will52100

I saw a smith using one at a demonstration years ago and made one for myself.  I didn't punch holes in the bottom, but used it to cool the rebar handles I weld to billets in my gas forge.  So far I've rusted out two cans, quick and easy to replace.  The third one I punched holes in the bottom for use with my new coal forge.  With a gas forge you don't heat just one spot, you've got a flame coming out the front that makes your handle hard to hold on to.

Cool, I've done a couple like that, stack up left over bits of wrought into a billet big enough to make a hawk.  Never got quite the patterning your getting.  There was patterning, but lots finer, guess I had a little higher grade wrought iron.  I know a knife maker that made several damascus bowies and daggers with low grade wrought iron guards that he etched for several hours, then polished, looked like polished silver lattice work.

Nice!  Love the wrought iron look.  

I've used plain old borax for years welding damascus with no issue, but the first time I tried forge welding A36 it didn't take.  I had it mostly welded, but there were less than perfect welds all through it.  Could have just been that stick of metal had some wierd alloys , or maybe I didn't clean good enough prior to welding.

If your using cold rolled, it's 1018, or at least it is down here.  That's what I use now when I want to forge weld mild steel, no issues yet.  Or if doing a hawk I grab some wrought iron, though it's getting harder to find reasonable.

Any event, love the hawk, any outdoors man would love to carry it.

Very nice, love the clean design and flow.

Looks good, what did you use for flux?  I assume you mean A36 when your talking mild steel?  The one hawk I did with it instead of 1018 or wrought iron didn't weld a 100%.  I was using anhydrous borax, will try another with iron mt flux.

Thanks for the links and photo's.  It's been a few years since I read the article and had no reason to question it.  Seems like I remember the article stating that the shop was closed in except for a garage door, but then I don't have the best memory out there.  From the pics I'd call that a pretty open shop.

In any event, burning zinc or other metals can be bad, bad business.

We never disagreed about zink dangers, only the exaggerated statements made about Jim.   fact can speak for them selves, embellishments never help.  When people modify the truth of a story, no matter why, some day the  modifications are found out, then others have doubts if anything was true.

Not to mention that some of the smaller yards around here want to charge more than you can buy new for.  The larger ones have contracts and have issues because there running large equipment sorting it.

A good quality respirator is a must, even with a dust collector I still use one when grinding noxious material.  One I just about refuse to use anymore is coca-bola.

I read the news about Pawpaw from anvil fire rite after it happened.  Was it accurate?  Don't know, but it sounded authentic.  If not I apologize for the inaccuracy.

And burning coal doesn't release toxins?  Using a cutting torch doesn't release toxins?  Welding doesn't release toxins?  Were not talking about doing a 100 of them at once, or making a big cloud of crap, or of doing it all day, every day.  If your forging in the city you might have issues.  My nearest neighbor is a 1/2 mile away.  Just use a little common sense when working in the shop and use basic safety rules.  The reason I've got a dust collector in my shop is for grinding materials like mycarta and carbon fiber, stuff you really really don't want to breath.

No, you don't have to, but when I was working as a welder I ran into a lot of galvanized metal that had to be welded.  I don't turn metal down just because it's got a coating of zink.  On the other hand I know the hazards of metal fume fever and how to avoid it, namely not breathing the crap and grinding it off before welding or heating.  And yes I try to avoid it if I can.  Yes, you can avoid it completely, but then coal dust and fumes ain't exactly healthy either.  Come to think of it, not a lot of things in metal working are without risk, you just got to know how to avoid and manage the hazards.

As for socket extensions, not sure what steel, there most likely a medium carbon.  I've added pieces into damascus mixes before just for fun.  The plating will burn off in the forge, but like most things you stick in the forge don't breath the fumes.  Pawpaw Wilson died from sticking galvanized pipe fittings in a gas forge in a closed in shop.  Personally I'd rather use part of a coil spring for any punches and such.

I like it, the only real concern I'd have would be the arrow holding the knife into the sheath and how comfortable the handle would be.  I'd think you'd get hot spots and blisters from prolonged use.

For me, for damascus billets, I absolutly love my vertical blown forge, just make sure you've got a handle welded on the billet.  Gets very hot, very fast and flux runs out the bottom and doesn't damage the lining.  For general knife forging I prefer my horizontal blown forge.  From what I've seen it's easier to get the ratio's rite on a blown forge and it will run very efficently even with a larger forge body.

Then you are a very profecient bladesmith.  I can get close most times with my preform and as I add the bevels it curves up to the correct shape, and I include distal taper into the blade.  Even then I might need a little tweeking, and most beginer bladesmith require more tweeking than an experianced smith.  Hammering on the edge with wood is a good way to add or remove a curve without maring or folding the edge like a hammer can, though I have doen it with a hammer before.

A ''swocker'' workers wonderfully.  It's basically a small baseball bat sized chunk of wood.  Heat the blade and let the thinner edge cool just a bit and lay the spine on the anvil and hammer the edge with the swocker.  The wood will smoke and scar, but if done rite you won't damage the edge and will straighten the spine out.  You can even prop one end of the spine up to get  a little more downward curve to the edge.

And that downward curve is the secrete, make your preform with the tip forged down and the edge curved down before hammering in the bevels.  When everything is rite, as you hammer the bevels the tip will rise and if you got your preform correct you will have to do little or no ''swocking''.  Wanye Goddard came up with the name because it makes a ''Swock'' sound when hitting the blade.  As an aside I highly recomend Wayne's books, ''the Wonder of knifemaking'' and ''the 50$ knife shop''.

BTW, the ''swocker'' is sacrificle and will eventually get eaten up.  I now just use a section of 2x4 and when it's eat up it goes as fire starter.

Seems like I had that book like 10 years ago.  it was interesting, but from what I remember, don't have the book anymore, they copied the little giant pretty much in every aspect, including the maple clutch blocks.  The toggle arms and ram was OK, but I really like the tire clutch on the Spencer hammer.

Thanks, what do you recommend for hardness?  I don't plan on getting fancy with the quench or anything, just point down after hitting critical.  With large blades I've had great success with a triple quench and draw at 350 degF.  But that's with an edge quenched blade, about half of the lower blade hardened, and blade will pass the brass rod test and is capable of being bent 90 deg at least once.  For the sword I don't want to chance a triple quench.  I've found with 5160 and 52100 that if I single quench I have to raise the tempering temp.

Wasn't sure whether to ask this here or in the heat treating section.

I forged out a single edged sword shaped object about a year ago and haven't found the time or courage to heat treat yet.  Blade is forged from virgin 5160 John Deere load shaft, single edged with a slight curve like a cutless.  A steel I've played with and has shown me good edge holding with outstanding toughness through knives with blades up to 12".

I've been going back and forth over how to heat treat, I'm leaning towards a full quench with a soft back draw to the tang and ricasso area.  The other option is an edge quench, which is what I do with most of my knives, or possibly a clay coating.  Since I'm not shooting for a hammon, the full quench with soft draw I'm thinking would be the easier to not screw up.

Next question would be what would be the desired hardness?  I'm thinking of tempering to 55 should give sufficient edge holding while remaining functionally unbreakable.

Blade is approximately 24", not counting the tang.  I say approximately as I'm not near my home and can't measure it rite now.

I've made a lot of knives, and some pretty big ones,  even a few Zombi Apocalypse type machetes out of leaf springs, but a sword is not a knife.

Thanks

I'm not sure on cast anvils whether any manufacturers harden the horn or not, except for Refflinghaus.  With a cast steel anvil some makers might be induction or flame hardening, depending on alloy, instead of heating the whole piece to critical temp.  That would be a way to have a soft horn on a homogeneous alloy anvil, though after using the Refflinghaus I can't think of why a soft horn would be a good thing.

Rockstar, I think it might be because a lot of early anvils were made from wrought iron and had a hard face forge welded on, the horn was wrought iron and the step was where the hard steel was.  Casting or forging from one alloy makes things different.

Fatfudd, I've got that exact anvil except I went for one without the side step.  In some ways I wish I'd gotten it, but am non the less extremely pleased with mine.  Especially after using an ASO for years.  To be fare, I really don't need a nice anvil since the majority of my work is blade smithing, but it sure is nice to play on. 

Just looked up Quick and Dirty tongs, haven't heard of them before and got to say they look very nice!  If I was in the market for buying tongs I'd probably go for them.  They are nice enough they give me something to shoot for when making mine.

I've got several tongs from different manufactures, but since learning how to forge my own there's a distinct satisfaction in using mine.  Not that I'm an expert at making them or even that good.  And I really need to get in the shop and make some more for the different sizes of stock I use.  I will keep using my store bought ones though, they are good tongs after all.  Kayne and Sons are my favourite store bought at the moment.

Cool ideas, some things I'm defiantly going to add to my shop.  I've also decided to extend my smithy/drop shed by 9', should give me more room for welding table and such, not to mention 3 more post to nail stuff to.

Just did a 2" thick hardy anvil, basically a 4"x4"x2" square anvil with welded on hardy for detail forging of blades.  I used to have a Russian cast steel anvil that I chopped the horn off of that was doing the job, but it was getting banged up.  This one is out of 4140, I quenched in water and agitated rapidly, and temped at 400, hopefully it will work good.  File test showed it got hard, but not "glass" hard.

Heat treating a hardy anvil I just got done welding, no reason it won't work.  I would suggest pre heating to at least 400 deg.F and deep V the hardy stock and welding with 7018 rod, possibly doing a normalizing heat after and re heat treating if your wanting it hardened.

I like the horse shoe idea, but probably won't use them, there kinda expensive down here and hard to get used/worn ones.  But I can forge hooks similar and somewhat larger for the same purpose.  Maybe twice as wide and about as tall should hold my good cold rolled and such, main thing is to keep it separate from my knife steel.