Shamus Blargostadt

hmm... at .04/lb that would definitely be worth the trip.  I could probably fill a drum for under $10.

17 minutes ago, Daswulf said:

Shamus, did you ever check out Gillespie coal yard in Fayette City? No bagged coal but it was around $80. A ton for bituminous coal. He should be open again soon or now. His usual customers are home heating type but I was talking with him about blacksmithing last time I was there and he seemed interested. Nice guy. 

I'm way up in Ellwood City so Fayette is around an hour and a half from me. That sure is a nice price though. If they sell smaller quantities it might be worth the trip. I'll give them a call. Thanks for the tip!

The coal yard does sell what they call blacksmithing coal, basically the smaller egg-sized bituminous.  There was another place I noticed last week, between Chippawa and the Ohio border that had a sign for anthracite "smokeless" coal.. I'm guessing it's going to be more expensive even if suitable for smithing. 

I don't know where in Ohio you are but just across the border in Chippewa, PA I buy mine for $7/50lb bag at "The Coal Yard".  They hold weird hours. If you happen to go and nobody is there, take your coal and leave money in the office on the desk (their instructions)

I've been cutting my teeth on 1084 and 1095 making knives for almost a year and a half now. After constantly keeping after rust on my blades, I'm thinking I'd like to try out some stainless steel. I keep reading 440c come up as a good place to start with SS, but I'm kind of confused on the heat treating part. Some folks make it sound fairly easy but I've seen others talking about steel wraps and aluminum plates and quenching in liquid nitrogen. As far as gear goes, I only have a toaster oven and oil I've been using to harden high carbon in. Is 440c (or some other recommended SS) something I can send out and have someone heat treat for me, proper for a knife? I'm thinking kitchen knives.

Does stainless steel forge similarly to high carbon or do people mostly do stock removal with it?

now only outlaw zombies will have knives

Just one burner or are you going to have two?  Are you going to use a door on the front or leave it open as shown?  Would be interested in any updated pics, I see this is a couple of months old.

I was surprised when my kids and even my wife started watching it with real interest. The episode where they had that girl on caught my 15yr old daughter's attention and now she's talking about taking a try at a knife.

very nice.. can't get a feel for the scale though. Is that a coil spring from a car?

etsy sounds like an easy way to get your feet wet selling crafted work. My wife just set herself up to start selling commissioned watercolors and it sounded pretty easy to do.

I go there for ideas on forged items sometimes.

awesome job on that skull by the way!

The bandsaw blade and banding doesn't have stuff on them but I didn't sand them down to shiny metal.. the banding has black on it (paint?) and the saw blade looks used.. maybe a tad oxidized. Should I sand the pieces down first for it to weld properly?

Thanks for the many comments. I'm going to keep trying.  I can't count the number of times I wished I could just follow someone around their shop and watch how they do things.  I do appreciate the efforts of the experienced smiths here to explain things to new folk and I also understand there are a million details that just can't be documented that will affect an outcome.

so if done right, you should only have to flux and weld once or twice?   if so I was way off target then.

yes I have a gas forge but had read you needed coal to get it hot enough for welding. I'll give it a shot in the gas. Thank you!

is my sequence of steps accurate?

1. heat

2. flux

3. heat

4. hammer

5. repeat until welded? How many iterations should this take if done proper?

propane would work better in this case?

holy cow this weekend was a grand fail. I got a spent band saw blade, and some pallet banding.. tested the banding and it broke just fine. I stacked around 7 BSB between the banding strips (about 6" long) with banding on the outside.. welded one end and wrapped the other end with wire.

made a hot coal file and once I heated the billet, added borax to the sides and ends to get between the strips.. back into the fire to get red hot... hammer, then repeat until giving up in futility. The strips never fused and had to replace the wire wrapping twice.  It was hot enough to start to burn the outside straps.  Am I going about this wrong?

Also warped and broke two blades I was working on..  not a productive weekend. I think perhaps I didn't heat my quench oil enough.

Thanks Thomas, that vinegar trick took most of the scale right off. I think I might be able to sand it now. Anxious to get at it.

My anvil is pretty beat up but I'm betting my inexperience is more to blame than that. The other side of the blade is similar but not as bad as this side.  I'm thinking I probably pounded scale into the stock, like Frosty said. I will definitely be more careful brushing after this.

I usually do brush it but I'm not very diligent about it. I didn't think of driving scale into the stock but that's almost what it seems like. It would explain why it seems to be deeper than the surrounding steel that is clean.

So I'm trying to make this kitchen knife and I've already made several mistakes. One thing that I'm getting concerned about though is this bit of scale right in the middle. I keep grinding and grinding on the belt grinder and it just doesn't seem to be going away and I'm afraid that the blade is going to be getting too thin.

My thickness is getting uneven too. It's anywhere from one quarter to 1/8" thick in places (one spot looks 1/16th.)

I started with 1095 steel and tried to cut out the basic shape of the blade. Then I tried to forge it to shape. I'm wondering if I should've gone easier on the hammer in that middle part to avoid making the indentations. Or is this normal and I should just keep grinding away until The scale is gone?

I'm using a 2x42 belt grinder. I was then going to finish up the edges with the angle grinder.

will do. Thank you very much sir!

On 9/17/2015 at 11:20 AM, ThomasPowers said:

Since I don't have power to my shop I generally do this by hand.  That's why I start with 25 layer billets of bandsaw blade and pallet strapping: 5 welds => 25,50,100,200,400 instead of 5,10,20,40,80.

I'm sure the Saxon process was en-thralling...

I scavenged a buddy's metal shop scrap bin and got a discarded bandsaw blade and plenty of pallet straps.  When you layer these, do you layer them alternating one by one or a group of saw, then a group of straps?

what do you normally use for etching these?

1 hour ago, WayneCoeArtistBlacksmith.c said:

If the base surface is still in good shape you could use Plistix or Metrikote IR reflective products.  Similar to ITC-100 but much cheaper.  I have used all three and can't tell any difference.  I have not done side by side tests though.  I do know that they all work.  If you paint the IR product on the inside of the forge you will get a white colored coating.

Let me know if I can help you.

Thanks Wayne. The stuff that is still there is in pretty good shape. Most of it is at least 1 1/2" thick. It just slopes down in the front such that pieces tend to fall out.  I can paint those products on top of what is already there, even not knowing what is in there?

Back in the summer, a brother of a friend lent me his gas forge. It has two burners, rectangular shape about 2' long and both sides open up. The front side has a smaller access hole.  When I got it, the insides were lined with some white glazy stuff that kind of looks like glass when it heats up. It is black now and starting to deteriorate near the ends and in the middle where steel likes to sit. We  haven't been doing any forge welding in it... use coal for that.

any tips on how to build this back up or the proper care to maintain it? I'm not sure if I can buy some of this material and just patch up the deteriorated areas or if it needs to be cleaned out and redone completely. I want to take proper care of it though and the owner doesn't seem to know what to do. Been reading through topics in the forum but haven't come across anything that has given me a eureka moment to purchase something. 

On 12/31/2015 at 10:49 AM, ThomasPowers said:

Shamus; do you also find it very therapeutic to go out and hit something with a hammer after a day working with computers? 

absolutely! After a week of fighting with broken mickysoft, mindless security hurdles, and endless government knucklehead politics, hammering steel is very soothing.

It is rumored that at the height of his success, billionaire J.D. Rockefeller was asked "how much is enough", to which he is reported to have replied "One more dollar."  

I'm a sysadmin by profession. I can appreciate the unsung success of "keeping the lights on" and thereby being invisible by a job well done, but my point was that significance isn't measured in just monetary value.  Furthermore, I can't buy inspiration; the kind of inspiration that drives me to go out and try to create something great. (then some of you are just so awesome I want to give up!)

What you seasoned craftsmen give is much more than a product that might be sold for a few bits of paper with a government seal on it, and it is far more valuable.

Yes money can affect our lives in great and positive ways, but it's not the only thing that makes life worth living. There's more.

Old small spike made into a letter opener