Chad J.

5160 rat tail knife.   I took it to 400 brit and then a surface conditioning belt.   I made the handle a little short but it is comfortable.   Not sure why,  the handle ends just before the pinky.

Borrowing from the rail spike "love"  I give you...

Ok, so the grinder got here and the belts finally came yesterday.  Ameribrade fast back with 1.5 hp vfd and 7 inch drive wheel.

How long did it take you to get used to your grinder?  I fully expect to wreck a bunch of spike knives learning to grind out the bevels and finishes,  but they're quick and easy to replace.

As a kids we had a sandbox in the back yard and plenty of free time and green army men.   I had the bright idea to grind sparklers into a powder,  mix them with gas and make a firy volcano battle scene.   The sandbox disappeared shortly after. 

Started learning my grinder tonight,  turned a nicely shaped spike knife into a letter opener,  the second one ground out a bit better and then put on the high grit belts and worked on finishing a cleaver I had started last year.  Think I'm going to be making and destroying several spike knives before I mess with any of my better designs. 

And along the lines of Pat's question,  does it need to be a high carbon steel?  I hadn't ever thought about that before now. 

Unfortunately I have to work, but I have a company smart phone so here I am. 

My girlfriend is a bad influence,  she keeps trying to get me to spend money, though usually she wants me to spend it on her. 

I actually like the counterpoint of the hard edges against the curves.  

It turned out great Das

Got my work table finished and assembled my new grinder.  Now to figure out where to put it...

Anyway the table legs are treated 4x4 that I cleaned up and roughly plumbed up on my jointer and the frame and table to are treated 2x6 that I did the same.  Now more sparks can fly...after I clean up all the saw dust. 

They call it stick welding for a reason too

Glad I have good airflow in my shop.  I'm not far from Frosty's temperature preferences.   The last week has been in the 80's and 90's.  Ice been going through more water than beer in the shop. 

Who was it that said 90 was a good warm temp?  I have a few words for them.  I continued to work on my new bench for the grinder and really just trying to get back into the woodwork mindset as well.   I would have gotten farther along but I am, apparently, the neighbor you ask when you don't know how to do something or have the tools.   And I just got here in December. 

Anyway here's where I'm at.... not great but I could dance a jig on the frame. 

Started in on my work bench for the belt grinder.   Making it out of salvaged wood from a fence I took  down.  My 6 inch delta jointer got a workout last night cleaning up the wood for this.  Felt good to really brush off the woodworking skills.  I'll post pictures this evening when I'm done with it. 

I have ADD so bad I forget

My smoker lives at the entrance to my shop.  Saturdays I'll throw a pork shoulder on and let it cook while I work so I have lunch for the week.   I have a shelf that fills up with empty brown pop bottles fairly quickly as well.  Speaking of,  has anyone ever tried cleaning and forge welding a bunch of caps together?

My stick welder is light duty.   Unless it retains enough heat from each pass that I don't have to heat it back up the propane use will be a good chunk too.  Maybe 2 or 3 tanks.

Thomas, He does

With wood 220 is really the highest grit I'll go.  You go too high, the finishes and stains don't take as well.  It's kinda like with the old leather boots.   You're not shining the leather, you're shining the polish.  If you want a nice shiny wood handle go heavy on the finish and sand that down.

I agree Goods.  Everything between the 2 cuts across has been ground away or came off.  The heat treatment is my biggest concern on this.   Now I am willing to fire up a smoker and fill a couple coolers with cool liquid refreshments if anyone in Wisconsin wants to try and make an event of this anvil repair.  My biggest concern is I never get around to doing anything with this and it sitting in my shop until I too over it one too many times.   Only reason I thought of using it as a source of wrought.

I've read the Gunther Schuler method and I've priced the Stoody rods, 88 dollars for 5 pounds.  I'm looking at maybe 15 pounds of rods to do this at least but then I also need to find the time.  I could do it,  and it could be a wonderful center piece for my shop.  I think it may just go into a corner in the barn until I take some vacation and try this.   What's the worst that can happen?

I have a Peter Wright that my guys grabbed from the scrap when it came in when I was a yard manager.  It had a crack in the face, no rebound along the waist, and a severe overhang on the sides.  I went to start addressing the problems and found the entire work face had busted free.  I still have it,  I am considering trying to repair it but that would be a lot of welding as about 8 inches of facing is gone completely.   I would hate to do it, the repairs are not beyond my welding skills but the cost and time may be.  My final thought, it is a cast wrought and I currently don't have any other wrought iron...

Mail call!  4 of the 5 boxes from my new Ameribrade grinder arrived today! Some assembly required...

It broke my heart but I had a blade that had really bad hammer marks in it,  the second to last blade I quenched tonight.  Many have recommended this so I did it to check my heat treat.  After I nearly knocked my leg vice stand over with the first shot I let it cool a bit more and snapped it.  *sniff sniff*  seriously, I think this is pretty good.

Let's not forget my shop is a hundred year old timber frame barn.   I'm planning on framing out the walls in the hot works area and putting corrugated on the base of the walls.