Jura T

Jura I have usually seen those type cracks when I have been working with antique wrought iron. Is it possible that you used a very old piece of scrap for this?

No, it is modern recycled steel (Fe37/S235).

Great to see this thread alive and kicking!

Beth, don't stop trying. I can feel your frustration as trying to achieve something by trial and error sometimes takes a lot of time. It is great that John has promised to walk you through the welding during the course. I hope that we had courses on ornamental ironwork in Finland, but we don't. John, any chance for a course on reproducing those gothic pieces?

This morning I had some time to play with the gothic piece once again. Below is a photo of what I managed to do. It is far from perfect. The shapes aren't flowing as they should and in same places I left the material too thick. However, I didn't pay too much attention to those as the purpose was to practice forge welding. This time I'm quite happy with that part. All the welds seem to be fairly good.

As you can see there are some cracks on some parts. They showed up right when I started to bend the scrolls. I think that they are caused by heating the parts too high too many times...

Yeah, but if you had the tooling, you'd make more! Chicken and egg. By the forth or fifth one you'll be ahead.

The dies are on my TODO list, but so are many other things as well.... To put a bit more value to this ping-pong type of "arguing", maybe you could give ideas on how to easily make such dies (with standard blacksmithing equipment).

For crying out loud you are a blacksmith... so make some !

Why? So far I've only made a couple of chisels that way and I don't have any plans to start making them in large quantities.

Uri Hofi shows the dies he uses for making chisels in this thread:
http://www.iforgeiro...orking-chisels/

I don't have such dies, so in the couple of chisels I've made I've used a butcher to set the shoulders.

Here you go Beth:

Will video the next one and put it on u-tube.

Great. I'm looking forward to seeing that.

In the picture I posted there is evidence of what I mean as you can see a very small bulge/increase in material thickness at 3 where the weld has been made. (Very small but it illustrates the point)

I remember thinking whether I should leave the material thicker for welding at some point, but then forgetting that idea. It is excellent that you point out that from the original piece. It is surprising how much thinking and work goes into such a small piece.

Great looking donkey. Any chance of seeing the tools and steps in making one?

What is fairly obvious from the pics is that you are tending to forge more from one side than the other, resulting in an unequal blend at the joint.

Good point. When welding the branches together, I didn't pay too much attention on that. I also made the small scrolls about half way through before welding the branches together. This prevented me to rotate the piece in the fire before welding, which probably resulted in slightly uneven temperature. Next time I wont start the scrolls before welding.

Not knowing what sizes of materials and the overall dimensions it is difficult to make specific comments, but it looks to me like you tried to weld these scrolls together as finished scrolls, sometimes that is achievable and sometimes not.

I measured (from your pictures) that the original material was somewhere around 6mm*12mm. I'm starting with 10mm square and dimensioning it to those dimensions.

I'm sort of following the same sequence as what Mark Aspery has shown in the National Curriculum Grille Youtube videos. Below are two more photos of my steps.

Thanks for all the advices. Thanks also for the others for encouragement. :)

do we call you jura though?

Yes, please. I finally managed to change that weird Minotaur to my real name.

keep posting what your doing wont you?

I will, though I'll probably wont have time to forge before next week :(

I had a day off from job today, so I decided to give a try to the ornament. You can see below how far I got. I've never done that kind of ornaments before.

I've tried drop tongs welding only once before, so I was kind of worried about it. It actually went pretty well. I managed to get a weld fairly easily all the four times that were needed in the pieces. It was the other welds where I failed. As you can see almost all the welds close to the branches started to open when I bent them. I guess I only had a welding heat close to the tip when welding the branches. I definitely need more practise...

Thank you very much John! Great to see how see how it had been done.

The whole is attached to what I would describe as a loop in the end of the scroll, similar to a rolled penny snub end but with a hollow centre or a bolt end scroll with no bolt,

The domed inner is a textured rivet head, the stem of the rivet is passed through the eye in the scroll end, and a washer or rove is placed over the protruding rivet stem, and the item then rivetted on (in certain areas, these outers actually spin on the rivet)

Thanks for the explanation. With hollow penny end snub do you mean that the end has been punched/drilled? The reason I'm asking these details is that that particular piece looks like a fun project to practice forge welding with.

This particular one shown here is a great example of what I mean, If you or others are interested in its make up/construction, I can post pictures, so you can see how it is constructed, maybe even start a new thread for it.

I'm definitely interested.

As Promised for you Jake, some pictures from our scrap pile of some ironwork,

Quite a scrap pile! Would you happen to have a photo showing how the small flowers are attached to the scrolls, like in the picture below?

Imho, 4140 only gets hard when quenched in water

According to this data sheet
www.fordtoolsteels.com/pdf/LSS_4140-4142HT.pdf
you can use oil for quenching.

The quenching temperature for 4140 is quite a bit higher than the Curie (non-magnetic) point, so using a magnet for detemining the quench temperature does not work.

Very sad news. My deepest condolences to you and your family.

I went and bought 120 meters of that steel. Should be enough for me for some years. Today I forged scrolling wrench and tongs out of it. Pretty tough stuff to forge. I'm glad to have a power hammer, hand forging those reigns would have worn me out.

I'm about to order a Refflinghaus anvil. Out of the models they have I like most the No 58 (double horn, side shelf). The only problem I have with that model is that the round horn doesn't seem to be round. From the pictures I have seen it seems to be somewhat rectangular. Could anyone who has seen the model in real life comment, whether it actually is so, and if that possible affects how to use the horn. With my current anvil, I seem to use mostly the top of the horn. However, when making a ring round I seem to go to the sides of the horn as well.

Maybe one of these:

Check this one out:
http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index.php?showtopic=19425

looks like 9250 to me

I just logged in to write that it seems to be fairly similar to 9260 (less silicon than in 9260). So seeing your reply I did some quick googling, but I couldn't find any info on 9250?

Dave, it does seem to be more or less the same as EN45. I think I will make the couple hour drive to get some 60 meters of that stuff.

Has anyone any experience with steel with the following alloying:
C 0.56
Si 1.59
Mn 0.8

I would be able to buy that stuff for the price of mild steel. It only comes in size of 8mmx25mm (~1/3"x1"). That size could be used for making tongs, but I'm also wondering whether it would work for edged tools (axes, adzes...).

By googling I was able to find out that it is called TRIP steel.

The anvil seems to be in great shape. There is no need to fix it. That dip is nice when you are straightening stuff.

Joel, are you able to browse through your files? What info do you get when trying to attach a picture?