SJS

Do something once, you did it... Do something 10 times and you should get at least 3 that you really like and can be proud of... Do something 100 times and 80-90 should match real nice. Do something 1000 times and you might have 3 duds, 20 that are so so, and everything else should be real nice. It takes time and devotion to the craft to achieve a level of mastery of a technique and a certain product. Teaching should be encouraging, tell them the truth, if you focus on getting better each time you will. Blacksmithing is constantly evaluating the effect of the hammer on the steel and adjusting what your doing to get the effect you want. Let them fail, but don't let them quit, encourage, encourage, encourage. You cannot learn to blacksmith without learning perseverance. If it were easy anyone could do it... Try really hard to let them do all the work, if you do tweak a project a bit, try and explain what your doing, why your doing it, and how to do it. Step by step, a piece in your hand, and them following your example in their is a good way to teach, if you have time, you can do a complete project quickly in front of them, and then do it step by step with them. Introduce the concept, go over the process, and then have them do it.

I generally just go to the "new content" button on the top of the main page, especially if I have just gone through all the forums recently. I like it cause it is quick and easy, I only have to sort through all the new posts...

Yes I used curved gouges on steel all the time. I use them for profiling shapes like dogs heads, and deeply scalloped leaves. As far as how sharp is too sharp with this particular steel, try making a thin bladed hot slitting chisel and see how it holds up under use. This would also seem to make an ideal material for slot punches and round punches, try it and see...

I use some curved chisels, forge the chisel shape, then sink into a bottom swage... I would make the struck end very broad and just slightly rounded, and get a couple copper or brass mallets for striking these tools. That is the one drawback to using fancy steels for struck tools, it is flat out just safer to use a soft hammer. You don't dent or scar your favorite forging hammer, and the struck tool is less likely to spall and throw chunks into your face or the crowd... I use a lot of S7 and they cut like crazy and last forever but since it air hardens the struck end is hard too... Your milage may vary since this is likely a tungsten alloy and very hot hard...

Ifen he is sparking every time it comes out it won't stay higher carbon;-)

Well 100 degrees and 90% humidity with a gasser blowing dragons breath at me, and slugging away with the power hammer, with respirator and work tunes hearing protection, Kevlar sleeves and gloves. My boots were soaked as well as the rest of me, had a marvelous time;-) Once I was making shoes for a big fat quarter horse and had the gasser on the tailgate of the truck and a down pour came through we probably got half an inch or better in 15 minutes. I was water forging, the shoes would pop as I put them on the anvil to flatten them out, again I was completely soaked down to me boots... Winter forging in the insulated brick shop back in Attica, cooking my front side with the gasser and hot steel in front of me and Whaling away at the steel, and freezing my backside and feet off. You also had to be very careful what you picked up, everything that didn't get warmed up in the gasser was flat nasty cold and might stick to you, and you felt the cold in your bones... Seems like every other day at pumpkin fest we had winds that would blow the smoke and the flames from the coal forge back into my face standing at the blower... Thankfully I don't have any stories about lightening, or wind so bad the anvil blew away... yet...

Using words like "Nazism" is a rhetorical technique designed to embarrass your opponent, put them on the defensive, and generally shut down debate. I maintain that grammar and language have rules for a reason, because it is nice when I say something, you decode what I encoded. I am all for creativity, but not learning the rules, isn't creative, and ignoring the rules because none of your friends say things that way isn't creative either... But I suppose I am an old narrow minded fuddy-duddy, because I also believe in absolute TRUTH, so it is perfectly alright to disregard everything I say because you choose to operate on a genetic fallacy, since I am obviously a Grammar Nazi there could be nothing of value in what I have said... Grammar, rhetoric, and logic, education just hasn't been the same since they lost the trivium;-)

Very nice potential as a smaller jig where you can clamp down elements of the fixture in those T-slots. First use you could make adjustable turning cams. Set up to bend twenty of the rotten shepard's crook that people have been pestering you to do... or is that just me;-) Make a fixture to help you forge horse shoe hearts if not faster maybe sharper;-) Supplemental table for your flypress to build bending fixtures on to it...

I had the attention span of a gnat, but I got better... What are we talking about;-) BIRD! Look over there,,,

Colour, honour, and I would have sworn wisdom had an e in it when I was young;-) and don't get me started on "Shirley and me went to the window"... If it is stupid to say "Me went to the window" in the singular, I maintain it is still stupid in the specific plural construction. If you are self-conscious about referring to yourself with I then use a nonspecific plural "we went to the window"

I try whenever I can and wherever I can to pass on whatever wisdom God has given to me. Worldly wisdom is learning from someone else's mistakes without having to make them yourself. When I was out in CA doing the starving artist thing, I was young and stupid, and lacked the confidence and maturity to seek out older smiths doing business out there and let them mentor me, cause I needed a lot of help, but that wounded my ego so I didn't do it... So I went back home and lived with my mom til I grew up a bit. I am still not good at the business side of blacksmithing, but I can console my fragile male ego that a lot of very talented smiths aren't good at the business side of blacksmithing, so I am in good company;-) I haven't given up, and I am still reading and refining how I try to make my passion for smithing pay the bills, but like I said I haven't quit my day job, yet;-) To encourage us all Winston Churchill said, "Never, never, never, never give up!" Then to caution us from doing something stupid, remember the definition of insanity is, Doing the SAME thing, and hoping for a different result. An unpleasant truth isn't any less true because people don't like it, and a fiction people like isn't true just because they like to believe it. Figure out what is true, and work with that...

Yes to both... There is a very specific look that I am going for. There is a texture that you get from the scaling process, but it is not big ugly chunks of scale, or deep divots from the scale being pounded in, and then popping off. There is a look I find very attractive, and to my eye displays a great deal of skill and attention to detail. Look closely at the forged to finish hammers where only the faces are sanded and polished, between the polished ends there is a satin sheen to the steel. Yes, there is texture, yes the surface is pitted slightly, but it is very even, smooth, and DELIBERATE. There are several ways to display your skill, having a good finish on your finished product is one of them, there are several techniques that can get you that finish in the end, wire brushing during the forging process helps, keeping the anvil face clean helps, using water, and scrappers, and controlling your temps skillfully all are displayed in the finished product... Unless you just sandblast the whole lot, and paint, where you loose some of the nuisances. Have you ever read about how they did the finishing on some of the interior pieces in the Samuel Yellin Shop, can't remember if it was in one of the books on Yellin, or if it was in some of George DIxon's writing in the Hammers Blow, or the Artist Blacksmith's Quarterly. But they emphasized the texture being developed in the finishing process. I doubt they used wire brushes much, But they are cheap and available now days and we have a great variety of them and they can be very useful...

I told a guy once that I had a 16# straight pein sledge, but that I didn't know anyone who could use it, (By which I meant swing it with the accuracy I deemed necessary to be more useful than harmful...) He thought I said pick it up and swing it, which he proceeded to do, and he thought he proved his view right. But since some of his blows were off when we were gang sledging a billet of Damascus at a hammer-in at my shop, he actually proved my point, he couldn't swing the hammer with the accuracy necessary... Language becomes a funny thing when we are careless in how we say things, or we don't all agree what some of the important words mean, or they get changed in the middle of the discussion... Choose your words as carefully as you would choose any of your other tools. Do you really want to say, "when I nod my head, hit it..."???

being careful to DEFINE "anyway that works" for our endlessly equivocating pluralistic relativistic you have your truth, and I have my truth culture... ANy way that works is, you don't manage to hurt me, you, or any one else, and most importantly, you don't hurt MY TOOLS;-)

I have been rereading some of my BS library, and in "Just An Idea" by L. H. Stanley, there are several notes about wire brushing the work to produce clean high quality finished work, he also mentions scale adding to the clinker. and I notice that a lot of the guys doing hand made hammers and forged to finished tools spend some time with the wire brush to get the best finish. I think like a lot of "good" ideas it doesn't seem absolutely necessary, but that if you develop the discipline you production rate may go down but the finish and the appeal of your work will go up. I wire brush some, and would like to be more disciplined about using the technique to improve the finished texture of my work. When I first started forging my best friend taught me I should ring the anvil ever second or third hit... It didn't seem necessary and I lost the habit, now I am older and it seems to make life easier on my hammer arm??? Good practice in principle for most people, but may not be profitable, or palatable to their temperament to some other people??? I find if I try and work too many pieces in the gas forge, and so I have to crank down the pressure, then I tend to get a more tenacious scale which I really have to work to get rid of and not mark up my surface too badly. But I like to stay busy;-)

This needs to be pinned to the start of the forum here, so its easy to find when I have time... and bandwidth... at the same time;-)

Its "Stimulating" I get excited and want to make all this tooling and work on projects... I like to think almost jokingly, that since I am made in the image of my creator, I kinda have that same bent. I want to create things. and he created... and it was very good;-)

If I remember correctly Donald Streeter illustrates the same kind of technique in "Professional Smithing." When I saw the subject line I was expecting to see more of a triangular cross-section, or something like a T post. I like that idea, of getting more of a rib. I might experiment with trying to get a little more "rib" to stiffen the joint when I get around to making a set tool for that. I think a bottom swage with a top tool would be able to extrude enough material to really stiffen it up. It is a shame to forge something out and use an inherently weak design, and then have it fail. Good design improves the utility and durability of the finished product. Process, process, process;-) I get so distracted thinking about doing things that sometimes I don't get much done;-) Fascinating, I could, and then... Of course I haven't done a bunch of ladles or flesh forks for a few years, except for a French Egg Spoon, a lady requested this year...

I always joke that I love all of the arts that involve Fire: blacksmithing, glass blowing, lamp work beads, silver smithing, ceramics, copper enamel. I also love cooking, baking, and of course eating. I have made cheese, yogurt, ice cream. Used to do Historical recreation from 6th century Irish, to 16th century Elizabethian. Used to do leatherworking and make armour. Used to do armoured combat and light contact jousting, and mounted archery. The wife is very talented, she has done vitrified painted stained glass, as well as copper foil, and lead came stained glass. She was a very talented seamstress and costumer. Did some saddle and harness making, as well as casting stirrup irons. She used to make folk wines and still makes cheeses and goats milk soap. We try and do a big garden each year, and have been adding fruit trees and berries to our farm. We raise most of our own meat a couple of cows and pigs get butchered each year, and we have chicken, ducks, and turkeys, for eggs and meat. She has also been reading the PA dystopian novels, and has been slowly "prepping" for the black swan event that collapses our modern society. We are more prepared than most people but still not ready. I might find myself in the same boat with Thomas, while I am not diabetic my digestion is somewhat fragile and I need a lot of supplements to be comfortable...

Yep Lion or panther, the weird back set ears are a little odd but the face other than that is pretty good... ;-) I make coat hooks out of almost everything... YMMV;-)

Cold rolled is often 1018, so it is very mild and uniform, easy to weld and machine. Hot rolled is generally AS36 which is remelt that they really only care about yield strength, people often complain about vast inconsistencies even in the same bar sometimes just inches away... And there are the stories of ball bearings, being found whole inside a bar... People who actually know what they are talking about can correct me;-) YMMV;-) To the original question I haven't noticed a difference...

We have in our modern society a culture of consumers, not producers. So when normal people see someone who can actually MAKE something it is novel and interesting. In our mass produced consumer society something that doesn't look perfectly the same as all the other widgets and dodads that are produced by the millions is more visually interesting and more valuable...

The design and efficiency of most all of the tools have improved... Have you ever tried to forge with tongs that look like those viking tongs... Its harder than it looks. The shape and the length of the jaws, make it so it is hard to grip the material, and the loss of leverage due to the extra distance from the pivot make it so you have to grip harder... They look aweful to me;-) and I geek history... But form follows function, Steve Parker's tongs are vastly superior to viking tongs. I am amazed at what the master smiths of the vikings could do with the quality of tools available to them. Because of our great wealth in energy, raw materials, and knowledge some of the tools we can produce are just phenomenal. I am sure that some of the viking hammes were a pure joy to use. And like Thomas said they were primarily using wrought at near a white heat when the were really forging, and a little stump anvil would get so hot you couldn't touch it, but that would help doing forge welds;-) I got started blacksmithing 30 years ago doing pattern welded steel and welding up axe heads. Some things it matters how you do them, and if you do it the hard way, close to the way they would have done it in period it just comes out looking more period, more Real! Other time being a slave to a romantic ideal is still just slavery and drudgery. Ultimately if you want to do this as a business you have to find a way to make it pay. Period! Most people can't or won't pay Thomas, or I, or you for that mater to put on period cloths and make our own wrought iron and then make something cool out of it. Which is why Thomas wrangles computers and databases, and I shoe horses. You can make a living doing something you love and are passionate about, but you have to be practical enough to pay the bills and market yourself and your merchandise. Go over and read some of the threads in the business of blacksmithing section. There have been lots of very talented smiths who quit and got a day job, because they weren't good at the business side of blacksmithing. I'm not particularly good at selling myself or my products, and I have a low stress tolerance so I shoe horses, and not to be immodest but I'm a pretty good smith... As iron sharpens iron... I'm not trying to dampen your enthusiasm, my hope is to sharpen your focus so you can make cool things, and pay the bills:-)

I haven't had much trouble either;-) but some suggestions to help. Use a what our English and Aussie freinds call a Snap (and we call it a rivet set) to form the head. If you are making 5 clout heads turn some tool steel with a domed head so there is more clearance for the face of your hammer. Don't use a ballpein, except maybe to finish the head. If you do the math right,1.5x-2x the diameter above the die stock, and a well centered blow it will generally upset nicely. Then all you have to do is make it look nice...

Lovely Spike on that Dale, and the blade compliments the hammer eye too. Benton my in laws found a pile of wagon rims at an auction and I think it ended up being about 3$ a piece ;-) But I heard of a place called "Junky Joes" that had wagon rims for sale somewhere in southern Indiana, and I think there was an antique store in Cayuga that had a bunch of rusty rims which might be pretty close for you...