Donal Harris

I am likely wrong, but I think Frosty meant cut off a piece of the same round stock you are making the head from and tack weld it to the side of your hammer blank. Then you no longer need worry about it rolling.

I primarily use my swage block as an anvil light enough to carry into the garage in the winter for working on copper. The only time I’ve ever used it for something like its intended use was when making a couple of bells from oilfield pipe. It would probably be more useful if it didn’t have the shovel form taking up quite a lot of space on one side. A much more useful swage block would seem to be one that has at least one square hole about the same size as my anvil’s Hardy hole. Many videos show someone hammering the end of the Hardy tool into the hole when fitting them. My anvil is only 97 or so pounds. I have always been worried I would break the heel off. Mouse holes have thick heels, but still. Another useful thing my SCABA swage block cannot be used for is disrupting the ends of round or square stock lengthwise. Yet another thing of no use to a bladesmith. :-) I’ve never punched a hole in anything round that was so thick, but have seen it done in videos with a single smith doing it on an anvil with no swage tools of any kind. Just drill holes to help you punch straight.

If you want to try a swage block, you can borrow mine. I never cleaned up all the mold lines, but it would let you find out if you even want one.

Do you have one of the SCABA swage blocks or a v swage Hardy tool? Korney put the large bolt he helped me punch and drift in a v swage Hardy tool. He held the punch. I whacked it with a sledge until the slug came out.

I found another thread here about this type of anvil. It was called a “pig”. There are actually several. It seems to be a French style. This is one from from a guy in Argentina. Not the same maker, but certainly the same style. That hole in the side does seem to be for the plug to fall through. gh.

Sweet!

This is the cover of our latest newsletter. Pretty cool. The piece was made by Russell Bartling. It will go in the gate SCABA makes each year. Standardized rings are passed out to anyone who wishes to craft something for the gate. This was his contribution. Very cool I think, and sums up the year.

I will text him and see if he can send me a picture of it. Or maybe Chris can get a picture the next time he is there.

Korney’s punch does all that plus punch the iris at the same time.

I will see if I can take a picture of Korney’s punch the next time I need coal. He said he had to make something like three tools, just to make the tool. He told me I should do just as Latticino suggested. He also said the punch doesn’t quite work as easily as he thought it might. I expect a Dremel would be hard to use for this unless one had rigged up something to mount and use it something like a mini-milling machine.

Thanks. I will look for the book. It will be a year or two before I build it. It has to be paid for with 100% disposable money that I have managed to not dispose of. Although I downloaded an app called RobinHood that is helping with that. It is a trading app which allows you to open an account with zero money. The costs to trade are minimal. I through a thousand at it just to see how well I could do. Pretty well it turned out, but then even a pigeon pecking at a list could do well after the crazy COVID sell off. Donal

You can’t see the profile well. I should have taken a picture prior to using it. I didn’t do a good job of hit, cool, hit, cool. It softened. To set the profile I placed two hex nuts edge to edge. I don’t have a welder at home and didn’t feel like driving the 60 miles or so to my Dad’s to use his. I just held them together with my fingers and used it as a gauge. I would file a bit and then see how far off it was and file again. The tip edge was just eyeballed to maybe 45. This was a piece of tie rod. I plan to try again with coil spring. I’ve told the owner of Everything Welding & Safety he should consider stocking a few tool steel blanks. People like me who don’t like shopping online or driving into the city would happily pay two to three times market price just for the convenience. That was the very first time I ever punched a hole through anything. I got it off-center and slightly crooked, but I was happy with it. I was totally surprised it actually worked.

That V on the end works great for thicker stock, but not so great with thinner like 10 or 12 gauge. What profile is best for those?

My skills are rusty, but better than most. I can use mig or arc welders. No tig. I welded for my dad and father in law before and after school from 14 till I left for the Army building gas tanks, utility trailers and such. But that was almost 40 years ago. Most of the welding on my pot was done by me. Dad did most of the cutting. My cuts looked like I was trying to make a saw. His were dead, solid straight. Not bad for a guy pushing 80. Donal

I first tried a Dremmel tool. What I resulted with was something that vaguely resembled my own very crude attempt at drawing a wolf. Looked like something a mother would say “Oh how precious! Let me glue a magnet to that and put it on the fridge door with your cute T-Rex eating a cave man.”

Yes. Upset. I’m a newb. Very much a newb. But I listen well to those who know. Especially those who can tell me how to build one that is safer, because they have already been there and done that when building presses which ended up being unsafe at any speed. My real reason for wanting a press is concern about power hammer noise in the neighborhood. We are sort of spread out, but this is still not a rural area. Thanks. Donal Harris

First: Several months back, I saw where someone had saved the photos and reposted them someplace on iforgeiron. I cannot now find it. Anyone know where they are Second: it is a very poor drawing, but, does anyone know how I might make this punch? It doesn’t look like it, but it is an eye with an iris and pupil. The white areas are depressions and the red areas are not. Our past SCABA president has such a punch. I suppose I might could ask if he is up for a lesson. When I asked him once, he said he had to make something like three different tools to make the eye punch tool. Sorry for the poor drawing, but it is hard to draw with our thumbs on a phone. Donal Harris.

Has anyone yet put together a plan for a hydraulic press which is easy to build and safe to use, meaning the thing is not going to experience spontaneous rapid disassembly? I would like to use it to disrupt an 8” length of 1.5” until it is 2.5” in diameter. Or draw out 2” stock until it as the desired thickness Perhaps a book I could search for and find?

How difficult would it be to convert my saw to one that cuts wood and mild steel? Evidently when new, you could purchase an option to make your saw able to cut both wood and steel. What parts would I need to find? The photo is of a gearbox from a wood/metal saw.

What do you think you would do differently to make it better?

What scales will you use?

JHCC, did you transfer the design to the steel first? I forget his name, but he has a post on how to do this and get good results. Since you aren’t happy with it, I expect you will do it over. I look forward to seeing it if you do.

I used 1/2” which equates to something like 12.7 mm. There appear to be several steel fabrication shops in São Paulo. Call them all until you find one willing to let you pick from their scrap pile. If they won’t, remind them you were planning to pay 4-5 x the current scrap price. If that won’t work, see if they will let you pick through their pile for free if you sweep out their shop. Actually if you tell them you are looking for steel plate to make an forge so you can begin blacksmithing, they may just let you have anything you want. As for how thick? 3/8” is about as low as I would go. But I really don’t know the thinnest which will hold up. I went with 1/2” because it was just what I had. At first I thought it was 3/8” by eyeballing it, but this afternoon I took a tape to some of the left over bits and it is 1/2”. Maybe some of the others might know the minimum thickness or optimum thickness. While it will not melt, it does rust quickly and flake away.

I am pretty sure my wife would have a stroke if she came in found I had installed a hand forged, door shelf thingy inside of our fridge. You really need to keep that woman.

No. Slept till almost noon. Will try next week. I really don’t know what kind of steel that piece I gave you is. That slice we took with Korney’s saw wasn’t the first. I had done one at a friends shop a few months prior to that. It took just as long to cut using his saw, and just as with Korney’s, almost took out the saw. I tried hardening that first slice using oil. It didn’t. To harden it I had to use water. Forging it was not easy and it cracked, but I attributed that to me not being used to forging anything other than mild steel or something like a tie rod. I was hitting it too cold. I don’t remember how we hardened the slice we took at Korney’s. I believe it was just water in a slack tub. That slice was a bit too thick and not long enough to break the way we were trying to break it. All we really were able to do was just knock a chip off of it. That slice is the one which caused me to wonder if it were possible to identify steel by density. There is a post about it somewhere. I still intend to see if I can find an engineering student at OU who is willing to test it in one of their labs.