Hello all,
Just started blacksmithing and so far have a simple firerake/prod finished and a pair of tongs mostly finished (going to add some bends to the reigns and grip to the mouth tomorrow). I'm using a very ghetto set-up at the moment, consisting of a brakedrum & castiron-sewage-pipetee forge and converted-vacuum-blower, but it seems to work well enough (getting to yellow-orange glow so far).
I understand that RR spikes generally make inferior blades even with superquenching, but a project I had in mind since starting with smithing was to make a soil knife or "hori hori" like tool with one. It'd basically be a modified garden trowl, used to dig up small plants, plant bulbs, and possibly cut a few roots or stems. Do you all think a "HC" marked spike would be decent for this purpose?
Also, I have another spike marked only with "C" (Copper?). Would this spike be useful for makeing a hotcut tool or a punch?
Thank you all for your time.