mcraigl

Dan, Another way to visualize Hollis' suggestion... I take a straight edge and hold it on the face of the hammer. You should have 1/32 - 1/16 gap on either side from the front to back and slight less from side to side. At least that's how I like my faces dressed based on using many different hammers belonging to other smiths. Also, on the pein end, it needs to be almost flat front to back, with a similar crown side to side as the face. I had my peins too sharp for a long time and after watching Mark Aspery pien out material for a leaf and ending with a very smooth surface I had him dress my pein, and it makes a heck of a difference. Not nearly as aggressive, but very much more controllable. Anyway, that's my $.02 McL

Rich, The first person that held this, AND the mammoth skinner bought them. That tells me something! You needed to raise your prices for the show! As always those are beautiful pieces.

The picture of the dew cans welded bottom to bottom... That's a completely different beast than cutting one in half then welding it together. I tig'd aluminum for a few years proffesionally, but all my Al was between .100 and .250 thick. I'm sure there's guys out there that can do it, and I'd love to watch them do it. Never heard of "Micro-welding" as a specialty. That sounds pretty cool to me.

It's a fuller. Good luck, forging a sword that looks decent seems to be a pretty big task to me.

an exterior lacquer is probably what you're talking about Valentin.

flat dies and butcher dies are both real handy in the guillotuine. Mild steel will work just fine unless you have a thinner section like the cutoff mentioned earlier. Just get a piece of leaf spring that's about the width of the tool you want to make. Forge / grind the dies to shape and then heat treat the working end if you're so inclined.

Get a pet sheep and "pet" it every day. Nothing like fresh lanolin to keep 'em from cracking. Other than that, Kestral Salve, Bag Balm, and Working Hands Cream all seem to work.

Ah.. I was wondering about this same thing and ran some stuff past Mark Aspery about why he doesn't have some cool sounding name, or a cool looking touchmark. His response was that when somebody sees a piece of work that he's done he wants them to know that it was Mark Aspery that made it. That's why his touchmark is Aspery. Rather than some cool sounding name, or design or whatever. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. I guess I'd rather have folks be amazed by, or talk about, or muse over my work and the quality of it rather than the cool / catchy name of my smithy or how novel my touchmark is. So for now, my touchmark will be my initials.

think TIG. only way I can imagine it being done routinely.

Thanks Rich, I was hoping you'd chime in as I've seen some real nice hammers outa you. Tempering was done by color, and we arrested at bronze'ish. I do now have a computer controlled kiln in which I can do some fairly sophisticated heat treating and may in fact try it. Cat track huh??? I just happen to know where there's an entire track from a D7 laying by the side of a road out in the woods. It's so rusted together it will require a torch to salvage. I'll have to see if I can get some sort of permit to go get it. Those pins are large enough diameter to make hammer heads out of huh? I'm going to have to remember that when the snow melts. The way it's snowing outside right now you'd think that will never happen though!

Let you imagination free man. Unlimited things you can do wit that material.

Wore mine in half at about year 4, so I've been without one for 18+ years now. love Jewelry, have a nice Seiko watch that I wear all the time, except when I'm working in the shop. Then it comes off and either goes in a pocket or gets left on the nightstand.

I.C. I got to see the dremel a little over a year ago. It don't hurt, but let me tell you, well actually I can't tell you, how hard it was to hold still with that thing coming directly at your eye AND NOT BLINK!!! I now think I can hold still and not flinch for just about anything. Glad they got yout taken care of. Mine was from using a jigsaw to cut out some sheet metal parts. You're right about the temperature / eye stickiness relationship too.

I made the "v" just a little bit wider than the cable I was welding up. So it doesn't bottom out. You end up with a nice triangular bar when you're done that you can then forge to whatever dimension you need. I let the depth be controlled by the width and angle, so I didn't really pay much attention to it. Probably ended up just a tad less than the width of the cable I was working on.

You're gonna want to double it back and forth 'til you got a polish sausage sized bundle, then wire it up reel good so it's fairly rigid. You get it up to a pretty high heat, orangish to me then pull it out, brush it vigorously and apply the flux, then right back into the fire. You can "fold" when you've completely consolidated the material. If you fold it to early you'll still have voids in the billet and they'll get incorporated, or create a shear point. You can strike the edge, but you have to be careful to not shear the thing apart. You don't really need to fold a chain billet much. You're pattern is pretty much built in from the contrast between the pins, cutters, and rakers. I think the pins are different material than the cutters and rakers too. Good luck. You might want to start with a piece of cable-mascus first. I think cable is pretty easy to weld compared to chain.

I have a piece of steel that is 3x3x2.5". On one of the faces I've cut a 60 degree "v" in it. The other faces are just flat, but will eventually get different shapes when I figure out what I need. I sit this thing in the fire when I'm making up some coke for the welding process, once I've got enough coke and the fire is cleaned out/up I'll set it next to the fire and weld the small stuff on it. Really helps a ton. The "v" works great for welding up cable, it seems that the 60 deg. vee is just right for forcing the strands together when struck.

I've decided to bite the bullet and order new steel to make a few hammers. In the past we've used Ag. shaft that was 4140'ish and it seems to work OK, however I do find myself dressing the faces a bit more than I'd like. I know Brent Bailey's hammers are real nice and he uses Atlantic-33. I think the heat treat on this alloy is one of it's selling points. Y'all got other "pet" alloys that work good for hammer heads? Where do you get them, and why do you like them?

when you aloe plant is in the window sill of the shop, about 30 inches from your forge???