SJS

Sounds fabulous, rock on:-) You gonna start making them for all your friends right??? ;-)

I've done three swords. The 2nd-4th pics are of the test piece I made, and then finished for my father-in-law. That blade was pretty good I swung it full force into a 6" shaft of steel and it nicked the shaft, but I couldn't find where I had hit the blade, still sharp, no flat on the blade, I was pleased... The pics 1, 5-7 are of the sword I forged for one of my best friend's son's wedding, which I did as a demo "sword Forging for dummies with power hammers" the last pic is at the end of the forging demo, You might notice the finished sword is a little bit shorter than the blank I forged out on the power hammer... I trimmed a wobble off the end of the blade, and then after hardening I broke the sword bladed dirk off of the end of the sword, you can see the dirk blade in the top of the ax target in pic 1 and on the table next to the sword in pic 6... Duhhh. I think I did both those swords in 2007. I don't have any pics of the 3rd sword which I worked on for Jim's younger son's wedding in 2013??? If my son makes it to Eagle Scout I will be making another one... if not before... I waited almost 20years before I did my first sword, lots of axes, spears, and knives, but I had too much respect for a sword to bugger it up too badly;-) All of the blades have a distal taper and a diamond cross section, and were forged to shape and finish ground before hardening and tempering and regrinding.

I would have TOTALLY done that:-) LemiShine dishwashing additive is citric acid, polish the snot out of it with a FRESH buffing wheels, and then soak in hot water with the lemishine to try and pasivitate it.

The innate skill and ability to be a master blade smith isn't in anyone... The potential to be a master blade smith is in some people. Skills are mental tools that have to be developed and sharpened through experience, and in order to get the experience you need the compulsion to just do it, until you have mastered it. The physical skills examined independently aren't too taxing, but putting together the whole package that takes a level of determination or compulsion... There is a "10,000 Hour" rule to achieve a level of mastery, that is debated because some people can become a grandmaster chess player in 2 years of concentrated practice and others might practice nearly as much and take 26 years. I suspect that the solid fuel in the rocket booster is a level of compulsion, it is an obsession, it occupies your mind and you are always thinking about it. It MATTERS like few things do, and you devote your time and energy and attention to achieving the goal. The other factor is the other things in life aren't nearly as important and aren't as distracting as for normal people. I suspect that there is no line between Genius and insanity. If you have achieved that level of mastery there is some form of dysfunction present, because normal people are too distracted with life to accomplish all that much. I read a book a number of years ago titled "The History of Human Accomplishment" very interesting book, especially the appendices in the back where he talked about the meta trends and concepts. He pointed out that many of the most significant figures in all the disciplines across the board had health problems, family problems, and social issues particularly in early childhood. There is a more recent book called "The Geek Shall Inherit the World" that examines some of the richest entrepreneurs and looks at them during high school;-) Some times the popular jock hits his peak in high school and it is all down high from there, he is relegated to being a "high school Harry." The Geek however tends to develop other skills other than social skills navigating high school, and is focused and determined and then succeeds... If you want to get good, get determined, and don't get distracted. Priorities are crucial, if you aim at nothing that is exactly what you will get. If you set goals and work to achieve those goal, even if it is thought exercises, or planning to block off some time to work on things... You stand a much better chance of achieving those goals. Giftedness isn't as much of an issue as most people think. There are people who have physical and metal gifts, but they often don't appreciate them, and more importantly don't capitalize on them... If you have the desire, the determination, and might I say the compulsion, you can go a long way, the physical skills can be developed, the aesthetic can be learned. Skills are honed and sharpened like a knife, you work diligently to get it sharp, and then you keep it honed to keep them sharp. Which is why you are always working to keep your hammer control good, you movements quick and sure, without being rushed, and work efficiently to produce high quality ironwork... :-) Oh and I agree with MrMaelstrom ;-) it is best to not pounce on the noob wannabeswardsmith in a malicious rush to burst his bubble, reeducation and adjusting unrealistic expectation is in order, but gently redirecting them is a better course of action. Remember "Do unto others as you would have them, do unto you" Most of us don't thrive on criticism, and aren't so oppositional that we will persevere just to prove some one wrong. If you want more blacksmiths to play with, you have to play nice;-)

That is a topic I have been thinking about lately Frosty... Divergent vs Convergent thinking. Convergent thinking is having all the rules internalized and examining the situation and coming to the best solution according to social conventions and beliefs. Divergent thinking doesn't have a box to think outside of, they just churn up potential solutions in a very non linear fashion. Some very creative, potentially nonsensical, and possibly dangerous ideas come out. Convergent ideas tend to follow traditional patterns, but are also reliable... Good design involves tempering the extemporaneous exuberance of divergent ideas with some convergent practicality... Very interesting ideas, about ideas....

Its just like the internet, you need to wade through a lot of hearsay and misinformation to get to the good stuff. Try and be humble and patient, you can't judge a book by its cover. Sometimes people actually do know something useful, and if not you never know when some goob will drop an actual pearl of knowledge in your lap, and if your gracious tools could be forthcoming too. There are lots of pretenders, and educated guessers (BS's)... It seems like we all watched a documentary on PBS 7 or 8 years ago and that makes us an expert on some topic, most people find themselves doing that especially if they think the other person doesn't know very much yet;-)... But the "hold the hammer firmly" violates my beliefs and qualifies as a sin;-)... Though to be fair there are some very good smiths in the "long handle, small head" denomination. They preach that mass x velocity squared equals energy, so you get more bang for your buck swinging faster, and a longer lever arm can help you accelerate the hammers head through the arc faster. Then the real quibble comes in weither he said "firmly but gently" or some other qualifier. Because you should hold the hammer firmly enough that you guide the hammer to the targeted landing spot, but loosely enough that energy from the hammer doesn't feed back into your arm. Hard to say how much truth was hiding in what he said...

I always tell people senility sets in early in my family, or is that ADD??? ;-) it amazes me that I can loose tools in plain sight. I know matter is neither created or destroyed in the normal course of things, but it is amazing how things can DISAPPEAR... I have an ill fitting tong story was teaching a younger boy and was working on something that didn't fit in the tongs and was higher carbon, as the stock cooled past its forging range and I kept working it jumped harder in protest and bounced out of the tongs and cartwheeled through the air and blistered the end of my nostril and upper lip... LOTS of nerve endings in your nose. Three lessons: tongs need to hold formerly, stop forging below forging temp, don't burn yourself, especially tender bits;-) Same boy I was showing how to do Damascus and I was using the rightangle grinder on the billet HOT. I have a resperator and hearing protection on and he swats my shoulder and points at my chest where my sweatshirt is on fire, I finish what I was doing and then put it out. Sometimes a leather apron is an important PPE;-)

Andrew that is great, its cheap, it works, and you got it done. No need to wait until you can build the taj mahal. I have so many building projects... my joke is "In my COPIOUS free time...." I would love to build one of those... in my copious free time....

Clifton Ralph has said that in the steel mill blacksmiths shop he worked in, 4140 was the default tool steel, they made almost all the tools out of 4140. They would forge or fabricate the tools and would use it just normalized or they would harden and then temper to nearly 1000... If I remember correctly, seems they were more worried about something fatiguing and exploding in their faces, than the prospect of having to make a new one. This was for struck tools, hacks, flat backed fullers, side sets, "furniture", swages, and spring fullers. A lot of the tongs were made out of coil spring.

Love the Henkel lube when I can get it to flash off and leave a nice film. I have had it dramatically increase the penetration of the tool, really nice when it works the way it is supposed to. I dip the tools and sometimes its hard not to drench them, which doesn't leave you with the nice film. If you use a spray bottle you get better flash and film on smaller tools, but you also don't get the full quench to keep the tool cool... There are always trade offs in life. I also like to add powdered green coal to a deep hole.

Industrial sized scrap is fun to get your hands on... I got one of the 6" diameter axils from Ptree makes a great sledging anvil, or an anvil to build a power or treadle hammer out of. Its 454# with a 22" diameter flange upset on the end. Lots of good scrap around, and lots of old tools lurking about ask and keep asking, if everyone you know!!!!!!! Everyone you meet, knows your looking something will pop up;-)

Actually I warm the hammer handles in the gasser as well. Take the tongs hold the wrong end of the bar in the fire till it is warm enough to hold on to, then you can heat up the end your working on;-) I don't mind roasting my front side, its freezing my backside, feet, and hands that I object to... I used to do quite a bit of work after dark in the dead of winter in an unheated brick shop. My new big shop isn't fully closed in yet so its no warmer than the old shop, maybe worse most of the time I wasn't standing in snow in the shop in Attica...

One of the cold weather tricks I use is to preheat all of the steel tools I'm using in the dragon's breath of the gas forge. Nasty grabbing cold tools...

I've got plenty of wrought, so I will likely just use that. I was going to carve up some rasps for the cheeks. Wanted to make some more stuff for my demo in June at the IBA conference. I made a mid 14th century Italian curb bit for a Percheron with a 5 1/2" mouth. The drawings I was using had fittings on the ends of the cheeks to attach it to the bridle so I forged those out too. Also made some brass cheek bosses. Somewhere I have pictures on a floppy disk;-) probably easier to get it off of a disk than my windows 8 desktop...

I have made bits for horses in the past, and just used mild steel. I think I remembered some manufactures referring to their bits as sweet iron, and someone claimed that stainless tasted bad??? Just wondering if someone with some actual experience in this area might be able to chime in. I have AS36, some 1018, wrought iron, some 300 series stainless, as well as 440C, plus some others;-) If I make and sell a fancy bit I would rather not have it rusting, but I can oil the snot out of it, I was going to have to do that to the arms anyway...

I have a bunch of S7 lathe drops that are 1.25" I need to make a swing arm fuller to do wrapped handles on tooling I make out of them... Much quicker than punching handle eyes... As a side not on the wrapped handles, some of the industrial blacksmiths that I know, are very deliberate in crimping their handles so that someone isn't tempted to put the hand 'Through the loop'... The idea being that if you put your finger through the loop, and the tool get crunched under the hammer you are going to get hurt, safer to make it so you can't put your fingers in the loop handle, than get your hand messed up.

Back to the original intent of the thread... There is a tradition among some that tap the anvil, traditions are often founded on some element of truth or something that seemed to work better. Often times the people doing/making something the "traditional" way didn't understand the science behind what they were doing in the way that we would. Like the Japanese laminating sword blades to overcome the limitations of the deep hardening steel that they were water quenching... Or the patternwelded swords in western Europe again coming up with a solution to an embrittlement issue. I am honestly curious where the tradition comes from, and who popularized it. I personally can't see of a good way to "scientifically" test to see if there is any honest benefit to the practice, other than a pause while you think and adjust. But I am not willing to categorically condemn anyone who uses the technique. A lot of us are self taught, we don't come out of a specific tradition, we made it up as we went along and found what worked best for us. I have heard Clifton Ralph tell stories about German, Polish and Czech blacksmiths in the steel mill who had some very rigid ideas about how the apprentices should swing their sledge hammers. Clifton even as a young punk was an ornery old cuss, and told them "you can complain if I hit the (xxxx) thing wrong, but don't tell me how I have to hold the hammer your special way to hit it." To use a horse analogy there are a lot of people who do the whole "natural Horsemanship" thing badly, many of them look like idiots and look like they are going to get themselves hurt. That doesn't mean that the system isn't a valid method of training, or that there aren't good solid element of "truth" in the methodology. Or that Monty Roberts, or Pat Parelli aren't great horse trainers... I suspect that might be the case here. I also suspect I don't have the information to make a honest judgment of the technique. If it is just a superstitious obsessive compulsive behavior then we probably shouldn't be passing it along. If it does help with working in a nice rhythm and reduces the strain on you hammer hand then it might have some usefulness? Like I said in a previous post I'm not really a tapper, but I also don't hold the sledge with my off hand on my near hip and punch the sledge down with my right hand either, but I'm not going to tell some European smith he is an idiot for holding his sledge that way, as long as he gets the job done;-)

I imagine he would profess his brain was hardly working, if I know him at all...;-)

Even with all the extra goodies that is high... I thought the 4k for a 25LG was high, most I see are 2-3K. What I find interesting is that you can sometimes find bigger hammers for less than that. I think its because most people don't want to move the big guys, can't fit them in their garage, and/or are afraid of them;-) I want to find a big hammer at a little hammer price, not a little hammer at a big hammer price;-)

When I was learning to smith I was encouraged to hit, hit, tap or something like that. I did it for a while and seem to remember it being easier, less tiring, and have an over all fond memory of the practice. Since there were long breaks where I didn't do much forging, I got out of the habit, and as I got back into forging regularly I got better, and I did it less often. Now I only do it occasionally. Sometimes I think it helps with muscle memory, where you don't know what to do next or can't remember what you had thought you needed to do while the part was heating, and that tap primes the pump to get you "flowing" again.. I also thick the hammer falls "dead" on the steel delivering all of its energy to the steel, so you have to lift the hammer back up, and the occasional tap "enlivens" the hammer and it bounces back up from the blow, allowing your arm a bit of a rest. If it is done right and your on an anvil with excellent rebound... Still I have gotten out of the habit most of the time, most of the time I am work several irons in the fire and hammering one thing after another... I lack the venom of the Anti-tappers for the most part;-), but I imagine if I saw someone wasting too much heat to tap it would offend me I suppose, but someone who does it well, it wouldn't bother me. I think if the person were working smoothly and efficiently a couple of taps wouldn't bother me. If it looks like the person is dawdling, or really doesn't know what they are doing I can see how it would be off putting;-) or they are too busy doing an obsessive compulsive behavior... I think I remember some kind of Japanese saying, something like a good craftsman is NOT slow, he works quickly without seeming hurried. That is ultimately my goal, work quickly without rushing and slapping things around, and do my best on each job, and hopefully I get better all the time. If I can fall into a nice rhythm, make it look easy, and do it gracefully even better.

Does it have extra dies, does it only have flat dies, or combo dies, or plow shear dies... Even small flat dies are very useful, and if they are worn enough to have a faint dip, and softening of the edge even better;-) If they are sharp enough to cut yourself on, not so much, but taking them out and softening the long edges can fix that... Combo dies will work, plow dies are useable but not nearly as versatile. Does it look like a war troll had installed the dies last, and is it going to be an ordeal to get them out, and you will need to make new wedges??? Is the adjustment bolt that allows you to shorten the stroke still useable, if you want to use much tooling under a 25#LG you will need to be able to shorten the stroke so there is more air between the dies. Does it have a BRAKE??? Its much easier to get MANNERS out of a little mechanical hammer if it has a break, rather than hitting your tool 2.5 times instead of once... None of the these are real deal breakers, new dies can be bought or made, the stroke adjustment can be fixed and a brake fabricated, but if you get all the goodie up front even better...

Flat dies are great. Furniture for your bottom die makes it very quick to switch out tools like, a narrow drawing die with built in kiss blocks, tapers, cupping tools, V blocks, spring fullers, and spring swages. Small handled tool to use under the hammer like a fuller/flatter combo paddles, tong making paddle, side sets, bob punches, as well as a small fuller I call a "rake" are all very handy... Then there are all the tools that you just throw on the bottom die, like a rivet snap/set, or a bolster to punch into. Some guys are real handy with changing out dies and use dedicated drawing dies, or do a lot of work with combo dies. I have mainly used flat dies with a lot of tooling. I haven't enjoyed the combo dies I have used, but the edges on the flat part were too sharp, and you couldn't work in the sweet spot of the die...I softened my edges on the long sides of my flat dies. Never felt like I could afford lots of dies, so I never invested in some of the nice options, but I did make a lot of handled tools, and some spring dies to set in a collar with a hardie hole to accept a post mounted on the spring die. Do you have more than one hammer? Is your flat die one of the good ones that is "broken in" that has a very definite sweet spot in the middle of the long face that is softer and allows you to draw a taper without a lot of "chew" marks;-) Flat die forging is very versatile if you take the time to learn the tricks and make the tools. Look up Clifton Ralph, and Steve Parker, both industrial blacksmiths who advocate for flat dies, UMBRA sells videos of conferences for pretty cheap. The tapes that Clifton made years ago are very informative if you can get by the sound and the format;-) Look at what some of the ABANA chapter libraries have as far as videos. Dave Manzers videos are also pretty useful too. Use what you have, look for opportunities to play with other peoples toys, before you cough up for more tooling. Unless you are looking to spend some money as a tax right off, then order some dies;-) Most of us don't have the problem of having too much money hanging around. The LG QC die system sounds cool, and I really like that after you invest in that you can build your own stuff off of it which is perfect... I love tool making, if you would rather buy some cool kit and get to work, as long as the cash flow works for you that's cool too... But you have to make sure that with any capital investment, that there will be a good return on your investment. I have a friend he bought three sets of dies with his hammer from Tom Clark, and I suspect he hasn't changed dies on the hammer very often, I have, and Tom did when he demoed there, all I ever see on that hammer are the flat dies... Might ask what dies did you buy that just collect dust... Inquiring minds want to know???

Draw out each leg a bit, then twist each leg, then weld the points together then weld to a poker, then twist the handle basket. You could also draw out and round each leg, then scroll the four legs up, or down and use that as a foot for a table leg, still have the spike head.

So were you able to split wrought iron like split rails for a fence inquiring mind's want to know???

I thought it might be another name for a side set... I like side sets, very useful little beasties. Jargon is so specific to a particular group of people;-) The industrial smiths I've talked to use the term side set, and guys doing repouse' seem to use the term 1st pass butcher , and 2nd pass butchers, for the tools do that same procedure. Need to look in Lilico and see what term he uses??? What is kind of interesting to me is that I met an industrial smith named "Guffy" who made his side sets so they had wings that tapered off away from the side set in the middle kinda like --^-- It kept the side set from rolling due to the resistance when you were pounding it into the steel, and you knew when you were done. My hammer has been down for years and I haven't made any yet, but it is on the bucket list of tools to make... :-)