TwistedCustoms

That's a great looking top, Congrats and happy forging! I've seen lots of Vulcan Arm and Hammer anvils but never a Vulcan marked Sheffield. Maybe someone will have more info. It's marked in hundred weight and looks a lot like a mousehole but clearly it's a Vulcan. Got me curious now......

129lb Vulcan, great looking English anvil. Any photos of the top?

There is an old blacksmiths saying, "if it won't rust, don't trust". Not very scientific but still a good rule of thumb. The connecting ends on my sucker rod are rusty when I get them but I've never given much thought to doing anything with them. Looks like a lot of time and fuel for not much payout. The ones you have may be a more modern version. If it is stainless or a high chromium tool steel it will have much different forging and heat treating requirements that simple steels. Some tool steels air harden, some oil harden. I know nothing about forging stainless but I've been told some stainless steels can be forged. If you can track down the manufacturer and get them to tell you what they use you can get the heat treat specs for it. Without knowing that it's a shot in the dark. I know that doesn't answer your question but for what it's worth...... Good luck!

The sucker rod I get has a female threaded bell made on one end and male threads on the other end of a 20' stick. I've never seen that style coupler, is it threaded all the way through? If you can find brass plugs with the same threads, screw one in each end, fill it with lead shot and weld a handle on = beefy dead blow hammer.

Prayers sent.

Nice work. I like the shape and the burlap looks good.

jlpservicesinc....no other websites, who has the time. Other than about two dozen supply houses I have bookmarked, ( some of which I learned about here, thank you IFI and co.) this is the only place I spend time online. I like the company much better than the FB crowd and being bombarded by pictures of cats with clever captions. If I get to hunt this fall I'll take some pics of the gear. Hickory flat bow drawing 55#@28" cedar shafts with right helicoil turkey fletching and forged two blade broad heads. The cutting diameter varies a few mills because I file them all till they weigh 125 grains. Getting the weight right for the spine of the shaft is more important to me than whether the wound channel is 1 7/8" or 1 15/16" and the deer don't care. As long as my broad heads are in the picks maybe it won't be too far off topic for this sight. I'll throw a fire striker in just to be safe. Be sure to update us when the mobile smithy is complete.

Thanks D.C. I've read just enough about making mail to know it would quickly become another all consuming obsession so I haven't started down that road. I hope you get to finish it and share photos! Curtis87.... I looked around the shop and couldn't find the door pulls I said I would post. I usually make a few extra when someone orders so I have a working pattern if they re-order but if I did they have grown legs. I do have some steak turners, I'm sure you've seen these. There are hundreds of spike project ideas on IFI but I've had trouble finding stuff on here too. Do a Google search to whatever you want and add iforgeiron to your search. Whatever I want is usually here but it's easier to find using Google. Hope that helps...... -M-

Very cool, I would love to have that one sitting on my shave-horse. I have bow staves that need thinning and no time to play with archery till January but the sight of that knife warms my soul.

Very nice work. How did you make the ferrules?

Nice work D.C. I'm the worlds worst for twisting off on a tangent but I have to compliment the chain mail, very cool. Did you make it? I just looked in the photo album and this is the only picture of a spike in my tablet. When I get back to the shop after lunch I'll get some pictures of cabinet hardware made from spikes.

Sources for the History of the Science of Steel is available on Amazon, bookmarked and added to "the list" My reading begins in earnest in January. Nothing to do with the weather, I'm just running nonstop till Christmas. I admit there are several items of medieval style and quality that I enjoy owning but when it comes to my cardiologist I'll stick with 21st century medicine.

In reference to medieval medicine, no, and the comparison is ludicrous. Noones life is at stake over a novelty knife. The article is posted on myArmoury.com. The information was prepared by whoever controls the site and I can't speak for it's academic veracity, I just found it interesting. As always Thomas, thank you for posting the Titles of the Refference Materials. I do pay attention and I do add them to my list. I will track them down in short order.

No argument there and a good point. I would prefer to work on one commission for several months and produce something that challenges me every step of the way. Those commissions do come along but they don't pay the bills. Day in, day out, knick-knacks keep the shop going and anything I make from a spike, whether it be door pulls, steak turners, knives or back scratchers is fully in the category of knick-knacks. As a side note, the article I read noted that two of the blades tested were mono-steel with uniform carbon tested at 3cm intervals from tip to tang at .60 and a Rockwell of 54. Both swords were viking from circa 1000ad/ce. They didn't specifically say they were Ulfbert swords but it made me think of a public television program I watched on the subject.

Apologies for getting sidetracked....... I have a friend who makes garden trowels from spikes, also the little three pronged garden rakes.

I get it. I had the benefit of a very knowledgeable established smith who was very generous with his time when I started. One of the first things I ever hit with a hammer was a 3" 52100 ball bearing. I always suspected he gave me that bearing to see if I was serious about wanting to learn. I'm less worried about the guys who are getting in the fire and trying things. They will figure it out eventually. I do have a problem with marketing things for sale either dishonestly or from a place of ignorance. There isn't a week that goes by that someone doesn't walk into the shop and say, "can you forge me a spike knife, I saw one in Dollywood" or some version of that. Most of these guys bring one or two, some bring a bucket full. I tell every one of them what the spikes are made of and point out several other steels in the shop which will make a better, stronger, sharper knife. It always ends the same....." So can you do it". Most of them end up sitting on the mantle and get passed around at cook outs but I do have a few guys who will stand up in church and swear it's the best skinner they've ever owned. There is a mystique surrounding spike knives. If they love them they will covet them and can't be swayed buy facts about metallurgy.

D.C. and jmccustomknives.....for the record, I am in complete agreement about misinformation and truth in advertising. I don't believe my post contains anything inaccurate and I qualified my personal ranking of the usefulness of spikes as an opinion, not fact. The core of my message was the ease of forging lower carbon steels for beginners. Ranking low to mid carbon steels midway between a stone knife and modern high carbon steels like 1095 might help someone with little to no knowledge of metallurgy better understand why spikes don't make great knives. Nowhere in my post do I describe spikes as being "high carbon". For my next post I'm going with something less controversial than RR spikes. I'm thinking religion or politics would be a safer place to tread.

I never understand why everyone picks on the humble RR spike. I just read an article about the chemical analysis of 20 swords ranging from 1000ad/ce to 1700ad/ce. The carbon content was all over the place with up to .60 variance in the same blade with some blades averaging in the low .20 range. Some of the blades showed evidence of water quenching with no tempering. At every point along the path smiths made the best tool they could out of what they had to work with at the time. If we apply that line of reasoning today with the super alloys and precision heat treat equipment that exists in the 21st century it wouldn't leave much room for traditional blacksmithing. Railroad spikes are not the best knife/tool steel available to us today, but then again neither is 1095, 5160, 15n20 or any of the other high carbon steels that can be worked in a coal fire and heat treated to a high degree of sucsess without using ultra-modern technologies. Assuming you don't consider the electric arc furnace that produces homogeneous batches of those steels "ultra" modern. When anyone says that a knife or other tool made from a spike is not a knife it's like saying knives didn't exist until after the industrial revolution. In my opinion, a spike knife that's water hardened would be superior to a stone knife, a copper knife, a bronze knife, and an iron knife, all of which are legitimate knives. It will be inferior to a knife forged from 5160 or 1095, assuming you have the skill set to get the most out of each of those materials. I think they're great for beginning blade smiths. The lower carbon steel moves easily, you can work it at higher temps and if you burn one up you're not out much. Most of us didn't learn how to drive in a race car. Learning to move hot steel with mild to medium carbon is a good way to learn hammer control and fire management basics without destroying higher quality steels. They are not going to make durable punches but its a cheep way to learn to hammer hexes and rounding tapers, drawing out, piercing and all sorts of other basics.

Right on Michael. That was a big part of the draw of blacksmithing for me, being able to take something no one wants and turn it into something useful. What's the old saying, "use it up, wear it out, make it work or do without".

It hadn't yet occurred to me that maybe I didn't survive jumping that creek on my bike back in 75 and this new world order I'm experiencing now is my punishment for trying one of Pops cigarettes behind the wood shed. It would explain a lot. I suspect that every generation feels something close to this when they realize the world is changing much faster than they like but I swear there are times when I feel like the social fabric is disintegrating at an exponential rate. I'm not a luddite, I like technology to the extent it actually improves my quality of life and I acknowledge there has been a lot of change for the better in my lifetime. I would however put all the lawyers, cell phones, bad music, and self-important instant gratification crowd in a giant sack and drop it to the bottom of the sea in exchange for a steady supply of soapstone and chalk.

It figures Frosty. How did we ever survive our youth without bicycle helmets and lawyers!

Those big sidewalk pieces could be a pain, the school supply isle in WallyWorld has white chalk board chalk for under a buck. I use a worn out file to sharpen chalk and soapstone to a wicked point. It never gets mixed up with my good files because its the white one hanging on a nail above a pile of chalk dust.

I use soapstone because I always have them around but regular chalk board chalk works for me at forging temp also

Does it weigh 555lbs?

It depends somewhat on what other tools you own or have access to. Making an improvised anvil can involve heavy welders, water jet cutters, power hack saws, chop saws, torches......or slipping a couple of feet of chain through the eye of a sledge hammer head and lag screwing it to a stump. Scrap yards in my area are not the best sources for the "good stuff". Spend a weekday going around to shops that work on heavy equipment and ask them what they do with their scrap. Be prepared to offer to buy someone lunch or bring a cooler full of cold drinks around lunch time. There is a shop close to me that services "big" all terrain fork lifts. The individual forks are 3" x 6" in cross section and weigh over 100lbs per foot. they are 4140 according to the guys at the shop and they will set one in the back of a pick up with a forklift for a grand total a $26.00 with a bill of sales. Not everyone looking for an anvil wants a thousand lb fork to drag home and cut up but I bet someone in your closest blacksmithing club does, and probably has some smaller pieces laying around his or her shop. If you want to find the best deals hang out with blacksmiths :-)