bigfootnampa

Simple, he says. I assume your spring steel to be old leaf spring... really hard but makes a nice knife when you are done. 1. Hot cut down to reasonable blank size... don't start with a big knife, learn faster with more small ones. 2. Forget the ricasso, guard etcetera... forge the tang first... for a small hunting knife about 3/8" square tapering to 1/4" square over 3 1/2" of length. 3. Using the tang as a tong handle, forge the basic blade shape... keep it simple to begin with. 4. Grind and file to refine the shape but leave the edge thicker (about 1/16" to 3/32") 5. Harden. Heat entire blade (NOT tang) to bright red or dark orange heat and quench in oil. 6. Grind/sand/file to remove scale. Remove most all scale at this stage to see colors in stage 7. 7. Temper. In a household oven about an hour at 375 degrees and another hour at 420 degrees, will give you a nice straw color which is very hard. You could improve this temper by drawing to darker colors along the spine with a flame. This refinement is trickier than it looks as the thinned edge will draw heat very quickly so to get the thick edge heated without ruining the temper of the thin edge, requires patient heating with a small flame (I like an alcohol lamp for this) moving constantly along the area to be softened, while watching like a hunting hawk, and quenching instantly when the colors are achieved. 8. Carve and attach handle. Use any nice available hardwood to carve the handle shape as desired. Drill it full depth (for the tang) with a 5/16" bit and then half depth with a 3/8" bit. Heat the tang, low to medium black heat, use tongs as a heat sink to protect the blade temper. Melt the tang into it's socket... use the tongs to insert the tang in the predrilled hole and then holding the blade just above the tang (with the tongs), tap the back of the handle against the anvil forcing the hot tang into the handle. Done right, this will melt the square tang into the round hole creating a near perfect fit with just a bit of room on some of the flats... the resins in the wood will act as hot glues and the slight compression of the fibers in the socket strengthens them. 9. Sharpen and test cut. I like a belt sander to sharpen with but use what you have. I like to hone with a diamond file and remove the burr with a butcher's steel. I am not happy with an edge until I can cut hair from the back of my hand with it. 10. In lieu of a guard, ricasso etcetera... leave a space between the blade and the handle. You can just leave the tang a bit overlong and round the corners on it a bit or grind a finger size notch at the back of the blade's edge. This makes sharpening much easier and helps to keep your fingers away from the sharp edge.

The wood looks like walnut, hard to know for sure from just pictures though. If it seems real soft maybe sassafras... though it appears darker than most sassafras. Sorry I didn't see that you are in Australia. Probably not either of these then... maybe Jarrah?

I just discovered him a few days ago... I saw that he was still hammering at the age of 86... an extraordinary man and certainly loved his work.

I use the bullet point Dewalt drills for everything on a regular basis (their only real drawback is that they are not readily resharpenable). When I am drilling on the drill press though I find that regular HSS cheapies are fine. The smooth powerful feed of the drill press and a little oil makes quick work of drilling in mild steels. I try to hot punch and drift anything very heavy when I can (especially tool steels).

Flat paint (especially black) is very dependent upon even depth spray coats for an even sheen... I suspect that you sprayed some areas more thickly, which would drown the flatters in the paint and give a higher than designed sheen. This will result in a sort of mottled sheen look which can be very visible on black surfaces. It is a common fault when spraying from cans or over surfaces which are not very evenly sheened before spraying. If this is the look you seek knowing the mechanics should allow you to recreate it at will (with maybe a little practice). An exaggerated form of this effect can be created with a gloss or polished surface by misting clear, or slightly tinted finish, over it unevenly. Using this latter technique offers you a little more control and a wider range of variations.

In my coal forge fire scale does a great job of creating pitting and the general rustic look on iron surfaces. I'd suggest that you limit your file use severely, avoid forging into the darker red or black heats, make minimal use of your wire brush, heat to a nice yellow before you start hammering. This will get you a long way toward the aged appearance you seek. If you can start with salvaged iron that may happen to be a bit rusty and/or pitted to begin with, that will help too. Utilizing salvaged wrought iron would be a nice touch. I have found that farm sales are a good place to buy it cheaply... just yesterday I was outbid (at $67.50) for a pile of around two ton of such iron that I would guess is around 20 to 30 percent WI. They had two old machines that they could not give away which were almost certainly framed with some WI... a guy with a car hauling trailer could have bought them for $5.00 each and winched them both up on one load! I am not sure what they were but they were VERY old and tractor sized machines.

My process seems simpler to me but has worked very well. I have been reforging hammers to get improved shapes and, as I have had some problems with keeping the heads tight on some of my old hammers, I now redrift the eyes to make sure of a nice waisted taper there and also to stretch the eyes so that they take a larger handle for strength since I tend to put them to heavy use. After the final shaping and drifting is done I reheat one more time and quench in water (the entire head... and swishing very swiftly) to harden. Then I use a flap disc to grind away the surface scale (I also use this opportunity to dress the hammers edges and faces to final shape and smoothness) so that I can see the colors for tempering. I then set the hammer back on top of the forge fire (mine is coal) and continue forging for a couple of hours or more. I turn the hammer often as it slow bakes atop the fire and let the heat flow through the eye often watching for the colors... when I get mostly dark blues (maybe just a bit of purples) I requench the hammer. This seems to give me a good hard face and peen with a (possibly) slightly softer eye and anyway very nice performance. Hammers treated thusly give me much better service than ones that I have bought, whether new or old. They are hard enough to keep their shape and have durable surfaces but do not chip or crack even when used to pound like crazy. They are harder than my anvil faces but mine are dressed with no sharp corners and I have developed very accurate hammer control... a ding is rare and tiny.

I can't help you with removing them but this stuff, while not cheap, will seal them back in for the rest of your lifetime. It is very THIN and will run into hairline cracks with ease. You'll have to seal carefully to keep it in and then use small batches to seal the cracks before the final cast. It is incredibly tough stuff! Great for setting handles too (NOT hammer handles though... too hard for that... it does make a good finish for hammer handles). Home Page

Whatsa matter wit you guys... he's giving FREE shipping! There's only 19 hours left so I'll wait till the last few seconds to get MY bid in!

Riveting Tips; use a set or spacer (proper thiickness flat bar with a hole in it) on the off side of the rivet. Sets are for the side with a finished head while you work on the other side. Spacers keep the stock centered in the hole while you form the first head. Use a small to very small hammer (depending on rivet size) and fairly gentle taps but very many (when riveting cold). For hot riveting you have to move swiftly so hammer a bit harder but even quicker. Heavy blows will upset the rivet and tighten the rivet in the hole... maybe good maybe bad depending on what you are riveting. Too heavy blows will bend the rivet stock especially when cold riveting. Practice on scrap with the same rivet stock and techniques before risking ruination of your projects. When you have to set a rivet where only one side will be easy to work on (like when riveting a ladle handle) use a header to preform the rivet head on the hard to work side.

When you are forging a bevel on one side of a blade it tends to lengthen that side of the blade, curving the blade away from your bevel. With a bit of practice most of this can be countered by prebending in the opposite direction (or... "counter bending").

One thing on my list to make is a "butcher edged hardy" as depicted by Mark Aspery. Basically like a cut-off hardy with one edge perpendicular to the anvil face and the edge softened. It is used to make tenons.

Sorry to hear it Frosty! I can see from the pictures what a sweet dog he was. It seems he had a lovely life! Clay

I think you misunderstood me though Charlotte. I believe that the pictures you saw likely referred to a clay shielded quench. A different kind of differential quench than the crude and dangerous method which I was referring to (just partial immersion in the quench lengthwise). I am not intending to cast aspersions on any of the traditional and tested methods of HT... simply to add another type of strategy for those who might not yet have it in their personal bag of tricks. My own experience is limited too... but I have had some successes with this and think it worthwhile to discuss.

One other thought on this subject... a full heat and partial quench will often result in a stress weakness at the point where the immersion in quenchant stops. I have not had that sort of problem when using the differential heating strategy as it seems that the steel naturally feathers the heat for a gradual enough transition zone to avoid serious weakening. I could see how it might be a problem but in ordinary practice it seems not to happen... at least not often.

I have used the differential heating mentioned by nakedanvil for some types of blades. It can be a very useful strategy in the right situation. An example is a rabbet plane that I bought which came with an iron so soft that it needed resharpening after only one or two strokes. In the field I used a small propane torch to heat the edge and quenched it in water. With such a limited heat source I could not have done a full harden and temper cycle but I was able to exploit the quicker heating of the thinned edge to get a nicely controlled differential heat which when quenched hardened my edge for about 3/16" to 1/4" back from the sharp edge (adequate for many years of use in this case). In this case I was very happy with the result and able to get my work done (which had started to become a bit frustrating). I still use this strategy sometimes... even when I am at my forge. As example I may only harden the edge area or tip section of a punch or chisel, leaving the handle and striking end soft. This is easy to do just by how I place the tool in the fire and time the heat. With a knife blade it can be more complicated but a partial grind before HT can allow a torch (especially if skillfully manipulated) to heat only the thinner edge area to critical temperature. Such blades as ordinary chisels are very good candidates for this type of hardening strategy as they usually only need hardening near the edge and given their long tapering shape zoned heats are easily achieved. Depending on the steel they may also need tempering however.

I hope that I may see another post like this when you hit 10,000 Frosty... maybe that new power hammer will help. I have an old buddy up there who retired as Wasilla police chief a few years ago. I know that I have personally learned a lot from reading your posts and I am truly grateful!

It was probably me who brought up the block knife Jake. I felt the need for one to make small handles with. I can work the first end while clamped in the shaving horse but the second end has too little room for clamping. My plan is to hand hold them on a bevel while shaving the ends against a block with the block knife. I have since searched the web for a supplier without success. I have tried to make one of my carving axes serve by clamping it in a forged piece of flat bar with a hook on the end (the hook for grasping the staple in the block). This was no go as the weight made it way too cumbersome to use (maybe I could have used lighter bar... 1 1/2 inch by 1/4 inch... still I think a failed design). I am next forging a hook on the end of an old drawknife blade (in place of one of the handles) and trying that. In the meantime I have developed skill with an old tool called a "carver's bib". It is a chunk of wood that hangs around my neck like an oversized pendant. I have forge welded a little slide buckle that adjusts a piece of macrame cord to hang it at just the right height (over my breastbone). I fit it with a groove and a small center depression to help keep the small handles in position and can use powerful wrist twist strokes to carve the handles while the bib allows me to cut right at the ends of the wood without being very careful not to cut myself. In this way I have one hand to operate the knife and one to hold the work. it is WAAAY faster than trying to clamp the work in my off hand while cutting away from myself... but I still think the block knife is the way to go. Essentially my carver's bib is accomplishing a similar thing... the work piece is clamped between a solid block and my hand controls the angle at which it is presented to the knife. With a true block knife I will also have the leverage of the staple hinging action and the larger blade and should be able to cut even faster! I have seen tobacco knives that were similarly designed (but they were too attractive as antiques to be priced right for a user like me). The drawknife seems right for the task as it has a stiff rib back with a long (but not too long) blade and a one sided bevel. I have one with through tangs so just have to make a hook of one of those and forge the peened end back straight on the other end and fit a new handle. An easy job but I have so many such things ongoing at any one time that some get back burnered for a while.

Jake: I do have Pfeil... woodcraft sells them. The steel is really nice quality! I regularly sharpen mine till they can dry shave the hair from the back of my hand. My cheaper axes and hatchets are nowhere near as good. They have a fairly thin blade that is fairly uniform in thickness from the front of the eye to about an inch and a half from the edge, then it tapers from both sides. I have lengthened my tapers and grind them very slightly convex. As I keep them they will work equally well from either side. Even for such a simple task as chopping ice from the water troughs in winter they excel! I have several nice antique broadaxes that I am restoring but none are really quite ready for working yet... so I currently use the Pfeils for that too. I had one of these for years and used it little but when I learned how to make it work for me it became quite a favorite tool. Now I keep several so that one is usually near to hand. They often find work in creating the roughed baulks for the drawknife and shaving horse. Mine are large axes for one hand use... I might like a smaller version for many things. Their handles (original) are longer than needed as I almost never take a full swing with them. Commonly I will be using them with my hand right up touching the bottom of the eye. When splitting the length is sometimes useful for leverage though. I am an advocate of controlled splitting for roughing carvings (or treen ware). I find that the axe and gouges are much more satisfying to use than the chain saw. They are very nearly as fast too and more accurate. Another bonus is that the marks left by roughing with these tools are attractive and need not necessarily be reworked for a nice appearance (which is NOT what I feel about chain saw marks). I'll bring one in here tomorrow and give you a little more detail on the architecture/size etcetera.

I like the axe! I'd be happier with a simpler (but more elegant) handle design. I have two or three swiss carving hatchets now, and I really love using them. I do quite a bit of light splitting with them. I've also used them for distressing/rusticating surfaces. They are much more versatile when you learn to drive them with a rubber mallet. They become handled chisels when used that way and are a great timber tool. I use cheaper ones in such manner for demo work too (I'd never risk my swiss ones for that type work). They are great for roughing out spoon and other treen ware blanks! With one of these, a hook knife, a pruning saw and a small patch of woods you can spend some fine days outside and show up at home with a few useful things.

"what do you mean by loading the cutting edges?.. keeping them covered in the oil?" No Josh, he means that you have to supply sufficient feed pressure to make the bit cut... too little pressure allows the bit to just spin and slide in the hole, which heats things up quickly and burns bits. Especially in mild steels, slow drilling speeds with fairly high feed pressure will drive the bit through the metal very swiftly with minimal heating problems (proper lube... which is not critical as to what you use... is also essential).

That's a good looking job! Normally the chains are not so much for holding the anvil in place (wedges or bent over spikes do that better) as for sound deadening... to soften the ringing.

The vacuum is likely a bit too powerful. Try a hair dryer or heat gun instead. I have used a vacuum myself and had to keep it off most of the time. I have a new forge now and the clinker breaker feature and ash dump prevent this problem. Fe-Wood is on the right track though, clinker and ash are the likely culprits.

I really like it for cleaning out the bathtub. Sprinkled into the cracks of my window sill it will deny access to ants... it's so nice not to have them crawling into the salads as I make them! The ants won't consistently cross a borax barrier.

I've used a trap like irnsrgn describes... we had so many mice that 6 boxes of poison dissappeared the first night... I don't think that any individual mice got enough to kill them either! The trap worked well killing up to a dozen a night (woulda got more but it leaked and when the water got too low to drown em they just jumped out). Don't set it till you leave for the night... listening to the little buggers scratching on the sides, first fast, then slower... ssslllloooowwweerrr still haunts me! You gotta put a ramp up to the edge so they'll find it and jump on that roller! I gotta admit cats are more pleasant quite proud of their work they are! They'll often line em up for display so you can see what great hunters they are! They always want me to take pictures... but I refuse. Where we used the trap was wilderness though, cats were NOT an option.