Chad J.

This 4 inch leg vice, paid 100 for it.   In. Planning on making a better stand for it later.  I didn't see a maker's mark. 

Oh, uhhh, oops!  I will never do such a thing again.  

Thank you.   Is there any other nomenclature I should be aware of?

Ok, I am picking up a 4 inch leg vice tomorrow,  I want to review what I've read on this thread.  It is offered that a post vice is at elbow height and securly mounted.  If it's going to be permanent then bury it's pile, if not then a heavy stand made of timbers or tube Ayelet with a flat base securely fastened is preferred.   Do I need to have something for the ball at the end of the leg to rest on?  That is the one item I didn't get an answer on. 

Just went for a walk by the tracks and filled a 5 galloon bucket with spikes that had been discarded.  That'll take me a while to work through.   Should this be in the "It followed me home thread"?

I have no idea Why this guy only wanted 8 bucks US for this giant rasp but it helped me fit a set of scales on a chef's knife In doing,  and in short order.   Since I am still fairly new to metalworking tools, I'm not always sure what to look for.  

At the beginning of July I was summarily dismissed from my job and found myself with a load of free time.  I had been working on getting the equipment needed to start knife smithing a while back but had lacked the time.   That first weekend I forged my first blade from a coil spring.  Since then the bug had bitten me and last night I managed to duplicate the rough shape of my 3rd knife.  I see a nice progression in my skills and am having fun learning to get the metal to move the way I want it to.   

Thank you Frosty, I'll check out the tooling section for examples.   I saw one thread discussing quenching the chisel recommending only quenching the bottom quarter.  It didn't say in what or tempering.  I'll search for that while eating my breakfast and get a rocker chisel made today.  Seems easy enough.  (Famous last words?)

Just out of curiosity,  maybe it's because I'm a beginner and there's so much to try,  does everybody kind of hop around on projects? I find myself hopping from a blade to bottle openers, to roses, to the next item that catches my interest.  

Anyway, this wasn't recent but it was what got me interested in metal work a bunch of years ago and I thought I'd share.  Made this in a welding class I took.

Great advice!  Thank you both.  I happen to have a coil spring in the smithy. 

I was planning on getting a hot cut hardy for my anvil,  would that do it or would a hold down be better with a hot cut chisel?  I'm sure it would come down to preference but the voice of experience should never be ignored.  

Thanks Daswulf!

21 hours ago, Daswulf said:

Hey Chad, would love to see some pictures. 

I've just started on my journey here.   Been doing this for a little over a month now.  The spatula needs to be spread more,  I'll have to slit it and the fork needs to be drawn out a bit more.  I'm going through my firsts. 

Made a pretty basic grill fork from a spike, practiced splitting steel with a chisel to do it, started making a spike spatula and then cooked a couple hot dogs in the flame of my propane forge.  Tomorrow I'm going to work on a few knives, one of them being from a bolt I found by the rail road tracks.  Mystery steel but I have 2 and one will be my test piece for heat treating.

On 8/24/2020 at 6:35 AM, Glenn said:

Purchase a brick modeling clay, usually in the hobby section.  It works the same as metal using the same tools without the heat.

Interesting tip, thanks!  I actually managed to move my smithy, if you can call my anvil and forge that,  down and set it up nearby.   I'm going to find a shop space at some point before it gets bu...really cold out.  

Yes, by English style I meant london pattern.  Again thank you for the welcome.  Now I need to find my way to the section on making hot chisels and splitting steel, my rail road spike grill fork turned out ok, but there is an easier way that I need to find.

Thank you both for the welcome.  Frosty, thank you for the tip, I hadn't realized there was a difference.   Now I'm going to have to go figure out why.   

Slag, thank you for the kind assessment of my work.   I'm having to pay close attention to my hammer work because I have only an angle grinder, a 3x21 belt sander, and a bench grinder to do the finish on the knives.   To say that it is slow going would be an understatement.  I have the extra money and studied up in the grinder section.   I am planning on ordering a Pheer 2x72 to reduce my finish work time.

U.S. Marine Combat Engineer.  94-06.  I've always loved making stuff,  I've got a pretty good wood shop and wanted to expand on my skills and make knives because I was never happy with the ones I bought. 

How is everyone?  I'm Chad, located in Cheeseheadistan, I mean south-central Wisconsin.  I've been wanting to start  smithing since I learned to weld 10 or so years ago and have finally had everything come together.  While I am very much the type to jump into something new and just go, I generally immerse myself in information while I'm fumbling about.  I've been actively working for a couple months now,  and by actively working I mean picking up my hammer whenever possible but my shop is a nice 2 hour drive from my tiny apartment. 

So far I have worked on a couple roses, I've gotten quicker with a simple leaf bottle opener that I've been using to develop my hammer technique,  a couple S hooks and 8 knives.  

I have a peter wright anvil that is missing the working face above the waist but three horn,  hardy hole, and pritchel hole are all intact, a rail that I shaped to an english style anvil, and a mystery anvil I just picked up that needs a little repair work due to damage that penetrates the work surface in 2 spots.  I am planning on restoring the Peter Wright with the Gunter method and may just hit the mystery anvil with some 7018 to repair it and peen it to relieve the stress.  My forge is a fire brick forge with a metal frame and my burner is a turkey fryer's with the end cut off, no fan, mounted in an 8 inch steel pipe top dead center(ish, the drill bit wandered).  I'm able to run it up to 5 psi and it works well enough.

I have a background in scrap having run a yard for a while and am familiar with some of the alloys.  For my blades I am using leaf spring, hopefully it's 5160, thermocycling them 3 times and quenching in warm canola oil.  Other projects are mild steel and I've started collecting railroad spikes for fun projects as well as sacrificial steel to learn how to move the metal in the direction I want.  I had been using some 2 to 2.5 lb HF hammers that I had tried to make work with mods that I found on here and on YouTube, but just bought a rounding hammer and diagonal peen. What a difference they make.  The HF handles once I stripped off the finish were too thin for my meatmittens so I tried wrapping them with string and leather cord.   Why hadn't anyone tried that? Oh, because the cord will slip and blister your hand.  I don't recommend it the way I tried it.  Maybe if I would have slathered on some mink oil it would have been better. 

Anyway,  if there is anyone in the Waukesha, Milwaukee, Madison area that is willing to meet up, I am a quick study and have some serious endurance.  

Oh, and yes, I did read that first and will likely read it again...

A few things I've done, and I am open to criticism.