Bonnskij

Trying my hand on a bit more forge welding this evening. Mild steel body and half the rasp I picked up at the scrapyard. I don't know how good the weld is yet. Feels fairly solid, but there's at least one small gap behind the insert. Bit more forging and grinding to shape and I'll see how it holds up. Definitely should have measured the rasp bit though. Got it wedged inside the forge, so the forging got a bit problematic :/

Thomas: Well that's quite fascinating. Especially the vacuum welding does my head in. My local library doesn't seem to have the book on solid phase welding of metals, but one of the branches of the university library does. I'll have to see if I can borrow the copy. I actually thought I'd have to dig up my backyard and fill the hole with charcoal again to have a shot at succeeding at forge welding. Welshj: Thank you for that! Lucky I'm not personally a huge fan of damscus, (With notable exceptions) so no 100 layers for me! Frosty: Good enough for me. I'll still try making it pretty though! I'd like to try my hand on that steeled wrought chisel now. And I'd say it's one of a soldiers job to break things. Unintentionally or otherwise. Here's my workstation view from more than a decade past: I was fairly good at breaking things. Though mostly trees, and mostly unintentionally.

Thanks Frosty! Yes I could probably have cleaned it up a bit, but yep I might just hang this on my shed wall without further ado. I might even frame it So would the key to a successful weld be both a function of heat and force applied? I remember a MythBusters episode where they welded two steel plates together at room temperature using high explosives. I'm assuming that would be the same concept? Forging at red heat I really didn't think possible by hand though. That is really impressive! I did a lot of research beforehand to give myself the best odds with the equipment I had at hand. It seems it paid off. Thanks again. I'll be aiming to make my next forge welding project my prettiest work to date (admittedly not a terribly high bar ).

Alright. I know this isn't a great achievement for most of the smiths on here, but I am super proud. This is my first attempt at a forge weld. And my first successful forge weld! I don't know how good it is, I turned the forge off about two minutes ago, but it has definitely welded. It is a piece of w2 that I attached to some mild steel with some steel wire. I know it looks like rubbish. It was just an experiment to see if my el cheapo gas forge could do it. From all I had heard I really didn't think it was possible to forge weld in it, but there we go. Definitely more confident to take on the steeled chisel and steeled hawk projects that I've been wanting to do now!

I started out doing them step by step at the same time, and towards the end decided to do the dressing of the anvil and go back to refining a couple of bits on one part, getting it close to finish and then making the other one a copy of the finished one. That might have been a mistake. In any case, it's been good practice and good fun. I'm investing a lot less time in these little blacksmithing projects than the knifesmithing projects so far, so I'll definitely keep it up. I'm making this set out of 16mm square stock and that certainly makes for eh... Chunky nutcrackers. Might try to make the next set out of 12mm stock, and then repeat the process a few times to get it down and get a good collection of Christmas presents ready.

Well I've started my nutcracker project. Clearly forging two exactly equal pieces is not my strong suit. I think I'm alright with a file though, so hopefully that will make up for it in the end. Oh. And I also dressed the side of my sledge-anvil. Much easier to do offsets now.

That's probably a good idea. Ausfire is pretty close by, though probably just outside the my current bubble of travel restrictions at the moment. Modern technology takes care of that problem though.

I wish I had a whole tire. I only have three pieces totalling about a kilo or so. Still big enough pieces for any size chisel bar framing or turning chisels I reckon. Must be a narrow rim, because there is no way it's wide enough for chisel stock on the cross section. I might go ahead and clean up a piece and check it for coarseness next then. Cheers!

That's reassuring. Your video is actually the reason I want to make a chisel in the first place. It's one of my most viewed and favourite forging videos. I probably have to dig up the backyard again and find find the bag of charcoal to have a shot at the forge welding part though. Justin: Haven't got any square stock, but I've got some wagon wheel rim. I reckon that should do the trick.

I have to say I really love that chisel of yours! I've been wanting to make a similar one with a w2 bit for a while and have all the materials picked out. The forge welding part is daunting though.

Aaah... Well bummer. Tested it at different heats and it didn't work. Thought it might be brass coloured steel, but a magnet didn't stick. Oh well. I'll try to find a different brush next.

Thanks Chris. That sounds sensible. Easier to repair a bend than a break. Thanks for the ideas Frosty! I hadn't considered bladed tools for the tire irons. Could be fun to try and make a little hawk. I might hold on trying to make a kukri though. My patang has given me so much grief that I have been a little put off making big blades for a while :/ Did a couple of hours of forging today. Had heaps of fun transforming a couple of the spanners Didn't get that brass look on the cats head that I was going for though. Makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong, or if Bunnings sold me a fake brass brush.

So I've decided that at least one tire iron will provide me with some punches and chisels. I'm also making a couple of chisels for wire inlay (the little ones in the photo). Now they're o1 steel, but I read someone's procedure for making inlay chisels somewhere (of similar stock size) included quenching the tip in water and barely tempering. He used high speed steel mind you. Should I just do the normal oil quench and temper for this one, or do I water quench for (presumably) higher hardness since the chisel is made for cutting cold steel?

Thanks! That's a lot of great ideas! I'll definitely make at least one bottle opener, and I love those cat wall hooks that ausfire made. Think I'll give that a crack and hope i don't mess up the face. Some candle holders sounds perfect of those tire irons and I'll try to get a couple of punches out of them as well. Don't know how to go about making snakes from the rasp, but sounds like fun, so I'll look into that. Also just came back from steel shopping on the other end of town. Got a couple of meters each of 16mm square, 10 or 12mm square, 6x25mm and some angle iron for my fuller. A proper steel manufacturer is so much cheaper than the local Bunnings... Thought I'd try making some nutcrackers, tongs and other Christmas present worthy things. I'll just have to wait for the rain to stop.

Nice! That reminds me a bit of a forged halloween decoration by Blackbear forge i watched on youtube last night. Think you could do a ghostly latch?

I guess we aren't quite made for it up north. And I swear it's been getting worse with the years. It was really nice when I used to do a lot of diving, but mid-summer now I'll go outside after the sun has gone down, grab a file and... Immediately not see a thing because my eyes are full of sweat. It's the humdidity that really gets to me though.

Still having a bit of trouble with heat treating my bigger leaf spring blades, so I've been working on a smaller test knife, so I can experiment a bit and see if I can pin down where I'm going wrong. I'm finding it hard to see the decalescence/recalescence points on the leaf spring and as I understand it, it can be very faint on some alloys. I've also been doing a fair bit of reading on heat treating lately as I obviously lack knowledge in the area. Not much forging the past few days as the rain season seems to have hit at the point where it should have been over... Also picked up some scrap metal yesterday for a hefty five dollaridoos. I have a couple of non-blade related projects thought out, but that's from some actual stock once I get that sorted. Does anybody have any ideas as to what I can make with my newly acquired bits and bobs?

Quite something to earn an accidental novel prize. Would've thought the university researchers who worked on and identified the problem would be quite deserving of the prize, but such is life. Certainly a great thing to put on your resume! For more forging work, this evening has not been particularly successful. The drawknife has been filed and sanded. Triple normalised this evening and quenched. Didn't harden. Quenched again. Still didn't harden. Quenched (ridiculously quickly) in brine (as in it was still glowing when I pulled it out) before putting it in oil and back in brine. Still no success. Decided I'd find a scrap piece and break for study. Heated to critical and quenched in brine. Alright. Hardened. Didn't crack though. I fully expected that from leaf spring. Wacked it hard onto the concrete floor and... It didn't break. Gave it a good wack with a hammer and it snapped like dry spaghetti. Now I'm far from an expert, but isn't the grain structure here surprisingly fine for having just quenched straight in brine without normalising? Any takers on what steel I'm sitting on and what steps to take next? Leaf spring. Repeatedly unsuccessful hardening attempts in canola. Test piece hardened in brine without cracking. -Have I ruined the steel while forging? (I personally don't think so. The blade itself has spent relatively little time in the forge, and I think I managed the temperature alright, but what do I know?) -Am I using too little oil for the quench? Roughly 6 litres of canola oil I think. I have successfully hardened a couple of blades from the same leaf spring before. -What steel is this most likely to be? I thought 5160 was quite forgiving in time to cool from critical, so I'm assuming I might have something different. Should I just straight up quench in brine next? And now my previously shiny blade is full of file marks from hardness testing. Oh dear. Live and learn.

That's pretty cool! And is that the guy that couldn't get his amateur radio working due to background radiation from the big bang, some other doctor worked out the conundrum and the amateur astronomer somewhat undeservedly got the nobel prize? (I'm not sure I even remember the story correctly). Makes sense it was a race not worth losing. Sounds like you have plenty of interesting stories to tell! I think the Germans focused on a heavy water based bomb, and their plans went to the bottom of a fjord near Rjukan thanks to Norwegian commandos. I was going to upload some photos of my last few days of work, but for some reason all my uploads fail. In any case. I built a small, but heavy duty table for my vise that I can move around. Scrap pallet wood, but very chunky. Filed the bevels on a few blades. The draw knife bevel is now sanded to 600 grit. I have yet to sand the flat. That will be tomorrows job.

I'd imagine even 100 tons of TNT were peanuts compared the total cost of the Manhattan project. That is one serious calibration run though. The large majority of the fossils have been bivalves, fish scales and vertebrae as well as turtle shell fragments. The most exciting finds though have been a shark tooth, a belemnite (which I was hoping was a kronosaur tooth), an almost complete side of a richmondichtus fish and a jaw segment of an ichtyosaur. All around 100 million years old. I haven't forged any display pieces, but that is certainly an exciting idea!

If I am ever in your direction, I will certainly give you a shout. Thank you. I appreciate that! Yes, I used to think the 80-odd kilometer drive between Sandane and Førde was the longest drive imaginable. Now There's been several 2000 kilometer long weekend drives for the sole purpose of digging for fossils and I've driven 100 kilometers for a good pizza no worries. Never even heard of the trinity jumbo container before, so I had to google that one. Man that's a big container! That would certainly make a lot of anvils. It's the weight of roughly four mbt's! And not even the nuke destroyed it! Amazing!

We are indeed quite adaptable. And widespread. That helps too I guess. I think humanity was very much on the bring of extinction at some point due to global climate change and I hope that wont be the case again. Seems also smaller animals are better at surviving extinction events. Not many truly big 'uns that survived the ice age far away from the equator. There's bison and muskox i suppose. And various deers and elks and such from a slightly smaller size bracket. Would love to see some neolithic dig sites. A few archaeological digs around my hometown, but they go back only 1000-2000 years as far as I'm aware.

Thanks pnut. To me there's no woodworking tool more fun to work with than a drawknife. Last time I did I picked up one that had probably not been touched in a hundred years and it carved up a tree branch like it was butter. I can't wait to have it finished. Thomas, yes I had never heard the name orox before. Figured Aurochs that I am used to was probably just the German name for them. There's a few big animals like that that seems to have gone extinct fairly recently. The ibex in question i think was around 2000. Another I am aware of is a subspecies of wild horse barely a hundred years ago. I am just glad that we still have at least one survivor from the ice age. The muskox. Probably one of my favourite animals! (Which i learned only a few years ago is actually more closely related to goats than oxen). But I've gone off on a tangent again...

Never heard of the attempt to bring back the orox either. The Nazis sure were overly ambitious with a few of their projects it would seem. Wasn't there some success in bringing back an extinct subspecies of Iberian ibex relatively recently? By all means keep at the conversation. It is quite fascinating Anyways. I don't have too much new to show for on the forging side of things. My draw knife now has a second tang and a bevel. The cleaver has a bit more shape to it and a longer tang. I've got some wrought iron that I practiced a little bit with and found a tiny offcut from a leaf spring that I decided to just wing it with and see were I ended up.

No need to be sorry about that. That was a really fascinating read, and I always appreciate learning something new. Thank you! There's clearly a lot of thought that goes into breeding that I wasn't aware of. And I didn't realise that ligers and tigons could actually produce offspring. Do you know whether the offspring of ligers and tigons remain fertile? Considering a lot of these big cats should logically have been separated for... I don't know how long, but Gondwana broke up a couple of hundred million years ago so that can't be it for pumas and cheetas. I wouldn't think they would be even within the same family after that long. Some sort of recent migration event like crossing the Bering strait or something along those lines? I'm finding my interest in evolutionary biology invigorated again where I'm sitting, so it might be time to pick up some books again. Most of this is over my head at the moment.