mcraigl

Dothacker,
You as unhappy 'bout the death of Robert Jordan as I am? I hear that someone's lined up to finish th series...

Don,
That's a beautiful piece of forgework there. How do you like having the handle in-line with the blade as opposed to the more common perpendicular/angled to the blade? Again, that's a nice piece.
ML

Peyton / Glenn. I too have been thinking of forging a hacksaw. I read somewhere that a heavier frame like 3/4" made the saws work and feel better than the cheesy storebought ones you get nowdays. What about making it the June project? Maybe that would motivate me to quit thinking about making one, and actually making one. I would love to see what some of y'all come up with if you were to forge them.

Thomas,
Good to see you posting. Made it back to northern Washington from the conference alright I assume. Looking forward to hearing how this project goes.
ML

Case has it right. Silicone will hold the mirror better than any sort of tabs. Just design your frame so that you've got enough frame/mirror overlap (say at least 1/4") then put a small bead of silicone on the very edge of the mirror and "set". That's how we would've done it in the glass shop I worked in anyway. Let it cure overnight and voila! You're good to go.

Chris,
Make sure and let us know how that stuff works out.

Now Mark. You're gonna make his head big with all that... Sorry I had to WORK that day, or you would have had to put up with the Mike and Mike show! Maybe I'll get to play next time too. They don't come no better than Mike-hr!

I payed .50/lb in Kfalls a couple of weeks ago for scrap steel. Not much cheaper than new in some cases. Asked about buying some sheet lead that I had seen laying in the yard and they had just shipped it all to headquarters 'cause lead had doubled the day before from .75lb to 1.50lb.

Colleen, that's kind of what I was hoping. I think there were a few people who maybe weren't so turned on by the pieces I had brought, but maybe got an idea of what is possible. A couple of them asked when they took my card if I was open to working with them to design a piece so I'll hope that a few of them were somewhat recession proof and will be looking to get something commissioned. Luckily I do this stuff for fun. I think my family would be pretty hungry right now if I lived where I do and was trying to make a living as an artist.

It was an un-eventful, but very educational weekend I just spent with Mike-HR at the Klamath Art Society art show. I didn't sell anything, probably had it priced too high for the local clientel, but I'd rather keep these pieces than sell them too cheap. Anyway, here's a pic of one of the pieces, and you can check out some other photos in this album in my gallery.

Peace,
ML

I'm mostly past the point of beating on hot steel solely for the sake of beating on hot steel so I usually at the very least have a mental image of what I'm trying to achieve. I do like the idea of cold-runs, and like Frosty, how detailed my plan is depends on how complex the project or how much time I've got into the piece that I'd have to redo if I screwed up a move. Even on simple pieces though I think I'm with Rich, I've at least got a mental picture of what I want to accomplish with that heat, the tools I'll need ready at hand, etc. for that step in the process. A dry-erase board near the forging area is a nice feature. On a topic related to that... Mike-hr made covers for his mill table out of fiber reinforced panel scraps and realized a very, very handy benefit in that they work as well with dry erase markers as any store bought dry erase board. Very handy to have a spot at the mill to write down figures and do math etc.

James,
I love the goosenecks when I need them, but when I don't, I use tongs with about a 16" rein, and the jaws only stick past the rivet about an inch. This is for exactly the reason you're playing with. Especially on the Power Hammer, I'll use the shorter jawed ones if possible AND a tong ring.

John, I think those steel choices would work just fine for those tools. They're all "edged" tools, and if you want them to "hold" and edge you will definately want to heat treat. I won't go into it here, but there's a ton of posts on heat treating the steels you are talking about if you search the forum. Post pix of them when you're done. I've been thinking of making a set of mortising chisels ever since all my hand tools got stolen a couple of decades ago. They're getting hard to find store bought these days.

If it's a complex shape, I draft it up in autocad and email a *.dwg file to the water-jet shop and then stop by after work with a 6 or 12 pack (depending on how big the job was) to pick it up. I still pay them for it, the beer is more for the inconvenience of them setting up for my piddly little jobs while they have production runs going that make them far, far more money than said piddly jobs.

Try an Industrial Supply company. There's a company here that supplies stuff to the lumber mills and they have new cable that they sell by the foot. Probably much cheaper than getting it from ellis.

EGADS! Can it be true? There's TWO GIS/GPS guys on here??? I'm the GIS Coordinator for a field office of the Bureau of Land Management. Use autocad a bit, but mostly ESRI and Trimble products. Also the Task Order Manager for our local IT Support contractor, and the IT Security Manager for my office. I've finally gotten a paycheck for a bit of smithed art, and am pretty happy about that, but I don't want the pressure of feeding my family based on it. So until I start getting federal retirement system checks in the mail (in about another 20 +/- years) I'll keep it as a happy fun hobby.

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.