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I Forge Iron

TwistedCustoms

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Everything posted by TwistedCustoms

  1. Does the one in the third photo have a hardened face plate on each of the three legs? That thing is cool! With a cradle set up to spin it as needed it would be fun to work with. Thanks for posting these!
  2. For best results with the urine quench the urine should be taken from a red haired maiden. The slave/blood quench doesn't require a specific hair color but it's almost imposable to get a permit for that one where I live. Blood bait is a different story though. When I was a kid we used to go to the slaughter house and scoop up buckets of congealed chicken blood. We would mix it with saw dust to form a stinky dough that catfish couldn't resist!
  3. @jeremy k I see the rivet on the virt/horiz members coming into the center of the scroll at right angles but the points of contact with the sides of the 45 degree bars look to have brazing built up. In the last photo one of the questionable, maybe brazed areas looks as if the brazing broke loose in one area. I cant clearly see a rivet head where the scrollwork meets the 45 but that doesn't mean it isn't there!
  4. blowing through a tube, the original "double lung" bellows!
  5. No swelling on the first pass through member, it's hard to say for sure from the photos but could the 45 degree member have been miter cut and brazed at the joint? There is some build up at the point of contact with the end of the 45 degree member and the scroll work that looks like it could be brazed. Also could be one hundred years of built up gunk. I would think dowel pinning combined with brazing the joint would last for another hundred years and look spot on even if that's not how they did it originally. I hope you work it out, I would love to see your repro when it comes together!
  6. Masterful work all around and a charming intro. I can smell the fire and taste the mead!
  7. I haven't found a tried and true formula for this. No matter how many times I do it there remains a "hit or miss" factor. If the tang is cold and the guard is @ forging temp the guard is going to shrink as it cools making a tight fit. I have never had a guard tear or split from shrinking but I have had a few shrink up so tight that I damaged the guard hammering it off cold. I mention this because my usual method is to set the guard before the edge bevels are hammered in and sometimes before fullering. Also I have done this with 5160 and mild/A-36 for the guard material, not wrought. If you have enough wrought to run some tests fits on various tangs it might save your finished work. As for the 3/4" you mentioned, I have had good results with a 16 degree tang hot fitting the last 1" with the tang at forging heat with light taps using a piece of "squished" 3/4" pipe as a sleeve over the tang to tap the guard down. I look forward to seeing pics!
  8. My gasser is mounted on a swivel post on the "off" side of my anvil. When I'm on the working side of the anvil I have plenty of room between me and the forge mouth but if I need to move to the other side of the anvil for some oddball reason I just turn the forge 90 degrees so the mouth is pointing away from me while in that position. I keep a pair of shade five torch glasses on my forehead and if I open the large hinged door on the side of the forge I flip the shades down to look inside. I also have several pairs of tongs with longer reigns for fetching work out of the gas forge. When I transitioned from coal to gas it took a few weeks to work out the particulars but by identifying and addressing the safety issues peculiar to forging with LP I'm a happy Blacksmith! My coal forge gets lit one day a week now and the rest of the time it's gas. I wear a respirator while running the gas forge too but there are plenty of threads here about airborne fibers!
  9. I have had the exact same issue with drilling files, Black Diamond and other "old" files. Sometimes after annealing I will get one or two holes that drill like butter and then hit a hard spot on the second or third. It is usually part way through and not consistent, just random hard spots. I always assumed it was some degree of air hardening. I have heated and punched holes as small as 3/16" and then drilled them out to 1/4" to clean up the holes but if you want smaller holes you can try "hot drilling" with a throw away drill bit or start over on the annealing. I don't know why it happens but the only time I ever have this come up is with files.
  10. I meant the time frame of the culture/country, i.e. present day, dark ages, medieval etc. If there are no restrictions on the timeline it opens a lot more doors. Metal work specific to one country or originating in one country/region could be religious icons, specific tools or day to day items like cookware. But I would love to see a forged kangaroo!
  11. Wow! There are no countries on that list. That is a list of regions which each include dozens of countries. If you don't have a time frame to work within then you have hundreds of countries and thousands of years of human history and cultures to chose from! Since forging is your passion why not try to zero in on some aspect of metal working in one of those times and places? Tool or forge development and evolution?
  12. Daswulf, I know how you feel about chasing that dream. I would do a lot of things different if I could turn back the clock but I'm laying a foundation now to ensure that I'll be able to continue forging as long as I'm physically able. I'm not getting that lost time back, none of us are, but we can make some use of what we learned along the way and apply that knowledge as we move forward. I finally figured out that I would rather be happy than successful and for the first time in my life I'm content. If there is a way to meet your obligations and do what you love then go for it. The clock keeps on ticking either way, might as well be doing what makes us happy!
  13. @Daswulf "The man who doesn't read has no advantage over the man who cannot read" Mark Twain Credentials from Institutions can open doors in modern life but they are in no way a guarantee of success or even qualification. The most valuable knowledge comes from reading and doing...IMO. And everyone knows that PhD stands for "Piled Higher and Deeper" :-)
  14. It was meant as a compliment! I have improvised a lot of "one time use" tools that weren't much to look at but got the job done in a pinch. Some of them end up staying in service long past their expected expiration date. Those are the ones I work with when I'm alone and throw a towel over when someone walks into the shop :-) Louis L'amour said in his auto biography, The Educating of a Wandering Man..."I had to drop out of school. It was interfering with my education!"
  15. Bends that tight could be done cold but most likely it was heated and bent. The screw driver tip was forged but whether by a smith or machine it is crude in the extreme. I would venture a guess that "Farmer Made" would be more accurate. A lot of tools get made in a hurry when something needs repairing that can't wait for a trip to town or the time it would take to forge a screwdriver, make a ferrule and handle and fit it together.
  16. That's the only doghead hammer I've ever seen that I like! I could use one of those with my cats paw nail puller! Nice work!
  17. That's a keeper. I have owned one Wilkinson and it gave me good service for a year. Mine was just over 100lbs with a bit of a saddle but great rebound. I got it in trade for a couple of Fraternal swords made by Ames. If I remember I had around a hundred bucks in it and sold it for three hundred. Fifty dollars for any real anvil that hasn't been in a fire or shot out of a cannon is a great deal. Enjoy!
  18. Search "Japanese Trough Forge". If this is a one time, or some times type project I would just do a simple brick pile you can easily tear down when you're done. For 20"" I would use three 3/4" air inlets stubbed in off of a central 2" line spaced at 5", 10" and 15". If you have pipe and fittings or a welder and twenty or so fire brick you should be able to throw one together in an hour or so and pack it up in about ten minutes. If you have space for a dedicated set up and it gets to be a regular thing maybe think about fabricating a more permanent version based on experiments with the easily changeable brick pile.
  19. OnlineSearchingGasRegulatorsYieldsBoatloads!
  20. As long as the regulator is made to work with a pressure gauge it should be ok. The regulators I've used that don't have the gauge outlet built in are made for cookers, fish fryers etc. where you don't really need to know the exact pressure you're running. I'm not saying you cant forge without a gauge but it will make it easier to know how efficiently your burners are running if you have a gauge. My regulator tops out at 15psi but I can reach welding heat fast at around 8-9psi. I run 6psi till the forge warms up,(I have a hard brick floor for durability), and then dial it down to 3-4psi for forging heat. It helps to track fuel consumption if you know the pressure.
  21. Nice work all around! I've always liked the coffin handles. I look forward to seeing more of your work!
  22. Daswulf, the thin edge section could have been a welded in piece more susceptible to corrosion or the thinnest section could have just corroded away first? Just speculation. JustAnotherViking, I was elated when those photos were first published! I would love to own that axe. Any of those pieces really but that axe, wow! Frosty, I have spent large chunks of my free time speculating about the Seax shape. The first time I saw one was at a Mountain Man rendezvous in the mid west in the early 90s. I had always liked the Wharncliffe blades the Case company would periodically issue on some of their folders but the Seax profile sets itself apart enough to be a whole other animal. The guy who was wearing it at the rendezvous told me what it was and it's been on my mind ever since. At times I'm struck by the visual similarity of the general blade shape to the shapes of the Futhorc runes. Intersections of straight lines...it's probably purely coincidental but...?
  23. TwistedCustoms

    Vise?

    Cold War lullabies may be back in fashion soon! Hope Not!!! Apologies Marc1 for running off on so many tangents on your thread. I'm easily distracted but every time I pop back in here that little vise/grinder/anvil widget grows on me. Would it be possible to mount a Jacobs type chuck to the spindle the grinding wheel is on and use it as a drill? Either way it's a neat little tool. Also, I could use an ashtray on my motor bike! And a fan for summer time riding :-)
  24. The only bronze tools I've ever actually worked with were non sparking hammers, never any kind of hot work. I didn't know the heat transfer was that drastic. Now I wonder how they handled crucibles for bronze and copper before iron tongs were around.
  25. Thomas I played around with whitetail antler handling small pieces of stock at forging temp this afternoon and it held up surprisingly well..I imagine reindeer antler would work fine to move a bloom a short distance onto a stone anvil in a situation where the "tongs/lifting hooks" wouldn't have to be in prolonged contact with the bloom once hammering started. Maybe just use them to roll or reposition the bloom as needed. However, if I had a nice big beefy pair of bronze tongs I would find a work around for warm reigns to avoid smelling the burnt antler!
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