ausfire

It's here now:

OK, here's my first shot at a grasshopper. Started with a railway spike with the 'ears' flattened in the forge and drawn out a bit.
Made the upper back legs from square bar and welded on some light rebar. The wings were made as for leaves in the forge. Front legs were short threaded rods (very rusted) and the antennae were 3 inch nails.
This is mostly forge work, but I'm going to make one out of junk soon. An old stilson wrench would be a good starting point.
Anyway here 'tis:
Didn't happen - see next posting....

One of the most common questions you would all get at demos is, "Do you ever burn yourself?"
What is your standard reply to that??
And speaking of burns, yesterday i was careless enough to sustain a very nasty burn. Not at the forge where I had been all morning, but as a result of a slip with an oxy torch.
All you experienced smiths would have undoubtedly have been burned in the past and I was wondering what your best recovery treatment is. First response is into the quench tub I guess, but after that ...

Michael: I think it looks just fine. You are thinking much along the same lines as I was. Yesterday I shaped a railway spike in the forge for the body and made some wings from flat bar and rear legs from 1/2 square bar. The little fron legs I made from 1/4 threaded rod flattened for the feet.
All was going quite well as I welded on the front legs. I was bending the legs with the oxy torch when I got careless and burned my hand with the oxy. Spent the rest of the afternoon with ice water and painkillers. Oxy is savage.
Anyway, I hope to get back to it later today (wearing gloves) and I'll post the result. Very similar to yours.

I do a lot of scrap art but a grasshopper is one thing I haven't done. I should make it a priority. There are plenty of scrap objects that would lend themselves to a suitable design. The patterned end of a kitchen knife would be a good starting point for the abdomen. Or, as you suggest, shape it out of 3/4 round bar. Very small reo bar makes nice legs with the ends flattened and textured in the forge. For wings I would go for old knife blades perhaps. If you use stainless, be careful of the fumes. Nasty.
I'll post a pic here if I make one soon.

Nice anvil and tools. Good to hear your story. I have only met one blacksmith and he was a bit like the guy you describe. He showed me how to punch holes properly and I showed him how I forge reo snakes. I came away with two of his handcrafted punches, free of course.
I later mailed him some steel tynes off an old horse-drawn rake so he can make more.
I'm pleased you had such a good introduction to smithing. Welcome to the blacksmith fraternity, and I hope you will share your progress here.

Thanks for all the pictures - great to see the variety of work. I have decided on the basic shape of the business end of the pokers I need to make and one is pictured below. A simple cut, draw out and and bend with no welding. A ram's head on the handle end. I'll get it neater with practice.
 

What about a use for the bandsaw itself? I bent a 25mm bandsaw blade after only a couple of uses (through carelessness). About 12 feet of high quality blade wasted. Didn't have the heart to throw it out after paying good money for it so it's still hanging up in the shed. Does such a thing have any possible use in the forge???

  I just needed a way to poke wood and remove ash...

 

And what more does a fire set need to do??

The poker looks like the 'split and fold back' method, right? No welding?

G'day Amanda,

You have done a wonderful job coordinating this project.  We will certainly call in and have a look at the tree when next we travel south. Fortunately my area in North Queensland is not affected much by bushfires (we have cyclones to deal with instead), but I sympathise with those in Vic and NSW who were seriously affected this year. The tree project would remind those residents that we do care.

I was too late for the big tree, but pleased to contribute leaves to your subsequent smaller project.

Again, congratulations on a wonderful concept and a job well done.

 

 

Feel free to discuss and promote other ways of doing things, we all do things a little different and there is more than one way to skin a cat, but I think it might be time to move on ...

 

If you will permit a comment from outside the inner circle of contributors to this thread, I think Dan's last statement is a worthy one.

The thing is this ... all you guys are highly skilled smiths in your own right. The beautiful things you make bear testimony to this. How you get there is up to you and you all have different ways of achieving excellence.

I don't see the value in point scoring of whose is the best method.  Celebrate the differences and the creative individuality and continue to forge magnificent things to be admired by all.

Amazing stuff!
01Tundra: Looks like you're using recycled steel there. Nice. I like the delicate wrap on the handle end.
Petere 76: Great. The basketweave handle and integrated loop is very effective.
Foundryman: First one I've seen with a rivetted hook - nice idea for those of us whose welding skill is suspect. Nice how you have combined the steel with brass and wood. The reverse twists look good too.
Eric: A very classy looking fire set. Many hours of forge work there. The loop and cut worked well for you.
Terrific to see these photos. Thanks for sharing your creative ideas.

Wow, nice work. The family would be very pleased you personalised the set with the cat and dog head handles. Nice how you have split the poker tip. I guess you thinned out the shaft a bit, leaving a bigger mass of metal on the end to work with. Very effective.
Thanks for posting the pics.

I know we have posted pictures of forged hooked pokers before, but can we have a thread here showing each person's interpretation of a hooked poker?
Whatever method you use, welded or not, it would be nice to see an array of these so we can make an informed decision on what style we, who are of minimal experience, would like to adopt for our own work.
Actual structural integrity need only be sufficient to poke the fire and shuffle some wood around, so I'm not concerned about welds that would surpass the Queen Mary's anchor chain. If it can be done without welds, all the better.
Some nice handle ideas would be good too. I have made a lot of straight pokers, but only two with a log hook on the end. These first humble attempts are shown below.
Show us what ya got:

The next poker I'll make is going to be the folded over type as shown. I like that, as there is more metal mass to be worked to the point and that looks better to my eyes. The ones I made by splitting and bending back are a bit skinny.
And the highlight of this recent thread was the blindfold on the acrophobic Rammy. Gotta keep a sense of humour!

 

All that being said most of the pokers I have made are for outside firepits and I make them 30-36" long and I start with 5/8 to 3/4" stock taper it down to about 3/8" square leaving a heavy section on the end.  I flatten that out to 3/8" flat punch a hole and split the end to make the hook.  3/8" square  is plenty on the business end.

That's music to my ears. A hooked poker with no welding!! I have done only a couple of hooked pokers and I used that method. I like your idea of leaving the heavy section at the end - that would give a more natural look after the hook is folded back. Thanks JNewman, I now have a plan for the next poker.

I guess I am pretty lucky with resources. Things just appear in my trailer from time to time. A farm area was being cleaned up a bit and owner says put your trailer here and we'll fill it up. Take what you don't want to the dump.
Lots of usable stuff there - old blacksmith made hooks and harness items, wheel hub rings, old machinery parts, heaps of buggy leaf springs and a few nice old coach axles. Some lengths of railway iron too, but that's too heavy for what I do and it will go to the dump. Also some heavy castings which I don't use. But I'll keep 80% of it. I think a lot is wrought iron.
It's nice when folks think of us before just dumping this sort of stuff isn't it?

I am a nobody on this site, but I will completely agree with the disappointed comment.

I don't think any of us are 'nobodys' on this site. At least I hope not. Those of us of lesser experience may feel at times overwhelmed by the expertise and knowledge of the recognised smiths who contribute here, but we all had to start somewhere, and there is a lot to be learnt here.
This thread is about forge welding ... I have never been able to achieve that, but once you cut arouns all the bias and argument, it is hoped that we can all glean some meaningful direction to help us on the path to being better at what we do.
Pictures and videos help much more than words, and I have been directed to a forge welding video by Mark Aspery, which explains in simple terms how to forge weld. I don't know if what he does on that video meets with the approval of all contributors to this thread, but I would certainly like to be able to weld two pieces of 3/8 rod together like that.
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Whoa, I have just read through all this heated conversation. I have no comment to make other than I am way way out of my depth here. I would just like to know how to make a weld. Any weld. Without resorting to Mr MIG.

Did I hear you right? You chiselled those leaf shapes from the saw blade!! I thought that would be pretty tough steel. I think I would be reaching for the oxy.
Anyway, a fine piece. Well done!

Great ideas. Finish looks good, too. What is the 'paste wax' you use?

You can split it, or you can notch, fold it back on itself, and weld it up.

 
Thanks Dan. I decided to try the split method. My first two attempts are shown below. I will improve with practice.

 

you may check this thread as it contains info on that actual forge weld on a fire poker :'?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

I will have a look at that. I have never been able to achieve a forge weld of any sort. Tried different heats and fluxes etc but just won't stick. There'll be great rejoicing when I finally achieve success. And I will.

So Ausfire, you tapering to a point or just tapering?  If it's for the poking end tapering to a point is most likely if it's for the handle end it could be most anything.  The devil is in the details!
 
If it's for the poking end I don't see why you'd go round after tapering---but that would make a better handle; gentler on the hand.

Again, I just assumed it would be taken as being the poking end. I usually put a folded back twist or a ram's head or something on the handle end. Sometimes I leave the taper square (if that's the correct term) but it looks quite respectable as a round taper running into a twisted section of the shaft.
And while we are on about poker points - how do you guys get that hook on there as well as a point? Nearest I can figure is that you split the bar like making horns of a rams head, draw one to a point and shorten and bend the other?? I'll tryit next time anyway.

And BTW, I notice some XXXX in my last post. Just want to say there was no serious expletive there. The censored word was the H word, nothing more.

 

The H word was removed and x'ed out in the first post, Here there was a minor edit to substitute "H word" instead of a spelling the word using characters.

I had just laid out a few steel pieces on the table for a project and when I returned with more pieces, this inquisitive carpet snake had turned up. It still hangs around the forge and enjoys a rat or two from the adjoining chook run.