toolish

When you say you made it, what did this process entail? Did you heat treat and temper it? Also what are you trying to sharpen it with?

Yep those are some nice tools, been meaning to make a few wood working tools, the up side of most wood working tools is you usually only need a small portion of metal (helps if you get the right steel for the job and temper it correctly. Me personally have always avoided wood work, as I ruin wood much faster then I do with metal work lol As with most things I find there is always 10 different ways to go about doing the same thing, you just got to work out the best way to do it with your skills and tools available at the time. Shame you live in a different state.

I was in the middle of making a set my self, after looking at these I am cutting the end off and starting again lol What I was making was going to end up to delicate and would not have lasted very long. Yours look very solid and should last you a long time.

Like the snakes, looks like you did a good job on making it round for the body and the heads seem like they have nice detail on them. If you even felt like selling something at markets those snakes would be the rage.

Looks like your putting together some rather professional looking work already. Your wood working skills will help you in blacksmithing as a fair few items have some sort of wood aspect. Look forward to seeing some of the blacksmithing work you do.

They would make great chopsticks or sticks for female hair buns. Would prob get a good price for them too

was reading something on the net suggesting that you want to make a fist around the handle and there to be around 1-2 cm gap between your finger tips and your palm. As everyone has different sized hands i am feeling handles should be different as well depending on your hand size. Just my thoughts though, so i wouldn't put a whole lot of weight behind it lol

Do you think a chain hold down would assist in punching and drifting the eye? Although you might require a double chain hold down, so you can hold each side down leaving a free spot in the middle to punch? I made this set up a while ago, just have not tested how it goes yet, seemed like a good idea for one manned operations lol

wow just wow, that looks amazing, the patterns and general shape of that axe is great. This piece really motivates me more to get pattern welding a go, the result is just such a better looking bit of work then without it. Really something you can hang on the wall and have your friends just stare blankly at it for ten minutes.

remember you catch more bees with honey then sugar. I would go for the over the top being nice. I regularly give small free things that I have too many of to my neighbors to keep them onside. But from the sounds of it I would let your folks run this one, there house that your under their rules, see what they come up with.

odd little guy, looks like some sort of of horse cat ;)

Yep looks top notch to me. Dont know if you are really going to be able to make that knife any better then it already looks. I guess performance would be the only other aspect that one could work on, although judging by the look of your work I am feeling rather confident that your blades will be performing rather well anyways. Sounds like you are looking for a challenge these days more then anything if you dont feel you need to go to much effort to produce such nice looking work. Not sure what is going to challenge you more, but I am sure that there is something you have not tried yet, so many different avenues when it comes to black smithing and knife making to play around with. Keep up the nice work either way and good to hear your sharing the knowledge with others in your shop.

funny how almost everyones first few blades are bananas lol (mine included) Sorry if you intended it to be bent :D As for your extra end peening it over is prob a good idea, makes it stronger, unless you split the handle in the process. If you can get the tang back out of the handle you could just cut it off, if you cant get it back out, you could add a little bit extra of either wood or metal pommel type thing and hold it on with a smal pin through the end of the tang. . What type of steel did you make it out of?

what did you make the vice out of, did you make your own thread or get it from something else? Been thinking about trying to make my own one out of a bit of rail road, just stuck on how to make a good thread for the vice.

looks like a solid camping/bush knife to me. Should provide you with some amusement if you are going to try and give it a rough time, looks like it would handle a bit of abuse.

Looks like it should work nicely, good for working near the edge when doing blades and that sort of thing. Kinda hard to see much in the pic to comment on, how have you mounted the block onto the wood, really would want to make sure it dont move or fall over while in use. Might have to dig a bit of wood out, or make some sort of bracket or I guess you could weld on some sort of foot onto the bottom to hold it down. I am feeling your make shift horn will only be 'ok' for light work, maybe sockets but not overly good for other horn uses as I feel it will just bend as you strike it. I guess you could always just grind a radius on one of the edges of your block if you really need a rounding portion to work on. Do you have a large vice or anywhere you can put hardy tools? If not I have seen simple systems where you just sink a thick bit of metal plate with a 1 " hole into a stump and use that

Nice table and solves a problem you were having. I think everyone has different things they do with the equipment, For me I am very close to other benches already with steel tops. My forge is also rather farge and has a big section with nothing on fire, so i usually put things down there for a bit if need be. But hey if i didnt have anywhere to put things I would make a little job table like this one, Might have thrown some wheels on it, at least 2, cant beat wheels lol

awesome way to use what you have available, your ability to use scrap and make it useful in my opinion is the basis of black smithing (well it's the part i like anyways) Interested to see what else you can come up with.

welcome to the site and to smithing. Best advice, start collecting high carbon scrap steel, looking at flea markets and become friends with your local scrap yard. Start collecting hammers now lol, you can never have enough hammers. You dont have to pay top dollar to do good work, many people can pump out some good stuff with very low cost items, just got to know where to look and how to use it.

No photo of the line up??? Good to know you have thought of your anvil's safety if you go away. You could also run underground wires to them with an electric fence, will take people ages to work it out, lol

nice video, the fast speed makes it sound like some sort of metal working woodpecker lol Looks very hard doing everything on the ground, a stand is going to be a big plus for you.

They really start with a whole lot more material at there tong end. Looks like a fair bit of upsetting would have been required. But hey are they strong or what. Love the little tong arm clamp thing, not too sure id have that much trust in it though

kinda hard to say from the pic, looks like you might need a little bit of grinding with a flap disk on an angle grinder. I would have a go at it with a steel brush and a little WD40 or just a bit of water, to just get the main stuff off. Then once scrubbed down see what you got, see how the rebound is, how straight things are and how bad the damage is on the edges. A maker mark may show up after the clean. So I guess it really depends what you paid and what you were forging on before? Looks like you can do some good work on it to me, got all the bits required, give it a good clean and repost what you find. Then start looking for something to mount it on and tie it down to the base well or it will run away when you call it names :D

Looks like a handy little knife, good grip, maybe watch out on your index finger if it gets close to the blade when doing something. Really good shape for a first blade, looks like you seem to understand blade dynamics for metal movement (as you didnt end up with a sharpened banana looking thing) :D Hard to see from pic but it looks like you are going to be cutting the thread with your knife when you put it it (unless you added a middle sandwich layer that I cant see. Keep at it tho, looks like you will be pumping out some nice stuff

I know the feeling when you score a nice hammer. I feel about the same with my new straight peen. Even better feeling when you get it for a great price. Dont think there be too many people on here who dont like pics of hammers