CTBlacksmith

You could make a copper rose with a steel or brass stem. you could even use copper for the stem if you want. to make the rose you just cut out six to eight petals. the "petals" are shaped like a figure eight but no holes in them. each "petal" then forms two petals. you drill a small hole in each petal directly in the center where the stem would go. to shape the petals i use the cross pein of a small hammer to spread out the ends. once all of your petals are formed you can make the stem. if you wanted to make a ring you could use a piece of nickel silver wire flattened out enough to form the ring. then you would leave enough wire above that so that when you stack the petals on the wire you have about an eight of an inch above them to form a rivet head. before you place the petals on the wire you want to draw it out and taper it. this will let the petals slide down onto the stem but it will keep them from going past a certain point. once the ring is formed and your petals are made you can stack them on. whenever i make one i put each petal on top of the previous one with the edges of the petal just touching. looking down on them it looks like they are in a spiral. form a rivet head on the stem once all of your petals are on. then take a chasing tool or even a center punch and lightly tap it over the rivet head so it looks like the center of a flower. bend all of the petals up and then take needle nose pliers and curl the very edges of them back down. now if you really want to make it special you could add a piece of felt onto the center of the flower and put a few drops of rose scent on it so it would smell like a rose. sorry it took so long to explain it but once they are done they look great.

thats a really nice bear trap in the back. they actually dont have to be welded shut to be legal. you can still purchase them new and i believe there is one state that you can still use them. not positive about the last thing but i know for sure that you can still but them

i started out when i was fourteen and i wanted to temper a knife blade for my cousin. i had a big pile of dirt in my backyard and i put a coffee can in the ground with holes in it. i ran a copper pipe out and put four bricks around the can. my air supply was an air pump for camping. i dont think i ever tempered that knife but i did straighten it out ( it was a trap spring). then i started playing around and i made a pair of tongs out of two concrete form ties. i thought they were the best thing ever and i showed them off to everybody in my family. now i look at them and wonder what everybody was thinking when i showed them. My cousin had a small anvil that he let me borrow and i started making different hooks and things. then i was looking through an old book and found plans for a brake drum forge. the same cousing helped me get all of the parts and weld the forge together. for about a year i used a compressor and a valve on my forge for the air supply. it worked ok but it was noisy and the compressor was too small. i thought it would be nice to get a hand crank blower but i had never seen them anywhere for sale. on my way home from Maine i stopped at a barn sale. the guy had different forges and swage blocks for sale, but the best thing was an old hand crank blower. it worked and all of the teeth were on the gears. i payed forty five dollars for it and that is the best forty five dollars i have spent. After about a year of that forge i decided that i wanted to learn how to weld. i bought an oxy-acetylene and my cousin gave me bottles for it. the first thing that i wanted to do was to gas weld a forge and firepot. i was able to cut out the table and weld on two of the legs. the welds eventually broke off and i realized that if i was going to make it work i needed a welder. once again my cousin helped me and welded the firepot and legs on for me. the forge sat around for a while because i didnt have time to finish it. this year i finally got a welder and finished the forge. i cut the legs off and welded it to the base of an old skinning machine. now i use it just about every day. my senior year in high school (this year) i won a three thousand dollar award for fine metalsmithing. i am going to college to be a metal shop teacher and artisan. my plan is to teach during the school year and i can blacksmith when i am off in the summer. i have been blacksmithing for about four years and i cant imagine ever stopping.

i plan to make both a shear and punch. the punch doesn't have to do anything large. i just want it for punching smaller square holes in thin stock that wouldnt be efficient to do on the forge.

Does anybody have a bench mounted punch press? im looking for something to just punch holes and curves. i dont want to buy one, i just want to make it. if anybody had plans, pictures or any information on it it would be much appreciated. thanks

i find all kinds of things on my local RR track. i get all the spikes i can carry, the plates that go under the tracks, large bolts and nuts, the bent bars that go to something( not sure what they are but they are good 1/2 in bar stock) and different bars that i find. the scrap yard that i go to has all kinds of stuff including piles of bar stock in 20ft lengths. i picked up some 3/4 by 1/8in stock for candle holders and a 10in piece of one inch round bar to make a tomahawk drift. i think that i am going to make the guy at the scrap yard a spike knife and maybe he will put some cool stuff that he gets aside for me.

I dont have any information to add but i do have a question. what do you think about being a metal shop teacher in a high school or college and being a blacksmith at the same time? the school job would give you the insurance and a steady income and then when you have the summers off you could do blacksmithing and teach classes. Im 17 and i hope that i can become a professional blacksmith/ metalsmith one day. what do you think about the two careers being combined?