devins

Please let us know what method does end up working for you on these, I have some I would like to try. We have quite a few bois d' arc posts around here that are frequently replaced with steel(these are very old, I am 44 and they were old when I was a kid) and I have some new limbs drying right now. It will be fall before I can probably get any pieces cut but I was going to for myself and I could cut a few more while I am at it. I also can get some of our old aged red cedar posts too. The burled areas are nice. Let me know in advance so I can round up more. I usually start in mid September.

Thank you Thomas and Glenn, and if I make to the Longview area I will certainly look you up with advanced notice. Thanks again

I just spent a few days out at a conference for work in San Diego and got to visit the Blacksmith Shop at the Old Town State Park. I loved it and the guys there were great at what they do and great to answer questions and showed me some great techniques. I spend some of the Summer weekends in Eastern Oklahoma. Does anyone know of any other events in Northeast Arkansas or Eastern Oklahoma coming up where I could see more demonstrations. Any help would be appreciated and Thanks to all of you that put on demos, I hope you know how much we appreciate your time. Devin

Thanks you all, I look forward top many enjoyable projects together here on the site. Devin

Thanks Steve, That is what I was hoping to hear. I can come up with a lot of good stuff besides the wrenches so I will stay away from them then. I really like your work and appreciate the help. Devin PS. I hope you don't mind more questions later.

SlySmith, My best friend is a tech ed teacher and has gone through many casting techniques. I have seen it done on the large scale and have done a good deal of lost wax on a broken arm centrifuge, gold and other alloys. But my friend could get you the info for your sand form on investment techniques. I will ask him if he has a source of all of the info together in one place. I know he has built all the way up to his own vice out of pieces he has cast. Let me know if that would be a help. I am interested in some of the same things too. I want to make a bloom furnace and use local ore to create a bloom for an iron source in a knife project(one of these days) Devin

Hello everyone, I am also posting here so it will stop telling me that I have not. I am anxious to get to know you all but am not anxious to demonstrate my ignorance. But you will find out soon enough if I talk to any of you. I have enjoyed this community very much so far and am very impressed with the work and artistry I have seen. I think I am in good company here with a group of dedicated artisans who love what they do and hold many of the same values I do. Which brings me to a project I would like to do and would like a little input on the best way to go about it. So far I have only been a knife maker. I enjoy that very much, but I have worked with metal and am an artisan in other materials(porcelain and I know precious metals and I grew up farming and raising hogs and cattle and if something was broken I fixed it and if I needed something I built it, and have built a lot of stuff including my belt grinder, and I do my own reloading and stock work on my rifles etc...) But I am going to make a charcoal fired forge and start making some blades from files. Pretty straight forward stuff but what I would like to do at some point and here is where I need some info, I would like to take some old tool steel (rusted up old wrenches and files and hammers the stuff we can still find out around old homestead sites here in Western Oklahoma that are not artifacts of museum quality but are still recognizable) and forge it into knives. I would like to take pieces of the original tool or disc or whatever it was and polish a small piece to hang on the thong from the thong tube as a reminder of what it was and where it came from. When I worked with gold and we were going to cast priviously cast gold we would purify it on charcoal and flux it and the impurities would roll off. How do I get the rust off the tools can I aneal and get pieces up to nonmagnetic and flux the daylights out of it and start to weld pieces in (example use a file in the blade section of a knife made of a wrench) It may be easier to just get clean tools or springs but where is the fun in that(I will do plenty of that to hone my skills and I can do lots of trial and error on what I am wanting to do just wandering if anyone else had tried this). I like the idea that it will honor some of the pioneers before us.