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I Forge Iron

-Quint-

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Posts posted by -Quint-

  1. Just finished this as a gift for my inlaws. Made the main part out of half of a broken stainless scissor. The corkscrew I made out of a piece of stainless threaded rod (left some of the threading marks that survived the drawing out and tapering process for character, instead of grinding it smooth). I think I got carried away with the size of the brass rivets, but otherwise I'm content with it.

    IMG_0837.JPG

  2. 17 hours ago, Frosty said:

    The pic makes it look galvanized, don't just toss it in the forge. That would be B-A-D. :(

    Frosty The Lucky.

    It definitely is Frosty. I'll be stripping that down before it sees any heat. The junky rod I've been hammering on was coated or painted with a goldish coating and I've been whipping that off with a wire wheel before sticking it in the fire. Do you think that's a good way to remove it or should I be using some other method? Not sure if creating the dust is nearly as bad as the fumes from burning. I wear one of my embalming masks anyway...

    Although, breathing NYC air every day probably already has my lungs "galvanized"  :unsure:

  3. 24 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

    spark test it; no reason to waste the time and money if it's not hardenable.

    I certainly will, thank you. Even if its not high carbon I'll probably still smash something out of it for the practice.

  4. Can't thank you gentlemen enough. Looks like I've come to the right place.

    In 25 years or so in my field, I've mostly only come across people who aren't interested in sharing their knowledge with anyone. I wasn't very deep into those 25 years when I realized it was most likely because they didn't have much wisdom to share... you guys are refreshing to me, you have a wealth of knowledge and are not only willing to share that wealth, but seem to find it exciting and rewarding to do so.

    I'll be taking everyone's advice and tips and shoving them into my brain as best as I can. I had nearly forgotten about the ABANA lessons, thank you for the reminder. I intend to do just that. And Frosty, I love the silicon caulk trick.Definitely using that as well, brilliant.

  5. Thanks for pointing that out frosty. I have a simple understanding of the principles of basic heat treatment, not from a hands on standpoint at all but just through reading (books) and picking the brain of a friend who is a pretty good respected knife maker. I guess I misused the language, or just took a language shortcut assuming that you guys all know a lot more than I do and would assume I meant tempering to achieve spring AFTER hardening. I never tried to harden or temper these pieces, or anything for that matter other than quenching while working. I've only worked with the few pieces I've shown here in this forum, all mild steel, and if what knowledge I have so far is correct, there's little noticeable result when "heat treating" mild steel, correct? 

     

  6. 9 minutes ago, Panday said:

    I'd lay a handsome wager you've never seen a spring steel stocking hook. 

    I'm not taking that bet, first stocking hook I've ever seen is the one in the pic above lol. When I was a kid, my "stocking hook" doubled as something called a thumbtack once xmas was over ;)

  7. 6 minutes ago, Panday said:

    "Tempering" is unlikely to effect that one way or the other. Most likely cause would be forging errors. 

    Well I'm sure there were plenty of forging errors lol. But on a serious note, that's very interesting to me. So even if it's not a tempered fairly high carbon, or "spring" steel, it'll still have enough give in it to not crack with repeated flexing? 

  8. 1 hour ago, Panday said:

    So long as its solid who cares. You should see the look on people's faces when they ask for something and I pull out some nasty bent rusted piece of scrap out of my bin. 

    Most of my tooling is made from really ugly looking scrap I found buried in my backyard. Lol

    The stuff I used here was some 3/16 rod I found stored up in the rafters of my house, from a previous owner. It had a goldish coating on it, which I whipped off with a wire wheel before I stuck it in the forge... It seems more than fine for decorative stuff. My only concern really was how much of a temper it could actually take, I'm assuming it's pretty low carbon, and I'm worried about the clamps cracking in the corners from flexing, but I'm still green and ignorant, so I don't know if that should be a concern or not. 

  9. 3 hours ago, Smoggy said:

    Lets think about that one Quint, as far as what matters the only difference twixt new stock and your scrap is:

    The steel supplier has taken scrap, reformed it into uniform long lengths and sold it to you at a premium price (after the stockist includes his profit), for you to cut down and reform again! So unless you are making parts on an industrial scale, you are paying for something you obviously don't need. Looks like you are doing fine as you are Quint. It is also my opinion that if you are buying the stock, and making both identical.......you may as well have just gone to the store and purchased the finished product at probably half the cost and little effort. Personally, I'd rather have two slightly odd, repurposed, handmade items, keep up the good work.

    Thanks Smoggy, I appreciate the encouragement very much. It's invaluable, especially early on as I'm sure you know. 

    I'm all about scrap, I don't intend to ever buy much steel. For this particular project I just kinda wish that I had used something a bit better, so I could put a bit of a spring temper in it. I'm worried that it's going to crumble at the corners after a few times clipping on and off the mantle. I guess we'll see!

    Oh and as far as making them look the same, I probably should've said "remotely similar" ;) because the first try at the second one wasn't even close. I don't want identical stuff either. 

  10. Thanks Frosty! I can't take credit for the idea, my wife said she saw something similar and asked me if I could make them. They clamp on the mantle pretty well, even if Santa is overly generous I think they'll stay put.

    Banged them out of some junk rod I had lying around. I keep telling myself that I'm just practicing so the material can be junk, but so far I'm using everything I've made, so maybe I should start using better steel...

    The toughest part was making the second one look like the first ;) 

     

  11. 1 hour ago, Panday said:

    I couldn't say really, don't have enough experience with forging it to really say. This stuff forged pretty easy for me, but its also only 1/2" bar, and I'm one of those guys that can forge 1/2" to a point in one heat. 

    I found it fairly easy too, but I don't really have any thing to compare it to. Plus I'm pretty heavy handed in general... So is it just that it's basically junk steel that steers you away from it?

  12. 3 hours ago, Panday said:

    This is the first (and last) time I've made them from rebar. This particular stick had a unique pattern I wanted to do something with, otherwise I'm usually a bit more than indifferent to anything from rebar. 

    Is rebar that much tougher to work than other steels? I've only really forged on rebar so far since I'm mostly practicing some basics, so I'm curious. Those look great by the way.

  13. I keep trying to thank you guys for the kind words but the post keeps disappearing.

    And trying to say that my favorite part of this opener is the accidental twist. Thought I had the scroll (more like a Dr Seuss/Tim Burton curlicue) in line, but somehow messed that up, so I had to twist it into alignment with a final heat. I like the slightly spiraled rebar pattern

  14. Dirty Smith, Dave Canterbury pathfinder school has a lot of simple projects for outdoors, Denis Frechette from theironworkshop not a lot of video but one of the best Heat treating video I have seen. and Chandler Dickinson 

    Yes, the Frechette heat treating video is great. In fact, it was my inspiration for starting this thread.

    Watched several Dirty Smith videos since the suggestions on this thread, can't believe I was missing these, they're great! I actually saw that episode of the Mike Rowe show a couple of weeks ago, didn't click right away.

  15. I did a quick search and didn't see this topic isolated into one thread, if it is and I missed it, my apologies.

    So who do you guys and gals like most on YouTube? I enjoy Gary Huston very much, just everything about him and his work, the nonchalant way of going about things yet at the same time extremely well thought out in an instant... Brilliant. I've enjoyed some of Chandler Dickinson for the entertainment value and the "what on earth will he do next?" factor... Denis Frechette is another I enjoy, his "economy of motion" approach seems somewhat unorthodox but after I think about it, it's rather crafty and makes a lot of sense, just a very knowledgeable guy with an interesting twist on some stuff that seems to be status quo elsewhere.

  16. Fired up the forge for the first time out back last night, that really swayed me toward not even considering the basement anymore. Wish I could, since it's so convenient, but safety and common sense definitely win this little argument inside my head. Too bad I already lugged the anvil down there ;)

    By the way, sincere apologies to anyone who may have been offended by my language. I'm sorry to say that my ears (and consequently my sense) have been hardened by what has become "acceptable language", 'specially around these parts... won't happen again. 

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