Geoff Keyes

I built a 2 piece anvil for my hammer. It's a piece of 8" round sitting on a piece of 12" round. There are ears welded to the top piece and it bolts to the bottom piece. It has worked well for me since 2000. It's probably not as good as a single piece anvil, but it works very well. I agree, solid steel only, no tube, no Al, or anything else. Look at what the commercial hammers used, steel anvils, sometimes 2 piece steel anvils. The weight is not the most important issue. steel will return energy to the tup and resist deformation better than anything else. It's too bad you're on the other coast, I know where there is a perfect power hammer anvil, several of them, in fact. One is 16" square and 11 feet long, and that is just a medium sized chunk. The same yard has a table, 3x5 feet and 4 inches thick, about 2500 lbs, about $1200 plus the truck and trailer to move it :wub:. Geoff

Not too badly. Have you ever used an Estwing camp axe, it's kind of like that. The best hand position, for me at least, is about 4 inches up from the butt. The long handle does give you room to work 2 handed, though. Geoff

Nice! I love doing integrals, even though they are a pain in some ways. Geoff

I forged this from a big chunk of 5/8ths leaf spring. It really took two of us, I used the press and hammer to draw the handle, but the head was forged in a post vice with a couple of 10lb+ hammers. OL 17 1/2" Head 3 x 6" Steel, who knows? 1095. 9250, 6150, 5260. I treated it like 5160 with a long temper @ 500 degrees.

One of my long time friends did mention that I looked like Gimli......hummm Geoff

So how thick is the blade at the thinnest spot? It still looks pretty beefy to me. I'd bet you could grind down to it and still have enough thickness for the blade to work and not be floppy. Alternatively, you could shorten it and grind a stick tang (set the shoulders right where you made the error) and still have a blade with nearly the same profile. Just my .02 Geoff

I'm one, and the original poster may be one as well, who adds mass whether I want to or not. This is fine if being a body builder is what you're after, not so good as a blacksmith. If I hammer every day for 3 days, I notice the difference right to left. If I spend a week hammering, I'm in 3x shirts. Much more than that and I'm wider than I am tall. I'm not kidding, quite. I was a 42 chest before my last knee surgery in my late 30's. 9 months of full body lifting and I was a 50 chest. Our poster may be in the same boat. I suggest a powerhammer. Geoff

A REAL blacksmith is asymmetrical, if you want to even things out then you have to do the same kind of work on the other side. There is no magic here. You can lift only on the weak side, or you can learn to hammer left handed. or you can give it all up and be a stick on both sides. Geoff

The Seattle International Knife Show (SIKS) is this weekend, a cold kept me out of the shop, so the 3 new pieces I expected to have done has become 1 new piece. OL 11 1/4" BL 7 1/8" Steel 1084/15n20 Handle walrus, purple heart and NS Thanks Geoff

Steve, you claimed that there are populations that are primarily left handed, which would indicate either a cultural bias in handedness, or some sort of strong genetic component. If that were true, then I would expect every article about handedness in humans to mention it. Everything I have read and can find on the subject says the same thing. Populations of humans are predominately right hand dominate, with 10-30% of the population being left hand dominate. If you count mixed hand dominate you get the higher , 30%, number. There is some evidence, not well attested to, that the number is rising. No one has found a strong genetic component. Hand dominance appears to be set before birth, but the mechanism is unclear. As far as I can tell hand dominance does not appear to run in families. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it. BTW, horses are nearly all left dominate (it's why all horse races are run counterclockwise) , great apes don't seem to show any preference, and elephants appear to be evenly split. I suspect that NASCAR races are all left turns out of tradition. Geoff

I can't find any evidence that handedness is cultural, except in societies that have taboos over eating hands, and to some extent, the horror stories out of the educational system about forcing lefties not to use their natural dominate hand. There is some evidence that the incidence of left dominance in the human population world wide is rising. 1 in 10 is the number usually quoted, but current stats suggest 3 in 10 is closer to reality. There is a simple test for eye dominance. Put your hands together at arms length so that you are looking through a small hole between your thumbs and fore fingers. With both eyes open, focus on a small spot (I used the logo of my monitor). Now close one eye, and then the other, while looking at the spot. Your dominant eye will center the spot, non-dominant will move the spot out of the aperture. I am strongly right handed, my left is useless except for added power. Trying to do martial arts forms first right lead and then left lead, for me, is like having a stroke! I have a friend who is right handed for most things, but left eye dominate, trying to teach her to shoot was really a challenge. My wife is ambidextrous, she can do complex things like spinning and knitting with either hand, and do them well. Geoff

Lugged feet, I thought that was a Fisher thing. Otherwise it doesn't look like a Fisher to me. Geoff

Just an update. We're home from the OKCA show, and we did better than I've ever done at that show. To refresh everyone, in support of the people who lost everything at the Oso slide here in Washington state, and all of the people involved in the recovery effort, I have decided to donate all of the proceeds of the sales of my EDCs to one of the recovery funds. In addition I'm donating 75% of the sales of my forged work. I'm running this until April 30, so there is still time to get in, if you've an interest. In 3 days at the OKCA show we took in over $1200 ! Much of that was table sales of my forged pieces and EDC's, but quite a bit was people giving us $10 and $20 out of their pocket money, one old gent gave me his last $3. I want to thank everyone who has donated, and everyone who is going to do so. Thank you Geoff and Marianne

ITC-100 is not intended to be a top coat, but is used s a finish coat to increase the IR reflectivity of the surface. You need a thin coat of a refractory mortar, like Satanite, Mizzou, or Kastolite, on top of the Kaowool, and then wash that with ITC-100 for he best performance. Hard surface forges burn more gas (in my experience), they take longer to come to heat, and take more input to keep them at heat. They do have the advantage of wearing better, and, in a production (rather than a hobby shop) environment, are lower maintenance. While I don't think of myself as a "hobby" smith, I only forge a couple of days a month (unless I'm making Damascus billets). So for me, a forge that heats fast is the biggest thing. My welding forge has a brick floor, and I just live with the fact that it burns more fuel. Just my .02 Geoff

About half way down the maple part. It's a tiny thing and doesn't need much more. Geoff

I wanted to call them Urban Carry Knives, but that didn't work out so well :lol:. Geoff

And now for something completely different. This is a riff on one of my buddy Dietrich's pieces, it's a little EDC, desk knife thingee OL 8 1/4" BL 4 1/2" Handle blackwood, fiber spacer, curly maple and bloodwood. Collar coppper Blade 1084/15n20 The patterns on each side of the blade are very different, one side shows the flame pretty well, the other is a hammer induced ladder. Geoff

Number 2 of 3 for the Eugene show. OL 13 1/4" BL 8 5/8" Steel 1084/15n20 Guard NS and copper Handle Desert Ironwood ivory and black horn Two of the spacers are textured. The guard is not really mokume, it's a soldered stack of NS and copper, filed to shape. It shows different things in different lights. As the copper ages the NS will show more. The blade is a low layer weave, 9 layers (I think) squared, four stacked, squared, and nine stacked (if that makes any sense). Then flipped, it made for a nice dense pattern. Thanks for looking Geoff

I have made test blades, that is, blades that are designed to pass the ABS JS test, in 5160, 1095, 1080/84, 1060, and 52100. My experience is that a torch draw is hard to get really consistent results with. An edge quench and an oven temper get me the best and most consistent results. Within broad limits, the steel is not the most important factor. Good thermal cycling, proper temperature control (both in the quench and the temper cycles) and good geometry are the most important factors. 1060/65, BTW, is used by many makers as a sword steel, properly heat treated. Geoff

There is a difference between a differential heat treat and tempering. If you want a blade with a hard edge and soft spine, you have to find a way to heat or quench only the parts of the blade you want hard. The Japanese sword smiths do this by putting a clay mask on the blade before the HT, thick on the spine as an insulator, and thin on the edge for a radiator. I use an edge quench for my differential blades. I quench a third to a half of the blade width and let the spine air cool to black. You still need to oven temper the whole blade, to keep the edge from stress cracking, but you can eliminate the torch draw. A friend of mine made an ABS test blade in 5160. Because 5160 is s deep hardening steel, a differential quench often gives you hardness in the spine, he then took the blade and packed the edge in wet sand and, using an O/A torch and a big rosebud, drew the spine to blue/white, almost to the point where you can see red. He did this 10 times (which might have been overkill). After the cut and chop tests we took turns bending the blade 90 degrees, back to straight, and 90 degrees the other way. After an hour of this, we lost count of the number cycles we'd done and went for beers. We were unable to break that blade, but it still had a good edge, no cracks, no chips, no roll overs. Just my .02 Geoff

I heat it until it blushes, and then quench, which is what I do with copper. NS is a Cu/Ni alloy, so it acts a lot like copper. I've never worked with pure Ni, but I think it works pretty much the same. Geoff

Yes I did! It started as a chunk 3/4 x 1/2 x 4. I took a heat to anneal it and then hammered until it started to stiffen up, took another heat, and so on. It takes a while. I was going to polish it out, but I liked the look of the butt cap and so in the end, I left it. Geoff

First of 3 (I hope) for Eugene, a mono-steel rustic bowie. It's got a hammer forged NS guard and butt cap with a stag handle. Everything has been hammer textured or acid washed. OL 14 1/4" BL 9" Handle Stag Guard forged NS Spacer copper and NS Butt cap textured NS Cap nut turned mild steel Blade steel 1084 It's interesting, if I don't think about it, this 9-10 inch blade is my default size. It just seems to fit my eye when I'm forging. If I want bigger or smaller, I have to force myself to think about it. Thanks for looking Geoff

It would be useful to know where you are. Anvil prices vary quite a bit by location. Geoff

It would be useful to know where you are. Anvil prices vary quite a bit by location. Geoff