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3/8" 1018 HR X 7.5" long.

For some reason this thread keeps calling my attention.. Today it dawned on me what the difference is when I was welding some 7/16 round 1018 CR to some A36.. At first I was frustrated.. Though the materials were completely clean and I could see clean/clear steel under the flux they would not weld at the temp I usually weld 1018 at all day.. So I had to up the temp on the A36 and it welded just fine.. So, while it was an Epiphany moment in the essence of this topic/thread it also made me realize that probably the largest part about not being a Newbie is the ability to figure out a problem in a timely fashion to get the job done.. When I had first started and even for the first few years I would have given up that day after mashing 5 or 6 parts and came back to it, time and time again until it worked.. (no YOUtube back then) So instead of taking weeks it only took about 15minutes extra to figure it out.. Oh, and instead of going for the tack and it not welding right away, I used to mash it instead of figuring out what was wrong and why it didn't stick.. I used to mash the hell out of a bad forge weld tack.. LOL..

Your EVO Tools..

The cycle times are very slow.. If you wanted to modify it so there was another power pack to increase cycle times it would work.. I have an air powered 50ton unit and while it is great for pressing stuff as a forging device it's just way to slow.. Now If I had my power pack hooked up it would be fast enough..

True dat..

A personal friend who had watched me work for years stopped by a few years back.. I was in the middle of working on something and the person said " I've been watching for years and You keep asking if I want to try it but have always refused because I didn't want to look foolish, but now no one is around would you mind if I try it"? I said sure.. Finished up what I was doing.. and I made a couple of nails explaining as I went along.. The person set about to make the nail.. It went very well.. As the person finished up and things were being put away I was given a hug then told " Now I can see why you are so happy all the time. You get to take your anger out on the metal"!!!! For me 2 things have come to pass which freed me up.. One of the biggest ones and the reason I quite professional smithing was I was dependent on doing quality work to my standards as a starving artist. While I was making ok money and had a new job or order every week I used to work my butt off to make the 60.00 per hour I charged back in the late 80's and 90's.. This lead to not feeling appreciated for the skill set I had acquired over a 20+ year learning curve (self taught) and each contract it was a hassle to get the 60 per hour (back then it seemed like good money but when you figured in expenses, insurances, etc, etc.. it was a struggle.. Every job was quoted so If I came in under time I made extra money and if over time I loss money per hour.. I learned to work very quickly and this made it look easy.. Anyhow, getting off track. So, once I no longer worked full time as a blacksmith and started making a decent pay check elsewhere it freed me up to once again explore blacksmithing and have passion for it the way I did when I was 10.. Only now I'm old as fart and with working hard physically for the last 40 years I have my aches and pains. Though still pretty good.. And 2.. I feel as though now I have something to contribute and don't need to be compensated.. The ability to give is what I would call it.. ( back when I was coming up, any of the local blacksmithing businesses would stop working as soon as you would walk in the door).. Literally would walk away from the forge.. Trade secrets.. While it doesn't really address the title of this thread.. I think more and more the line between beginner, advanced can be very blurry.. professional not so much, as I would consider a professional making a paycheck and having a full time shop.. I also think as a professional the giving back process is more difficult because of the time constraints.. Where being a beginner or advanced there seems to be more time to question, research, and share results.. Also as a professional the standards of what is being shared has to be to the 999999999''sssss.. (nines) or else we feel it's not worth sharing.. IE (proud moments).. The videos I have been making lately I leave the bloopers and blunders in.. Something I would have never dreamed of 15 or 20 years ago because it wasn't considered professional, though it happens to everyone.. Great job on the tools by the way..

Thanks for the clarification.. I was just posting what I had read some 30+ years ago.. Nice to have updated info.. Makes sense though since who would straighten an eye once punched.. Not eye..

It can be a pretty good question in the right context.. I was a professional smith (making a living at it for 8 years +).. I stopped working as a smith because I had writers block.. I was still doing small jobs for myself but had stopped doing anything that was paying job for 3 years.. I then started to pick up work again on a reluctant nature.. It was only 3 years ago that I started to get more serious again.. In the 10years that I took off and moved away from the blacksmith scene there had been a lot of changes, (youtube, facebook, google+, but youtube first and foremost).. The internet has opened doors for the learning of blacksmithing which I had never dreamed.. Anyhow, While my brain has forgotten more than I know about blacksmithing now, and I also know how to make just about anything as I was a trade blacksmith vs artist blacksmith.. Never one for art.. vs useable items.. Anyhow, It was suggested I might be asked to judge a competition on blacksmithing.. Beginner, Advanced and professional.. I had to turn down even the suggestion of it as unless I can do it I'm not one to judge it.. Though I might possess all the steps and knowledge and can still swing a hammer.. In my mind I am a beginner of sorts... Until I can get back up to speed with both thought and execution of technique I am a beginner.. I figure it will take a year to get things back in line but the quality of work now finish wise is pretty outstanding and with this major resurgence there are a lot of people turning out quality work.. My work now is sloppy, and slower.. Both qualities of which I am not fond of.. So, a beginner..

Congrats on getting through.. Sizable stock for a beginner.. FYI,, Hand hammers (all of them) had straight eyes and they actually had ears welded to the inside of the eye... These thin strips were then nailed through holes onto the wooden handle thus secured the handle to the head.. The story goes a Man named David Maydole was the first person to use an oval eye that was tapered top and bottom and side to side, Whether that is true or not I don't know.. I can tell you that ideally a hammers eye does not need to be drifted once punched large enough if punched from both sides with a round punch.. Just forge back in the sides and it will create an oval eye both in length and from top to bottom... The slotting punch style of Brazeal minimizes this eye egging out of the sides as you are really slotting it vs a round punch.. It's a modified slotting punch.. This allows for enough spacing to get a drift in to both drift the eye and forge the sides of the hammer.. Also, if you are working by yourself the Brazeal style rounding hammer can be a lot of work by yourself.. Also FYI.. Most top tools or handled punches in a vintage blacksmith shop were left overs from Wagon repairs.. the top tools were left with straight sides so as the handles wore you would just stick them in farther.. Mistaken hit, snapped a handle big deal just grab a spoke out of the burn pile and good to go.. Anyhow, so far looking good.. Have you figured out what your favorite hammer weight is yet?

Well since we are all over the place on this one.. Let me add.. Metal does care. Well it depends on what kind of metal.. HSS don't like sulfur or phosphorus when being heated in a coal forge. As for a coal forge.. It has 3 zones based on how much air is being pumped in, These 3 different zones change within the fire depth as the amount of air goes up or down. Unless the fire is high enough that nearly all the O2 is burnt up before it can find the steel/alloys being heated.. Carbonizing. When I have the Bituminous fire setup for forge welding and I'm in the groove the 1018, A36, can be a nice white color and won't throw sparks until it is removed from the fire.. Then it will start to sparkle as if it is over heated.. Because the steel is in a neutral atmospere it won't give off the carbon atoms till it has more oxygen... So with that being said.. Pretty much any carbon fuel source can have Decarb, neutral or Carbonizing flame.. A/O torch, Gas forge (with choke), coal forge, wood forge, oil forge.. It just depends on the air to fuel ratio.. Do the steels care.. Heck yah.. Some do, most do.. For most applications I would agree that I think people care and engineers care even more.. There are so many variables when forging iron/steel by hand that if it was just one way or the other we as humans would have never made it out of the pond.. How many of us on here actually agree there is a right or wrong way to forge something.. I mean excluding rookie mistakes or forging errors all together.. The whole process of war and making better weapons has driven from bog iron to carbonized wrought irons. to mass produced super alloys.. Ok well 4140's.. The forging process either by hand or by machine has stayed consistent for 1000's of years.. When I say consistent I'm saying that it's still done in air.. (barring super alloys) Anyhow. the point of external vs internal temperature was a great one.. Induction heating in a neutral environment would be pretty cool as there could be a vacuum like in space and it wouldn't matter. Or would it???? Thanks.. Just taking up space..

If you are doing one size rod.. all you need is 1 die with 3 stations (dies sunk) on it.. One for roughout, 2nd for punch and 3rd for flash.. You could get away with a 2 station die but you would need to figure out proper flow dynamics to do this and it would mean a larger hammer to do more work at one blow.. How much money does the company have to invest in new tooling? A 3 station die on a large enough drop hammer would take less then a minute. 3 Hits and it would be finished.. Maybe 5 seconds total per end.. One of the problems with this kind of operation is the extra investment in tooling, furnaces, and man power.. What are the cycle times from start to finish now? What size are the bars? Key factor missing.. There is no way to hand forge for production as fast as closed dies..

For high performance sway bars most are hollow tube with heim joints on the ends or TIG welded assemblies. If your are looking because you have broken one.. Just go to the scrappers and pull one.. Ideally we all need more information to give you the best information..

There are many excellent how to's on the subject.. As pointed out there are lots of things you can make without the use of tongs, but more power to you in making them.. My first pair of tongs was made from 3/4" stock and it took me foreva and a day.. The jaw cracked because of a cold shut.. But it was a step in the right direction..

Here in the North East its pretty slim pickings unless you are near a Manufacturer, or weld shop that does volume work.. Scrap now goes for what every they can charge because there really isn't my industry now and certianly not much good stuff going to scrap.. If you go to a metal supplier/metal dealer you might be able to get cutoffs for decent money..

Need to be careful with any used Springs that have been pulled off a vehicle/trailer as most have micro cracks.. If you heat it to orange and watch it the cracks will start showing up as darker lines..

That was a great deal.. Congrats.. I have a Hardie beak, hot chisel, and several punches and 2 handled punches made from jack hammer bits.. Great steel to work with. One of the best things about being a blacksmith and having an understanding about steels is the ability to figure out how to use a steel suitably for a certain kind of use.. ( in the old days every steel was mystery steel) A file if hardened and tempered properly can be made into,, A knife, draw knife, punch, hammer, chisel, Hot chisel, bolt header, spring, frizzen, etc, etc... Each item will need a different temper and each could use a different quench media if you really want to maximize use.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's where I sound like a complete jerk: I always do but thats besides the point.. " Go buy your steel so you know what it is" is perfect if you need a consistent, easy, by the book process with instruction written out for you.. Especially if you have salt bath's, Heat treat ovens.. etc, etc.. If you are needing a heat resistant steel for deep hot punching or are doing reselling like a knife maker, or selling tooling, " Then go buy the material as this will expedite the process and you can guarantee a certain result consistently offering a product with the qualities you require." I know many production guys who follow the directions by the letter and end up with a very decent product.. Then I know a few guys who go the extra mile and still test each batch of steel they get so they know for a fact that this batch can be tempered a little harder or softer and it will hold a better edge.. Jerk hat off: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I use mystery metal all the time for tools.. I have 2 Farrier hammers that got used daily with thousand of nails driven, and clips knocked back that are still in excellent shape, and will last 2, 3 or 4 more generations made from mystery metal, I also have dedicated material H13, 4140, D2, A2 and HSS, and 5160.. But for 95% of my tools they are all mystery metal.. If you sample and test enough materials it only takes a few minutes longer to sample it to figure out what the material needs for heat treat, what hardening media and then figure out the correct temper.. Mind you I'm old school and poor as dirt when learning the trade, so if I need a punch I grab a coil spring uncoil it and 15minutes later I have a punch.. to everyone's Horror I also don't have a big tub of oil in the shop so harden everything in water, yup I harden oil hardening steel in water.. I'll even harden 4140 in water depending on cross section and required use.. (video on "Nail header making," was hardened in water).. In 38 years of working this way I've had maybe 3 hot punches that have crumpled from water cracks.. I also have cold chisels designed for special purposes out of 1095 hardened in water with no temper at all.. "I use them for cutting hinge joints and to my dismay a Blacksmith friend came over while I wasn't in the shop and broke 2 of them trying to use them like regular cold chisels.. He looked at me and said they were defective.. LOL.. I was like Dude, you broke my hinge chisels.. (Hinge chisels the guy retorted) .They had very long tapers with very thin cutting edges.. Anyhow.. Learning to figure out what a material is good for by testing has always been a blacksmiths gift.. If used properly it can offer you many tooling options.. And while a lot of engineers will argue the point that this steel is no good for this and you should use this instead, blah, blah, blah.. This because they are correct.. For the most part since the steel would have been tested to offer advantages here and not so much there.. I used to love the old flyers on different steel alloy types.. It would show a good, better and best with the steels listed and then have: Hammering, forming, forging, cold work, etc, etc.. Most the steels would overlap, but there would be that one "Best for" under each steel.. How many production facilities would carry all the different steels for each "Best for".... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just remember you have to understand the process of Heat treating to get to a desired result or be willing to have a lot of failures and maybe even some injuries as hitting a file with a hammer is not recommended... any hardened material can have the potential to explode when hit and create injury you or on lookers if not taken care of properly so PPG is essential.. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are a newbie find some guidance, local guild, meet or group.. ABANA is a great resource to find local chapters.. But then again if you are a newbie working 1.125 high carbon steel is not going to be fun anyhow.. I can remember when working 3/4" Sq 1018HR stock during tong making was nearly impossible..... As a blacksmith you have a whole world that is open to you... The correct forging steps, hardening and heat treating. tools, hardware, Wrought iron, low, medium, high carbon steels, alloy steels, Corten, Aluminum, bronze, copper, The only limits are what you place on it..

You can also gas weld them.. Make a mandrel (straight rod with one side ground flat..Hold this in a vise.. Put all the rings on with a slight gap between them. with the gap over the flat. start at one end and just zip along adding filler when needed.. You can also do it with tig this way and if the tig doesn't go low enough you can increase weld speed moving from one ring to the other in a shorter time.. the heat from the previous ring will carry over to the next one.. Also since you can start your tig torch on the 3/4" round stock or 5/8" you won't have as much arc blow or amperage spike when you start off.. Frugal is good.. It's what keeps me in really cool stuff..

By you. or auction house?

Nice finds.. Did you get them from the same Farrier?

funny how a good majority of blacksmiths turned to Auto repair.. Even back before major manufacturing took off in the USA, England is the one I know about mostly. They were shipping hardware to the Colonies that was being mass produced by hand in large blacksmithing shops.. The Norfolk latch is one such export..

Move your forge welds to the ends of the links vs the middle.. Even if welded with the utmost care the welded area will fail..

I can see what you are saying and agree.. There is an expression: " Change with the times or die" Meaning there is a constant evolution going on around us, adapt to it.. As gas welding and then Electric welding became available most smiths couldn't wait to get one of these contraptions into the shop.. Talk about a great labor and time saver.. swage blocks, tire shrinkers became door stops.. I've always gravitated towards old technologies.. Kniting, pottery, blacksmithing, horse shoeing,, LOL.. Steam engines.. Hand work vs electric. I'd rather use a hand tool vs electric anyday. Funny, HA, Ha.. I'm not exactly sure why Wrought iron keeps coming up as a subject.. I was grooving on the hammer work and weld joints... I actually thought people would be more interested in springs and axles in this thread as they are usually high carbon.. The Nitro Express gun makers H&H would covet buggy springs for there Damascus gun barrels because of how nicely they would weld, twist.. etc, etc.. Yes, even this thread.. I am not the best conversationalist and being dyslexic makes it even worse..

Nice area over there.. There used to be some good pickings for scrap at the old Steven's farm until they made it into and horse farm... never did find out where they buried all the scrap.. The goberment won't ever concede to the idiocy about biking in the watershed lands.. if you consider all the logging they do (heavy equipment) i have pictures showing the oil stains, how the main roads dump all the salt and road/car grime into the water from the highways, and with 2 dumps (one vintage) and one just getting ready to be capped right near the water intake that supplies Boston. It's mind boggling to think they are concerned with MTBing and oil contamination, as it has a smaller foot print per use vs a hiker/person walking..

You did very well.. That is in great shape.. congrats.. Those firepots are my favorites..

Thats pretty awesome.. I used to get asked all the time what was the hardest thing to make.. My very serious answer was/is.. It's not that one thing is harder to make than another.. It only takes longer to make.. I find all things take the same level of skill.. It may take 12 hrs instead of 2.. While it is possible to make things today with great skill.. Making 8, 15, 20, 200 and having them look the same takes great skill especially on custom orders vs stocking list items. It takes me about 1.5hrs to make a random thumblatch complete with back group and nails to make 1 latch.. it takes me about 2hrs-2.5hrs per latch when I have to make more than 5.. Nope.. Off limits.. It gets very complicated in there since I'm a MTB'r.. Mind you if I see a rouge bar hanging around it's free game, but the most I have ever found there worth taking was a leaf spring broken off a truck on one of the roads.. Simply put it's not worth the trouble if you get caught..