Jump to content
I Forge Iron

duckrunner

Members
  • Posts

    28
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by duckrunner

  1. Haha good question, Thomas, I don't see my blood line going any farther than me. Pretty convinced it's for the good of humanity... But yes, it is a little low for me. My cousin built it to fit him and he's got a little longer reach than I do for being the same height as I am. Picked up an old 50# anvil for $40 from an old farmer so I'm gonna go cut myself a stump and get it at the right height for me.
  2. Yeah I know I need to work on that and I noticed it on that drop point and have been working more on hammer control and not torquing the hammer on the way down. I actually hit a little more on the top edge than anything. It's not going to be an abused knife at all so I'm not worried about the tip breaking. Mostly use it for cutting bale twine, opening boxes, that kind of stuff... No chopping, prying or anything crazy like that.
  3. Been hard at it fiddling around with the forge again... I think I'm on the right track here. I'm gonna need more leaf springs at this rate. 4 1/2" blade seax, carved walnut handle, full tang I finished up this morning. 3 1/2" drop point, leaving the forge marks in but took it to 1,000 grit to still shine. Casting the brass guard tomorrow, scales for the handle should be in early this week. 6" Bowie I started today. Only stock removal was cutting the tang out. Plan on leaving the forge marks in it except the edge. Getting a steel guard on this one I think. I sold my Jeep today, I'm debating whether I need to catch up on bills or go get one of those fancy store bought anvils with that money haha. I'm having way too much fun with this knife thing!
  4. Stayed home sick from work. So naturally after a nap, half a bottle of DayQuil and some emergen-c I wandered out to the shop... Did some handle work, made a display stand and welded up a new pistol target. Got a feeling I'm not done fiddling around out there.
  5. Hahaha oh no we've got a great relationship, but for some stupid reason I moved back to where I grew up when I should be out there with him... I don't know if "regular" is the word I'd use to describe him, though.
  6. Thank you! I melted down casings from the last time my dad and I shot guns together to make the guard. He lives 15 hours away so I don't see him much anymore. Put a lot of thought and time into making him something nice yet functional. Really gonna be upset if he never even uses it as a knife lol
  7. I think I'm funny, but not in an appropriate way.. people don't like taking me into public. So I'll keep my dark sense of humor off the family forums. Thanks for the epoxy tip! I figured the longer cure stuff would be stronger, but I had some of the 6 minute stuff from anothet project. Should've just left it in the drawer... Oh well, lesson learned! I appreciate the compliments, criticism and guidance. You guys ain't all that bad, you know that?
  8. My Kalamazoo belt sander came in yesterday so no more having to do the grinding and whatnot with my angle grinder. Dispite having a nice sander I still didn't get the handle how I wanted it. Some idiot put their guard on backwards with quick set epoxy on everything and it really screwed me up. Oh well, made due and finished this one tonight. Next one will be better, I hope. Through some horse trading I scored a basically endless supply of nice wood through a friend's dad who makes custom furniture and cabinets... He also has an anvil I can borrow til I can find one of my own. So, this weekend should be fun!
  9. True, but my roommate can hear this I beam ring in the house when I'm out forging and that's 100 yards away. I'm thinking something a little more solid will help in more than one aspect.
  10. I shaped the head of my hammer and it helped immensely! Took all the hard edges off one side and left it mostly flat, pretty much rounded off the other side. It's amazing how much easier those little changes made in the work. Can't wait to get my hands on an actual anvil and see how much that helps!
  11. Haha actually the truck was in very good shape until someone backed a skid loader into it. I don't think it had more than 10k miles on it. Was just used to haul hay bails it's whole life. Doubt it even spent any time on a paved road. There was obviously some surface rust on the springs, but 30 seconds with a sander and it was good and clean. No cracks in the portion of the spring I have cut up that I can see yet anyways.
  12. Thanks JHCC! The hidden tang knife started it's life as a leaf spring from a 76 dodge pickup. Curious to see how it holds up!
  13. I've played around a bit more since the last posts, made a couple more blades and finished my second one completely. Working on a handle for my third knife I'm giving to my dad for his birthday tomorrow, and I think it's turning out very nice. I cast the brass myself for the guard, boy what a learning experience that was lol. Since this picture I've finished the brass guard, stamped it and buffed it. Just don't have pictures of that yet. I also made a small blade for a friend from a 12mm ratchet wrench and a file*. ***Removing the chrome from the wrench and forging outside since it was so nice here on Sunday*** Frosty, I do like jokes I'm just not very funny lol
  14. Haha man, didn't catch that when I reread it before posting, thought I cleaned it up. My bad!
  15. I dunno, seems to work pretty good to me! If you don't mind me asking, what do you see wrong? I took the instructions from another site, wish I could remember which one, though.
  16. Nothing wrong with a good butt chewing, I should have known better than to leave out the PPE disclaimer. I spent four years in the Marines so keep on with the xxxx chewings as you see fit, I've got a thick hide on me lol. Hopefully this will be the last time needed, though. Wrong, here is another chewing, Watch the language, we are serious about th ToS G rated family friendly topics and language.
  17. I'm always open to learning something new from other people. Sorry if anyone had an aneurism because of my post. Steve, thanks for the link!
  18. I was asked what was gonna happen when the county finally tells me to clean the junk up. My response "it's art, not junk."
  19. Hmmmmm, well I've only got 4 more acres not covered in junk, house and garage but I bet I could have it down to 3 acres after piling up every non-galvinized spring i can come up with!
  20. That is awesome... Yep, next set of commercial springs I do I'm keeping the old ones! My only worry is when these springs break it's because they're structurally worn out inside and fatigued. Is that going to be an issue with the final product or will the forging kind of fix it?
  21. Haha you know, that's awesome info! I didn't even think of using old springs! I have tons of them in the dumpsters at the shop. Anybody around Minnesota needs spring steel, I have an endless supply apparently lol
  22. Thanks for the comments and concerns guys, great feedback! I do know how terrible it sounds, I do know a decent bit on metallurgy and safety, though. I was a welder, went to school for it and a lot of what was covered was on safety and whatnot. My shop is very well ventilated and respirator was worn. A guy I used to work with made knives from wrenches and would leave the chrome on where the handle was going to be and filled me in. Might not sit well with you guys, but I'm confident I did well enough. Maybe I'm missing something though... The first blade is completely unusable, just gonna sit on the shelf so years from now I can look back at it and see the progress. The second blade is actually quite comfortable in MY hands, may not be to others... We'll see how it ends up after epoxy sets and I finish the handle... Again, thanks for the comments and concerns. Look forward to learning and growing from here! Here's an easier to see picture of the profile just after heat treat. It's not as curved as the other picture makes it look.. like I said, comfortable in my hands. We'll see how it ends up when the handle is 100%
  23. New to smithing, actually just fired up my first forge on Sunday and have two knives, ok one and a half knives made. Gotta say, I'm hooked... First one, rushed through and had 0 idea what I was doing but got a decent blade shape with an absolutely terrible handle, but that's ok. My second one went a little better. Kind of knew what to expect, got a better hang of how the metal moves, finessed a little more instead of smashing the hammer down like Thor. Little upset I told my buddy it would be for him, I think it turned out really cool! They're both made from an old CV breaker bar and I left the chrome on the second one until after forging. Wire wheeled it off and got this awesome pitted patina look to it. Still gotta get my handle finished up, but the blade itself is all done and I couldn't be happier!
  24. So this is my first time building a forge, did a ton of research and lurked on here quite a bit and here's what I came up with. I call him Gene. The body is an old air tank (9"wX16"l) I had buried in my camping gear. All the rest is from various other projects and random crap I've had laying around, minus the ceramic wool, a couple of the burner fittings and refractory I just got in tonight. 2" of whatever brand ceramic wool the pottery supply store had in Minneapolis coated with a 3000° refractory cement that's currently curing. Also picked up a 2,800° fire brick from the pottery store I'm going to cut in half for flooring in the forge. Burner is a 3/4" reil design with a flap on top to control air flow, regulator came off a deep frier my roommate has... So I'm gonna need to get my own regulator before he goes to fry a turkey next Thanksgiving... I built this so I can forge small stuff, mostly knives and whatnot but also be able to stand it vertical so I can melt down brass to use for guards on said knives. I know the burner burns, just hope it all works for actual forging! Any input, criticism and ideas are very welcome and appreciated! Few random pics through the build process...
×
×
  • Create New...