Geoff Keyes

I bent the springs for mine (or had them bent) cold under a big press. You could, however, use them just as you find them. It gives you a longer, lazier, motion. That is assuming that you're thinking about a Dupont linkage. There are several variant versions, some which use straight springs. There is also a rocker beam guided helve design, which uses a straight flat pack of springs. First you need to sort out which style of hammer you want to build, and don't overlook the tire hammers. Geoff

Sure, and I make jewelry out the scraps. I've seen small boxes, hinges, pulls, buckles, even a sculpture of a turtle about the size of a large wok. Anything you can make out of steel, you can make out of Damascus. What did you have in mind? Geoff

Resistance loss is what you're looking for. It might be enough, but you'll know if it trips the breaker. It's a long run, so I expect that you are right on the edge. Geoff

That is exactly how it's supposed to work. If the handle ends up too long, as if you didn't get the drift in far enough, cut the remainder off. If the head slides up too far, wrap a thin piece of leather or cloth around the head. I should work like a mattock handle. BTW, your example, while very nice, is rather too massive to be a "real" hawk :rolleyes:. It's more like a fokos, or a Shepard's axe. There is a nice Wiki article on them. It might give you some different ideas about handles. Geoff

Very nice. As I say, "Preserving history, one rusty piece of steel at a time." Geoff

Frank has a great reputation, and so I think that is a very good idea. If you have the resources to do it, the wanderjahr could teach you a lot, and not just about blacksmithing. The thing I find about these kind of skills, and perhaps it's just me, is that a days worth of teaching takes me months to absorb and use. I have to take what I've been shown home and live with it for a while before it becomes part of my tool kit. If you do this thing, and you get as far as the Seattle area, look me up. I'm primarily a bladesmith, but I know most of the local smiths. As to steels, there is a ton of information here, I'm sure a search for steel types would uncover more than you can use. From my point of view there are two kinds of steel. Steel without enough carbon to harden (anything with less than 0.40 carbon) and carbon steel. Mild steel is all about shear and torsion, more than that and you need a mechanical engineering degree. Carbon steel is all about the environment it's going to work in. For hand held application, simple alloys work pretty well. It gets pretty specialized after that, an engineering degree comes in to it. If you really want to know about the interactions of vanadium and cobalt as alloy components, get thee to school young man. If you want a recipe for heat treating a specific steel, a search here should turn that up. Geoff Heck! blast!

A spring need not be hardened. You can make springs out of mild steel and even copper. A mild steel spring works just fine, up to a point. Once you exceed the yield point, the mild steel spring deforms and can't return to shape, A hardened spring has a much higher yield point, so it can take more load before it fails, but then it is likely to fail catastrophically. A copper spring works until the spring work hardens and then cracks. I can see wrought buggy springs, you'd just have more mass to increase the load rating. Geoff

Rather than try to weld the band saw blades in to a stack and then layer it with your other material, why not do it all at once? I make stacks out of steel in the .070 range all of the time. If you are really worried about it, build you billet with the thick layers on the outside, so there is very little movement of the stack. I would build it 1080 BSB BSB BSB BSB 1080 and so on until you've got the starting count you're after. Geoff

Eric Grip is in Apache Junction, he posts here and should stick his head up at some point. Geoff

If you went edge on, that would make a fair anvil. You'd still get a lot of energy loss hammering on the flat. Pretty cool chunk of steel, though. Geoff

You could drill holes in the handle and do a cord wrap. Or, I've put round head rivets through the holes peened them over and left it at that. Rather than forge the handles down, upset them to give them some thickness. File work. Slab handles. Spray on rubber/plastic stuff. Horse stall mat. Rawhide (buy the biggest dog chew toy and soak in water to unknot the ends). Geoff

I suspect that the original term was not English. We'd need to know what the term is in Greek/Aramaic or some other early language. Latin might be good enough, since a fair bit of English is Latin based. For instance, in brewing we use the term sparge, which in turn comes from the French espargier, which comes from the Latin spargere to sprinkle. Smithing is nearly as old as brewing and so the language is going to be old as well. Geoff

If you're talking about carbon steels, there are all of the usual things. Oil or wax as a first defense. You can blue them, or use one of the hard finishes, Gunkote or Parkerizing. On my kitchen knives I tell people that they are like Grandmas kitchen knives and to learn to like the dark surface. You pretty much can't stop them from rusting if you're going to use them. I think it's part of the charm of carbon steel. Geoff

Weight markings are English, style is more Continental, German maybe? Geoff

Not a demo thing, but a show thing that I have noticed. I can sit at the table with my best, friendliest face on, answering questions and such and get mostly reasonable people. If I get up to take a break, walk the floor, or run to the head, all of the crazies and weirdos come out like they've just been waiting for me to leave, so they can talk to my wife. The guy who wants to talk about how I do some small thing and then argue about how I'm doing it wrong. The guy who won't believe that my work is hand made. The guy who thinks that this special steel is the ONLY steel to use and wants to argue about it. The one who wants to nitpick my every artistic choice. The guy who believes that ancient forged blade are superior to modern ones because: they used human sacrifice, because they had secret ways of making steel, because the edge packed the blades and didn't harden them. As soon as I start back for the table, they're gone, like they've got radar. I can watch them streaming away from 4 rows over. I don't think I'm that scary, but it happens at every show. Geoff

I'm not sure there ever was a time when a "blacksmith was king". Sam Yellin was a master salesman. That was why he could have a shop that employed 100 smiths. I spent a wonderful evening with an old school traditional European trained smith named John Adolphson. He did a 7 year apprenticeship in post war Germany. They learned how to smith, how to bid a job, how to keep the books, how to supervise apprentices and journeymen, how to train smiths, how to run a farm to feed the staff, and, how to market the work of the shop. I'm sure there was a point when he looked back and said "The best job was when I was an apprentice". But you know what we call an Artist who can't market his own work? A waiter. It's not sad, it just is. And getting nostalgic for some mythic time when people worshiped the scale you walked on is a waste of spirit. You want to be a smith? Then go get the iron hot and hit it. While it's heating, you can mull over how hard it is to do the thing that you've chosen to do. Geoff

I had an experience just recently that is part of this discussion. Last weekend we went into a small town nearby where my favorite potter has his shop. He's been working in the local area since 1983 and has gone from a one man shop and street fairs to a large facility where he makes small production runs, one off work, custom work, and teaches classes. We went in because we use his pieces as our everyday eating ware, plates, bowls, casseroles, canisters, cups and mugs, pretty much everything. Pieces get broken and we were after some replacements. We spent $100, mostly on seconds, and got a half dozen things, all of it hand made by a first rate craftsman. Yesterday we were talking about a dinner party we are having on Saturday (Not Thanksgiving, for those fed up with relatives) and realized we did not have enough plates and such. We could have gone with paper (ick!), and we thought about Goodwill. In the end we went to the Dollar Store. We bought 20 plates, 20 bowls, and a bunch of other party stuff, for less than $50. The plates are china, made in China, and hand painted (lots of little variations). I don't understand how a single ceramic plate can be made, painted, fired, packed and shipped, distributed to stores, all for $1 (.90, after our discount!). Americans, and I suspect people everywhere, want stuff, we want it now, we want it cheap, we want lots of it, and that is what I got. As an Artist/Craftsman you are not even in the same market. You probably can't sell to the person who only knows the now/cheap/lots model, not without a lot of education. It's up to us to teach people that they want heirlooms, that they need the one off, hand made thing. It's part of the job of the Artist. Geoff

Ah, The Person From Porlock. Geoff

Glad to help. g

I do a local club show in the Fall, and I do a forging demo as part of that. I take the demo pieces and donate them to the club for the raffle. Then I take them home and finish them up and ship them to the winner. This the first of two pieces I did this year. I'd like to figure how to get a grinder to the show and do a complete, start to finish piece at the show. BL 4 in Steel 1084 Handle Blacktail spike and an ebony spacer. Thanks for looking Geoff

If you are going to move a blade in the quench, up and down only, no side to side movement. Geoff

Uneven thickness can cause problems, but I suspect that you may be moving the piece side to side in the quench. That can cause the blade to move to one side. BTW, there is no point in normalizing before forging, your first heat is going to do that anyway. Geoff

I suppose you could, but how would that be better than a San Mai construction? I would be concerned that the thermal shock might create fracture lines. I suppose that you could pre-heat the core steel. It sounds like a lot of work for not much gain. It might be worth a small scale study, hough. Geoff

I think $2 a pound is a fair price for a usable anvil. Here in the PNW anvils are harder to come by and $3-$5 a pound is common. I think if you could get it for less than $100, you'd be OK. I would mention to the seller (4 or 5 times) that the horn is broken and the anvil is kinda beat up. I like Fishers, I own 2. Geoff

Actually, there are steel bows made in India, and at least one steel bow that I know of from the mid 1800's found in the US, I don't know whether they made for good bows, but often sub-optimal stuff was made and used and worked just fine. So what if you did not squeeze every bit of performance out of it? Of course forged crossbow limbs have been used, historical examples exist. I don't think I would want to trust my life to one that I had made. If a blade fails, it's probably not going to do so catastrophically. If a crossbow limb fails, it's going to do it right in front of your face. The alloy is not the point, any carbon steel would work, you could probably make them out of mild steel if you didn't exceed the yield point of the limb. The heat treat is what is going to make or break (pun) the limb. I have built chopping blades out of 2" x .100 material, the width and a good heat treat makes up for a lack of mass. I'm not sure what it is that you are trying to get at. I don't think you could prove that "katana steel" (whatever that is) makes for a better cutter. Mike Bell, who is the best Japanese style maker that I know personally, makes katana for mat cutting out of cable weld billets. The right steel (one with some carbon in it) a good heat treat and a good geometry make for a good performing sword. OTOH, I have seen a sword made from a lawnmower blade cut through an 8 inch rolled tatami mat, and it wasn't even particularly sharp. Geoff