little forges at my demos, never thought it was worth THAT much. Wes

Finished up a few RR spike letter openers for a show and thought they turned out ok for an afternoons work so I thought Id share a picture or two. Wes



After I finished these I had a stamp made with my town and state reading Thermopolis, Wy, and I now take the spike and hot stamp my name on the broad side and the town stamp on the under side and then make the twist in the shank before forging out the blade and it shows the stampings in the twist giving it a real interesting appeal.

I haven't used the rasp to make the snake itself but instead I use the rasp to create the scales on the snakes I make out of half inch round rod by taking the snake body when at an orange heat and laying it down on the rasp and tapping in the scales all over the body. Granted, they are not as uniform this way, but I've never had any complaints or comments about it as most folks are simply surprised to see a snake forged from iron to begin with. Wes

Well I have a show coming up this weekend and they want me to do forging demonstraions along with the items I will be selling and I thought I give a try at making some tripods. Made two sizes, medium and heavy duty. They took longer than I imaginged they would but for my first time I didn;t really know what to expect. I also had a go at a few of the adjustable trammel hooks though I've never seen one first hand, just in books and I'll say that for something that looks so simple there can be a bit of a learning curve getting the proportions right and making everything mesh well, anyway, here's a few pics to pick at. Wes

Hey CurlyGeorge thanks a bunch for that tip on fotosizer, once I figured out the steps it worked great and I resized all those pics easily! Wes

I spent the last two days on a projects list for a show coming up in a couple weeks and I started off by trying my hand at making some heart hooks I saw pictured here awhile back. I have a new camera, it's digital, and I'm not so bare with me.





These were a good challenge for me as I'm used to making stuff out of heavier stock than this 1/4 inch square stock. little more delicate,lots of tiny tapers and short work time due to heat loss, also I didn't even try splitting the stock with a chisel so I instead slit them on a small bandsaw before forging out the heart tines. The last photo shows the jig I made for shaping each half of the heart for more uniformity(35 hearts is alot of shaping). Only lost two of the 35 due to tines breaking, they made great coat hooks at the door way though.

next are whats left of a batch (25) of RR spike bottle openers I tried following Mark Aspery's book and I have less than half those left so I'll be making more for this same show.

And finally a candle holder I made, the last one of a dozen made at the same time. These were well recieved so I put the word out that I was looking for more insulators, and folks have been bringing them in by the baskets full just to get ride of them cause they didn't have a use for them but couldn't see throwing them away, lucky me. Made from 3/8 square.


I did some further looking and noticed that this topic may be in the wrong catagory, if this is the case please feel free to redirect it. On second thought, I suppose this topic could become a project topic? Wes

Looks good and it looks like a thick double layer of insulation will cover most of the burner tubes inside the forge. If you have much if any burner tube sticking out or even faced even with the interior liner wall they will burn up pretty fast if your doing much forge welding, even if the nozzles are stainless. I'm using a pair of T-Rex burners in mine and I positioned them at an angle for more of a swirling flame (seems to distribute the heat more uniformly). Also looks like you have the burners tuned good, looks like a real fire breather. Wes

I'm not as old as some, but I grew up driving an Oliver tractor that wasn't even half wore out and was tickled when we got fairly new Minniapolis Molines as replacments. My dad and grandad always took Rc cola and lard sandwiches to the fields that they cleared themselves with sticks of dynamite bought down at the hardware store, and oh was I so glad when we got our first vacum cannister milking machines so we got an extra hour of sleep in the morning. And Rachel Welch Was the hottest women on the tv! Wes