mcraigl

How big's your shop? Mine is 17'x21', (detached garage) with a double garage door which leaks terribly. I did insulate the rest of the building the best I could and I installed 4 of these Ouellet Residential Radiant Cove Heater 71in., 900W/240V, Model# ORC0900BL | Heaters | Northern Tool + Equipment cove heaters on a programmable thermostat. It is super nice, no fumes, and relatively cheap.

Ah yes... The elusive Kansas Steelhead... That's a nice one bud.

OK. I'll give my .02 cents worth since I use tongs in this way a fair amount. I have to disagree with John B a little, sort of. The key to avoiding injury here is to make sure the tools being held are short, and to (as Grant already said) have a good radius/crown on the struck end of the tool. One more thing I wanted to point out here is the heat treat for O1 is generally more like 1500, and it likes to soak for 30 minutes to get everything into solution before it is quenched. Lastly, There's no need to turn or forge the waist so small, you just need enough of a shoulder for the tongs to not slip up or down the tool. Incidently, the reason I made my tongs and went to this method was that I got a rippin' deal on short 3" - 5" drops of 1/2" 4140 and 4340. Way too short to hang onto by hand, perfect for the chisel tongs.

Disciples.... Sorry, but I had to stop laughing before I could respond. Yea, I suppose I'm one of the devout. Though I am branching out and grinding my slot punches to the Hofi / Brazeal geometry now. I do use a rounding hammer a bit, particularly when drawing. My only "issue" with Erin's design is that I don't care for the boss protruding above the faces if that makes any sense. Not that one is frequently hammering up against a verticle that interferes with the boss. Just something that I'd grind level with the top of the faces if I were making it. I do like the fact that Erin makes each one himself, and thus there's a whole lot of blacksmith love put into them as compared to a "factory made" hammer.

My guess is that the head weighs 41 ounces. Erin's tools are nice, and well made. Not my favorite styles, but still well and nicely made. From the CBA Curriculum reading list: Erin Simmons blacksmith@directcon.net, 530-622-7803

rokshasa, Yes, the sheath has a snakeskin inlay. A couple of weeks before I built the sheath I was out in the desert with Mike-hr and he killed this 30" Great Basin Rattlesnake. We BBQ'd it for dinner and Mike-hr tanned the skin. We each made a knife sheath with inlay out of the hide. And no, Rattlesnake doesn't taste like chicken. Actually I thought it tasted more like frog legs... ML

Echo what Thomas said. In addition, you may want to use some sort of filler/sealer. I haven't worked with "african" mahogany, but with other types of mahogany and it has some large pore spaces that will be a little bit difficult to fill with just the tung oil. Look at midway or brownell's for products for gunstock finishing and you'll find what I'm talking about. One way to try it without filler is to wetsand with tung oil for several coats, allowing to dry inbetween coats until the pores are filled, then go to coats of tung oil rubbed with very fine steel wool in between. Then finish off with paste wax.

Yes the more expensive belts last longer. Also, if you talk to any of the "guru's", they're gonna tell you to use belts as if they are free. Ei. in other words new belts (good quality) work so much better, cleaner, faster, etc. that it's not worth the heartache to try to stretch the life of a belt. Myself, I rotate what the belt gets used for with each few uses. Once I've done the main grind on a blade with my coarse belt, it get's relegated to general purpose grinding. I can't always keep to this schedule, but there's is a significant enough difference between low quality and high quality (and expense), and whether a belt it new or used...

To add to Keykeeper's final comments. You COULD use the mold to determine the curvature/radiuses of a palm swell to perfectly fit a customer's hand. I have a rifle that has a palm swell that was carved to fit my hand, and it sure does feel better than a plain jane stock.

I've been thinking about having the waterjet shop cut something for me into a large planer blade I've got and using it as the negative. Wouldn't work for many shapes, but I think it will work fine for what I've got in mind.

Here's one I did a couple of years ago for an Aunt.

Integral Steak Knives from O-1 with (maybe) antler tip handles.

I've seen it on several of the knifemaker's supply sites. Anyone tried it or something like it? PCB There's also a higher temp verson of this stuff, but I think this might be just the ticket for most of the "normal" steels we use Ie. 1095, O1, 5160, etc.? Any input here? Also looks to be a fair bit cheaper than the foil depending on how much you end up using per blade.

Sam, Glad you're OK man. Pictures. We wanna see carnage pictures. So the KMG is out of business for a while too now? That's a real bummer. did I mention we want to see carnage pictures?

That's it? All there is to it? Great!

Freagul, Though you mention it in your text, go to user cp and edit your location so folks can see at a glance where you're at. Now to answer your questions... 1. Join the California Blacksmith's Association (CBA). They come out with a bi-monthly journal and it lists in the back instructors by region. 2. There are a pile of instructors in the sacramento area. I don't know many of them by name, but know a few of them. John Crandall comes to mind. He was also until recently the education committee chairman of CBA and will know who most of the instructors in the bay area are.

Could ya talk him into giving us a little discourse on how to keep the bark from slipping when making a knife handle from it? I actually like the look of that handle, and I'm not normally into the tribal style that much.

The mechanism inside the flywheel may be a brake? Never run this type of hammer so not sure, but a brake is a real nice thing to have. Doh! Grant beat me to it...

No experience on this, but something down inside me is saying stay away from the sanding disc? Shot blasting maybe?

You can always use a center/prick punch, a round punch, a hot-cut chisel, and a curved chisel. That would be a very, very basic set in my mind, add a few different radius curved chisels, a couple of different radius hand fullers, a few varieties of eye punches and you'd have a more than basic set. Search the forum for instructions, it's been gone over many, many times. ML

Grant, did you do any sort of "break-in" procedure when you first got them? I got a new Quincy about a year ago, and it was shipped with a "break-in" lubricant, and after so many hours (40 I think), etc. I was supposed to D&R with new compressor Oil. Ingersol Rand's have a similar break-in procedure. I figure I'm probably getting close to the 40hrs. of service at this point and will probably do it before winter "really" sets in. Just wondering if you had done it and maybe we could attribure some of the things you saw to it, or conversely if it's just a gambit to get you to buy their bazillion dollar per gallon synthetic compressor oil (quincy or IR). ML

Tired and in a hurry cost me the tip of my left thumb on a table saw 15 or so years ago....

The old guy in Monroe had Cumberland Elkhorn a couple of years ago when I last bought a ton. I'm getting low and need to start thinking about making another run up there. It is a pain, but it's also the best Bs'ing coal we've found on the west coast. I'd be interested to hear verification that he's still selling good coal. I had heard (thread on the board here) not long after we got our coal from him that he'd retired and got out of the farrier/blacksmith supply business but that he was going to continue to sell coal. Hope that's the case.

Also, put the clay on in thin coats and allow to dry completely and thouroughly before putting in the forge.

Steve, My understanding is that they are often L6. Not sure if that's true or not. Mikey has made several knives out of it and they've all hardened nicely in an oil quench. Not sure what temp. he's tempered too. Do you have a spare piece / scrap? Maybe tell the customer he needs to bring you a scrap then do the 'ol junkyard ht test on it. That'd probably be the safest/best way to proceed as nobody is going to be able to definitively tell you exactly what alloy the blade is without a whole bunch more information I suspect. Mike L.