bobasaurus

Thanks, horse. I already gave it away so I don't have a good size reference. The final face diameter is about 1 1/4" after grinding. It's on the large side for a chasing hammer, but not too bad.

Thanks. It's hard to tell in the photos, but the face does have a slight crown. If I were making it for planishing or other body work, I would leave it harder.

I made this jewelers chasing/repousse hammer for my Father's xmas gift. It started as a 1" diameter bar. I tapered one side to 3/4", then upset the other end to make a ~1.5" rivet-style head. I then punched and drifted the eye. Everything else was ground to shape, as it's very tricky to forge in the delicate fullers on a small hammer like this. It is heat treated, but tempered back to be fairly soft on the face to allow for better gripping of the chasing tool shanks. I turned the handle from apple wood, the wedges are jatoba. Shellac and renaissance wax finish.

My neighbor stopped by with a 5' section of railroad track today. After he helped move it onto my property, he asked for a knife in exchange... couldn't really refuse, so I made a this quick spike knife. It has a piece of an old file forge-welded on for the cutting edge. Etched to show the transition from spike to file.

I recently finished this pattern-welded integral bolster chef knife, can't wait to start using it. I started with 8 layers of 1080 and 15n20 steel, forge welded them together, twisted the whole mess as much as I could, then forged to a knife-ish shape before grinding. I did the heat treatment in the forge, quenching in preheated canola oil and tempering in my kitchen oven. My logo is electro-etched on there and then gold plated to look fancy. The handle is cocobolo with a mosaic pin and copper spacer.

I got to see a lot of these in person a couple weeks back, very nice work. Matt is a great demonstrator too.

Hah, love the railroad spikes. Looks like it will work fine.

My kanna blade made from cable and an old file is coming along. The pattern is showing up post-quench:

I love the tentacle. Could you share more information about how it was forged?

Making a small wood plane blade from several pieces of cable and an old file. Here is the scarf before the final forge weld:

I used the punch dies in my guillotine tool for the first time yesterday, they work great. I made a handled hammer eye punch (punches making punches, kind of redundant). Also made an eye drift, forge-welded a hammer together (mild body with high carbon faces), and tried making another eye punch out of a RR spike but it kind of failed. This punch is made from flea market mystery steel, so who knows how well it will hold up. From previous forgings with it, I think it's maybe a lower or mid carbon steel. It does seem to harden in water, but not oil. Tooling I've made with it before has been a bit soft, so we'll see.

I've done a few pattern welds, and I only have hand hammers. It can be done, but is an absolute bear to draw out when over 1" diameter... I would keep it 3/4 and below in the cross section. I like bandsaw/strapping damascus, I do it by first grinding the set off the teeth and grinding the black coating off the strapping. I did a fluxless weld on it with my latest billet and it worked well.

I've also wondered if this is necessary. Theoretically, if the forge weld was done properly there should be no need for this step. Plus, it might introduce open pockets inside the steel.

The photo links are not working, could you re-upload them somewhere?

I've been using these hammers pretty much exclusively on my recent projects and they work far better than my ebay specials. I seem to get fewer glancing blows that put big dings into the work, and I like the balance and feel of the handles a lot. But I think it was good that I used the ebay hammers for a few years to get my hammer control down before springing for these. Here are two projects I made with these hammers: A cable knife, still in progress: Some snake candle holders from railroad spikes:

I tried to forge the peen but it pretty much laughed at my feeble attempts to move that much steel. I got it part of the way then ground the rest. Probably more grinding than forging by the end.

We'll have to see I guess. Both metals have similar carbon contents and other alloying elements, and should be at about the same rockwell.

Thanks a lot. The head is almost exactly 1 lb. Total with the handle it weights 1.2 lbs.

A 1 lb pattern-welded cross peen hammer I forged from 1080 and 15n20 steel. The eye was hot punched instead of drilled/milled. I gold plated my logo, though it got a bit messed up in the acid etch. The handle is ash with bajan mahogany pieces laminated on for extra thickness.

It's Jackpine forge, you can find them on facebook

Looks great. Nice clean plunges and sanding. Love the walnut too. How are you getting such an even hand sand finish?

I like this knife a lot, the thicker layer in the center looks great. Did you have problems with the brass delaminating from the handle after epoxying? That always seems to happen to me, can't get anything to stick brass to wood properly. What epoxy are you using?

Do side drafts have a fan inside? Looks like some good use of scrap.

Thanks a lot, it ended up pretty unique. Chain is a to work with, though. The upper billet was an earlier attempt, with chain on both sides of a 1080 bar to make a san mai billet. Unfortunately, I tried to do a fluxless weld which did not work at all... it basically fell apart. I did make one ugly little knife from about 2 inches of it that pseudo-welded (the small knife in the rough ground photo above). Here is a pic of it finished, I'm not too happy with the result:

I received this great pair of forging hammers today. 2.5 lb cross and straight peins out of 1045 steel. They look and feel amazing, can't wait to try them tomorrow.