Meisenmann

I did it that way, I had five leaves per disc. But cutting it out with aviation snips was tedious work ^^

I hardened the blade today. I applied a clay insulation on the spine of the blade for differential heat treating. First I tried fire cement but that decided to go seperate ways when I heated the blade. I annealed two times for one hour each cycle at 200

No no, I formulated my sentence wrong and made myself misunderstood. I meant it is horrible to learn if it is not one's mother language. I considered its grammar for example... As far as I know as much as one third of the US citizens have some german roots. At least that was said in a documentary I saw a week ago about the migration of germans to the US during the last 5 centuries. I was really surprised when I heard that.

I am lurking for half a year, I really like the forum for good advice and interesting posts :-) English is fine with me :cool: Otherwise I would be in the wrong place here I guess... Your post would translate as: >Welcome to Iforge. You will find a wealth of info here to answer all your >questions you may happen upon. I would say all this in German, except my 4 >years of schooling in the language has been 26+ years ago and have had no >one to use it with. So it is pretty much lost. Willkommen bei Iforge! Du wirst hier einen Reichtum an Infos vorfinden, der all deine Fragen, auf die du sto

Hi everybody! I thought at least a little Introduction of my person would be the a matter of politeness after littering the forum with my posts... I am 23 years old and live in Germany. I always wanted to forge since the first time I watched Conan the barbarian with its intro scenewhen I was young. Well, of course I know today that it really wasn't a correct represantation of correctly forging a blade, but the movie was cool anyway (even if I like the books more....but that is a diferent topic ^^). I have no real job, well not yet anyway. I am studying Medicine in my third year, there are still 4 years to go (in the german system). I have acquired or improvised the tools in the past half year (even got a good anvil), now I have holidays and will divide the spare time between hobbies and "working at the hospital". To cut a long speech short: Hello!

Here is my first try on a knife shaped object: It is made from an old file. I annealed it the day before. After that I removed the teeth with my big monstrous file (I named her "Brunhilde", she works like a charm). Then I tried to hammer it to shape, made the tip and so on. I really would like to have three hands. Then I could have removed the scale before hammering. If I tried it the whole mess was cold the time I wanted to start pounding. I really thought the file would have more "meat" (it was a triangular one) after hammering it flat. Now I have a blade that is too thin to harden without a big bang I am afraid... It is only a good milimetre thick and due to that I could not file clean the whole thing because I would have had to remove too much material. After forging I normalized it three times as good as I could and tried not to get it too hot (heated to nonmagnetic). After that I hand filed and sanded the blade up to the "point-of-it-gets-too-thin-if-you-remove-more" I rounded all the sides, the point, and so on. I will try to harden the day after tomorrow, I have to make some improvements on my forge for a better, more even heat beforehands. I will quench in vegetable oil, pre-heated of course. (at least if you folks do not think different...). Now to the pics:

Thanks for the nice words, that improves my mood for today Today's work did not turn out the way I planned. I pounded on a bar of steel to make it thicker on one end, after that I tried to stretch the rest of the bar to make it thinner. After pounding several hours I had very little effect, but there are some things to improve with my forge anyway. Tomorrow I will try something different, I will post pics of course if there is something to show... Should I open new threads or post in this one? Problems I will post into the problem solving area I guess... Additionally, I will post a short greeting text in the appropriate area of the forum in the next days.

Thanks for the tip, but english is okay for me (at least if you can understand me and aren't bothered by my sermons ) I just didn't know the word for the tool I used and used a translation site for it. Maybe aviation snips is a better word for it, i don't know. Normal sentences are way easier to translate than technical terms.

Thanks. No, I had no idea how people use a torch for cutting such things out to be honest. I bought some metal shears (hope this is the right word, I used a translation site for it) and cut it out by hand. The downsides were that it took long and I got some painful blisters on my fingers.

Thank you very much! I think I will try making a candleholder next time, I read a tutorial on them in a book from the library. Now, re-reading my first post I see that I really overused the word "I"....I start nearly every sentence with it. Kind of embarassing.

Hi there! I have never had anything to do with metalworking in the past and only wanted to forge blades when I began reading about forging etc. But my first project should be of a different kind because I wanted to make a special birthday present for my girlfriend. So my first try was a rose after I had everything I needed. I got an anvil from a retiring metal worker who closed down his shop. I got it really cheap (60 Euro for approximately 60 Kilos) and he never used it himself before so it was in good condition. I built a forge from materials I do not know how to translate in english and use a hair dryer that "can blow cold" for air supply. I also used a welding torch with a small propane/butane canister. I also learned some important lessons about how to improve my forge and that working without the proper tools can be a pain in the ***. I really need some good tongs, proper pliers etc. I had some problems with the flower, especially connecting leaves to the stem (which was nigh to impossible for me, I also had no flux so forge welding was not an option. I had no idea how to forge weld them anyway without burning the leaf) Some of the questions I will ask in this forum in the future I think, but now to the pictures. I presented it with two real roses as company in a small bouquet.

I especially like the Tomahawk! I love the sleek and graceful curves Is he allowed to bring this kind kind of gear with him?