Iron Poet

I made some hooks and a treble coat hang before promptly falling asleep, I think I'm getting some sort of respiratory infection or maybe my diet of hamburgers and snack cakes has finally caught up to me.

I'd try to find a way to make anvil tools out of them. You should be able to make a pretty sweet guillotine tool out of them.

I'd recommend using some kind of tool steel, if you have some leaf spring or some other spring steel I'd try that. But from what I've read people used to make wrenches from wrought iron all the time so a36 should be fine if you make it beefy enough or if you just want to practice.

Old anvils were typically repaired by forgewelding the broken bits back on. Those look like forge welding lines to me where they were couldn't be bothered to smooth them out.

2 hours ago, JHCC said:

It ain't a party 'til someone bleeds.

The worst part is that I wasn't even one of the guys wailing on the piece of tool steel with sledgehammers, I was about 10 feet away. It hit me with such force that I thought that a hammer head came lose and hit my arm. For a couple of days afterward I couldn't even open or close my hand, even now my hand hurts if I move it wrong.

Drive hooks. They are simple to make and cost you virtually nothing to produce while still being able to turn a profit. I sell ones maybe 6" long for $10, not bad for 5 minutes of work!

On 8/30/2016 at 9:09 AM, MrDarkNebulah said:

It wont harden at all if it is very low carbon. It is fantastic for anything except tools or things that need to be hardened. Ornamental work and the lot will be great for it.

A soft faced hammer is a good idea. I got hit by an inch long steel chip about a month ago and it took a 1/4" deep chunk out of my arm.

Make sure both peices are brought up to heat evenly and slowly, make it is adequately fluxed, and make sure to work it over until you can't see the line between the metals.
 If that doesn't fix your problem you might be using a tool steel with a lot of chromium which hates welding.

I know for a fact that you can buy acetylene and oxygen bottles, A year or two ago a distributor near me was selling 3-foot tall tanks. I don't know if they were legally able to do that or if they got permission for Airgas, but if you do get the chance to own a set they will exchange them just like any other.

3 hours ago, ausfire said:

Those heart pendants are neat. And so much quicker to make than roses for Valentine's Day!

True, it takes about a heat to make the heart shape and another to roughly cut out the shape with a chisel. Even with grinding I can get one done in about 15 minutes and can probably sell one for $20.

Valentines day is coming up so I thought it would be prudent to make a heart stamp and a swage to do with it. It's a bit difficult to hammer the punch into even yellow hot steel due to the surface area, but it does come out nicely even if the punch itself is a tiny bit wonky and a tad too short.

On 1/15/2017 at 11:21 AM, bubba682 said:

15 BUCKS an hour is pretty cheap IP especially in Ont your givin it away man if your half decent go get it if you charge to little which to me 15 bucks is people kinda of wonder why so cheap. 

I live in a very rural part of New York and find it sufficient especially since people will balk at at anything more expensive, especially since I have very little upkeep. This might just be my foolish pride talking but I personally don't think my work is worth $30 an hour so I couldn't in good conscious charge that much, when I deem my work good enough I'll charge more. So I'm an idiot, but at least I'm a principled idiot.

1 hour ago, Glenn said:

Jymm Hoffman anvils are available in double horn or colonial patterns. He is a member of IForgeIron and donates a portion of the sale back to the site.

I'll recommend these, they even come with a free hat and cutoff hardie. I'd recommend the one with the shelf especially if you plan on forgewelding anything thin as the shelf heats up nicely. Know that the face of the anvil is a tad soft so you have to be careful not to beat it up too much with heavy hammers or chisels.

Materials + ($15 x hours worked). If they want me to make a blueprint, or a 3d render of what it might look like, or anything aside from a quick sketch they'll pay for it. And they pay for 50% up front, you'll be surprised how many people want to haggle after doing a job for them or how many want to do something different halfway through or just pretend they don't even know who you are when you start waving that bill around.

21 hours ago, BIGGUNDOCTOR said:

Look for a steel supply company, or structural steel fabricator, then ask them if they have any scrap pieces that you can get. Therw was one near where I used to work that had a dumpster full of big steel -like 24" I-beam big. 

In my area steel yards typically frown on giving out freebies, but they will sell you drops at what is practically scrap prices. The place I go to almost always have large sheet metal drops they can't do anything with (like 2'x5' or 3'x6") that I pick up for pennies on the dollar.

On 1/8/2017 at 8:31 AM, bubba682 said:

What would be considered the top of the line in old anvils.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a lot of people would have said Fisher, apparently an anvil with a wrought iron body will eventually deform while one with with a cast iron body is more resilient. According to the book I read Fisher was the only anvil manufacturer to have a complete guarantee on their products.

But if an anvil has lasted 100+ years it's probably serviceable regardless of the brand.

1 hour ago, Dustin Quade said:

Its a shame the pattern didnt really come through on it. I do like the idea of recycling the little bits of damascus left over from projects. Just seems such a wast to scrap it. I have also never attempted a dagger point myself but the lines on yours look pretty close to symetrical which is imoressive, especially for a first attempt. Why didnt you temper it if you dont mind my asking?

I did all the shaping by hand, just some files and sandpaper. it was surprisingly easy to keep even. I didn't temper it because it's so small that I thought hardness was better than toughness because you really don't have a lot of material to resharpen, and it's hard to apply enough force to break it with a thumb and forefinger.

1 hour ago, C-1ToolSteel said:

Cool and unique design. I would definitely recommend tempering. If you drop it, there's a chance it could even shatter. You also might want to try Kydex or rawhide for the sheath. That way you could make it "grab" the blade so you could hang it upside down. The way it is now, it would be tricky to draw it with one hand.

It was just a little experiment so I do agree it could use some work, I'm not a leatherworker or sheath maker so it's a little rough.

I was making a Damascus skinning knife as a Christmas present and I forgot to take a picture of it. I did however have a small piece of stock left over, so I decided to make a neck knife out of it. It's about 2" overall, oil quenched with no tempering, and even though I've never made a knife with a dagger point it is still incredibly sharp.

Overall it was a fun attempt at recycling.

9 minutes ago, ausfire said:

Stop worrying about what's wrong with it and just use it! What do you need to do that it can't handle? Enjoy its character.

It does make you appreciate a nice new anvil if you ever decide to buy one, and it's better to bang up the old banged up ones.

On 12/8/2016 at 0:32 PM, SkoobyNewb said:

Plan on getting it professionally resurfaced to fix that missing chunk and the various dings on the face.

I'd have them mill the section with the missing chunk into a 45 degree plane. It would be more useful than you'd imagine

You should try to sand that knife, sanding and finishing is harder than most people suspect and it's better to learn those skills on practice piece instead of trying to learn on something yo can't mess up.

Would the average blacksmith need to worry about this? I feel that forge welding or even just forging would produce a negligable amount of manganese exposure. From what I understand most of the danger is caused by the smoke the flux gives off, which forge welding typically doesn't have.

The guys stick welding might have problems though.

On 12/25/2016 at 9:26 AM, tdaleh said:

I use the round  dish shapes the most. Then the large curved depression  to make round  shapes.

Same here, it's nice for making little decorative bowls and such.

I recently started forge welding Chainsaw chain together and in my first experiment I used a mild steel flat bar just to have something to tie the chain to during welding. After I had forge welded all the chain down into a nice rectangular bar I folded it so the mild steel would form a sandwich around the tool steel, I figured that it would stop the actual usable metal from decarburizing. After forging it I was going to grind it off but I discovered that the mild steel wasn't so mild anymore. It instead threw off some pretty nice sparks, so I forged it flat sideways and made it so that the previously mild steel became the cutting edge while the chain formed a nice thick band in the middle of the blade. Now that the knife is hardened, tempered and razor sharp it has help up perfectly against ice, wood and cardboard without the edge rolling or crumpling like a tincan, so I'd be willing to guess that it's around .60% carbon.

This is really interesting to me as the differing metals have great contrast with the 'mild' steel while it also has great weldability. So making a decorative but still useable hammer for instance would cheaper and easier for someone with no money like myself. One of the many few problems I can foresee is getting the ratio of mild steel to high carbon/tool steel correct so that it can carburizes, While another problem would be forging it before all of the materials homogenize and you don't get a nice pattern.

I feel like there is at least a 60/40 chance that this is a really stupid idea but I just wanted to give you guys the chance to make sure.

I'm not great at most of the processes but I can do all of them, what I'm really good at is forge welding but I suppose everyone is really good at at least one thing.