Buster Bolster

A little much on the heat treatment, i guess- it's the focus, the aesthetics are later, and I'll keep it to myself mostly outside of specific discussions. I did a fair bit of experimentation and still do on a regular basis (snapped heat treated and snapped W1 samples at lunch today, and hardness tested some things and archived pictures). But that's the thrill stuff for a maker and it's kind of like a burger. I like burgers, but I don't want to watch chefs talk about them. Frosty - I don't know how many people come from the forums that I migrated off of - the woodworking side of things seems to have died outside of the social media sites and youtube. Those things are much more superficial. I did know a couple of blacksmiths, but one of them died and the other is an antique dealer now. I'd have to search their names on here. Literally came here just to try to leave a legit bit of information on the competitor, or stick around long enough to do it, and had no idea so much other content or topical stuff was here! Even learned in the process that the anvil that I thought was probably not a soderfors is probably a soderfors and probably a columbian marked soderfors. Certainly didn't expect that, either.

AEB-L and XHP can both be done in the open atmosphere, but the key to it is being able to get high heat very quickly, and very evenly and then quenching and taking what you can get out of it and that's it. I mention those two because I've made knives and tools out of them. I have a hardness tester and a metallurgical scope to look at the steel, though. the heat needs to be very high, very quick (like fraction of a minute to heat) and you need to do samples until you get something that's suitable. this is an XHP knife that I used to cut some sticks and then poplar when testing - it's a thin knife - only about a hundredth thick above the bevel, which was why I wanted to make it. Thinner than you can generally get near the edge with commercial knives. It's a little underhard - i'd have to guess 59/60, but good enough. I'm sure it's easy to write off a guess, but I've heat treated several hundred items and have a pretty good feel for what steel feels like on stones and belts. Stainless steels on an alumina stone really clue you in because if they have decent hardness between the carbides, they will be slick feeling on an alumina stone. if they are a touch soft, they will sharpen as easily as a carbon steel tool or knife that's hard and that's a red flag if you're I've had good luck with AEB/L hardness testing at 60.5 after a double 340F temper. I've made plane irons out of it and some number of knives and all seem to be fine. My first attempts with stainless were generally underhardened, and nothing good happens in the open atmosphere at both high temperature and some time elapsing. maybe it's my imagination, but I think chromium migrates and carbon definitely does. Thus the suggestion if you are in a pinch and need to do some, you need a very quick high temp. If I worked with these steels often rather than occasionally, i'd get a furnace (don't have one), or if someone was thinking of making a lot of knives or professionally, hiring out is also not a bad option. Even if I thought I could make an AEB-L knife that people would like (i could, there are a lot of variables that you can manipulate making one offs to make a 60/61 hardness AEB-L seem interesting), I wouldn't bother - it's easier to win a dispute with a buyer if you can tell them what you did.

Thanks guys, they do work well - perhaps a little better than they look. Which is the case for the English stuff, too. I used a ward chisel as the bar to get past malleting and 26c3 seems like the steel to do it. The English chisels of higher make (solid steel) are lower in carbon - I can tell from planing with them and looking at the surface that shows up in a metallurgical scope - there are probably carbides, but they are very small and any big enough to be visible are very few. But those chisels are often around 63 hardness, more consistent than people give them credit for, and 26c3 is a bit of a cheat to get to the same place because it will get to 63/64 on the bit end more easily, but without suffering low toughness that pushing another steel might cause. This is a chart - so, O1, I had done a fair amount of using and I did four samples at separate times - one of the test coupons got lost in my forge (or lost from my mind) and sat too long, so I don't know which one of those it was, but suspect it was the one top left. I do something that's a little unusual, which is to get to magnetic and then learn the fast overshot the steel would need to get to higher hardness. These samples are double tempered an hour each temper at 390F. 26c3 is a little more variable when heat treating by eye and judgement, but you can see that there's not much reason to use O1 if actual use bears out what the chart shows (it does). The red 1095 dot that I put in shows exactly what JHCC says. I use a lot of O1 for plane irons and 26c3 in chisels, but I don't use much 1095 and never 1084. 1084 actually tested similar toughness - where I tripped in this exercise is taking a routine that I use for O1 and 26c3 and applying it to 1095 and 1084. I guess people would think they're very similar, but they just tolerate the overheat less well. 26c3 likes it as well or better than it likes an electric furnace, and I think this has something to do with the lack of a longer soak putting excess carbon in solution. 1095 and 1084 seemed to come up short in use before this, but I made one or two tools of each and wrote them off. The testing let me know that they need a more gentle upshot after nonmagnetic if working by hand and eye, and then I didn't send more samples to be tested because I don't think it's really worth Larrin's time (he doesn't care for the heat treating method and I think that's perfectly reasonable as an opinion), and I don't have a reason to give up on it. Snapping some 1095 and 1084 samples after getting embarrassed clued me in on those - I just don't have a reason to use them. But I'm in a little bit of a pickle now because my love for 26c3 type steels relies on being able to get them, and forging a chisel from rod is out because it's not available in rod, and I can't find anything with more carbon than 52100 in the US other than 115crv3 rods from one supplier, and they failed to harden and were full of graphitization when I snapped them (even before forging). I guess this is evidence that I'm in this pretty deep!! what I didn't ever really want to get back from someone is a report that they used my chisels (or knives if I made the a knife) and said something about having something else with a better combination of durability and sharpenability. Short story long, it takes less time to work up a routine for 1095 and 1084 that keeps the grain fine and the toughness higher than it does to make one chisel, but I didn't do it and got wrapped up in thinking the method could be used without any adjustment......didn't do my homework and got burned. I obviously drew the dot of 1095 in there. The chart looks like the ones on knife steel nerds. it would hurt my heart to send a chisel out that looked great but performed substandard to something inexpensive and common - for sure! I got wrapped up a little bit further in drawing out material because I think it is going to hold the key to why i can't use bar stock of something 0.9% carbon or whatever and get the same feel and look under the microscope as the older tools, which are just very simple water hardening steel, but very stable edges at high hardness without relying on the surplus of carbon that 26c3 has.

Thanks! [Unnecessary quote removed.] I've spent gobs of time on the heat treatment part so that I can do it quickly but not give up anything. You can normalize and thermally cycle 26c3 and then heat for quench in several minutes and have carbides and grain in a snapped sample that are much finer and stand up better than just reheating a file or using a commercial file - which will have fine grain, but you can make it more compact. I got a sniff of all of this eons ago making a replacement iron for an old English plane that someone just gave to me - a bullnose infill. They were going to throw it away. And it's taken off from there. The heat treatment for me is the core of it because you ultimately want to make your chisels something you prefer to commercial tools or when you're working wood, you'll go to using something that works better and it won't be yours. what's out there steel-wise in most woodworking tools is cut and computerized heat treat (a lot of A2, some O1, some CTS-XHP and then maybe in europe there's a little more salt bath stuff and use of steels like 80crv2, or actual forging of O1 (like ashley iles will do with chisels and carving tools). So, the moral for me is the toolmaking caught on because if you work wood by hand, you're going to end up needing to do it. Sometimes a slapped together single use tool is nice, but then maybe getting deeper into it and making tools to make them well is good, and it's all part of making. I like to keep my feet in both worlds - it's really easy to know what you like in chisels and planes if you use them a lot and have bought a lot of fine older tools. it would be harder for me to work with no reference - for me, there has to be something to try to match or better, and it's not always what someone else will prefer. For example, amateurs will read things in ad copy and perhaps they'll get the idea that anything freehand ground without jigs is crude. The solution for them is simple (aside from the fact that I don't sell or trade with amateur users), the market already has a lot of options for them. I want my tools to be used, and receive feedback if possible (especially if it's negative and I can learn from it).

Thanks, larry - yes on all of the parts - I try to make everything and I try to do it mostly freehand and by eye so that I end up with a certain look and feel and get some hand time on the tools. The handles are just turned and similar to what Marples used to call a "carver's pattern. I've made more elaborate handles, but they're never as comfortable - even the common types like London pattern, etc. They look great but they don't disappear from your mind in use like the more common handle types do. Sometimes what is nice in the hand isn't the flashiest, I guess. the ferrules are brass tube - .025-.03" thickness with the tenon/stub of the handle cut for a very tight fit. A bit heavy compared to the thinner ferrules on commercial chisels that are set in place with a punch, but I typically give them a tiny shot of glue when fitting the handles- if they should ever come loose in a dry climate, they can always get another small dot of glue by whoever I send the chisels to. I make as an amateur so that I can choose who gets the tools - usually based on either someone who is a friend, or often a pro who makes a request. I think if you make reasonably good tools, you can probably sell them, or you can just charge the cost of materials (which is what I do) or trade for something else and send tools to professional users who are more predictable and a pleasure to deal with. I don't have enough time to consider going pro and probably only make 50-100 things a year, whether those are plane irons or chisels or whatever else.

Hi, I'm new to this board mostly because I'm getting more into forging and a couple of weeks ago when searching for anvil information, google brought me here. I'm an amateur toolmaker, but also a woodworker and sometimes guitar maker. I've shaped chisels from thicker flat stock for a while, but have gotten recently more into drawing them out from round stock (why is the selection so poor compared to flat stock?!) I don't think I'll expand anvil or smithing work beyond tools, but it is a nice way to make things more pleasant in what has become a world of sourced parts stuffed together, or CNC made chisels out of flat stock that is just OK for chisels. I'm north of Pittsburgh, PA a few miles. I posted a couple of examples of what I like to make in the chisel section. My name is Dave, but it looks like there's not too much full real name on here, so I called myself Buster Bolster because it's one of the things - the bolster - that's often missing or done in a cheesy way on modern chisels and I used to talk on woodworking boards and a few of my acquaintances there loved to give me heat about my fascination with getting a bolster forged integrally or welded onto a chisel so that the chisel would be a "real chisel" and not just hammered bar stock stuck in a handle.

I didn't expect this topic to be here. I'm a sometimes amateur guitar maker, sometimes amateur woodworker and often amateur toolmaker with a nod mostly toward wooden planes and chisels in the pre-1900 English styles because those are the ones I like most when actually working wood. I've mostly tapered flat stock at the anvil and then forge welded on a steel bolster to my chisels - they're always all steel and not wrought with a welded bit or anything, heat treated by eye. But I am pretty serious about that - about trying to beat the book stats on tested samples and shrink grain so that hardened samples are finer than commercial stuff of similar alloy. it also has some advantages in terms of how the chisel is hardened through the business area (the first half of the length) and then up through the shoulder and tang vs. furnacing the entire chisel and quenching or not quenching parts. I understand that it can be contentious to claim you're good at heat treating in a way that's now seen as unconventional - or at least have learned that, but I think it was probably a bit more typical when most of my favorite tools were made. Most of my chisels have been in 26c3 solely because it is relatively easy to use to make a good chisel and in wood, it holds up better than anything commercially offered. But I'm moving to draw the metal out by hand out of rod at least for some things to have the chisel be entirely one piece. I'm not a pro, but I try to make things well enough that it's not apparent that I'm not.

Actually, figuring out what it is (the old one) is a real chore. Someone cleaned it in the past and it had a combination of rust and scale that obscured the letters and they are either rusted off or covered over. there's little pinholes all over the side of the casting from some kind of rust, unless the anvils were cast, and if it's swedish anything, it might have been marked Columbian, Soderfors, Sweden - but there is so little there and too much glare in pictures that I can't manage to see it. I'll rely on the ball bearings when they come in the mail to guess. Maybe the guy was telling the truth - it has two pritchels which show up as far as I can see in pictures only or mostly on the anvils branded Columbian. I know so little about anvils, but enough on the woodworking side to know stuff in the early to mid 1900s in the US could've literally been from a better international brand than the "along for the ride" domestic distributor, but Columbian probably marketed machinist and blacksmith stuff. They definitely made woodworking vises. I like the new anvil better because of the size factor, but it will take more marks from misstrikes over the years. I don't make many of those because nothing I'm doing is demanding - I'm drawing out bar and doing some rough shaping into a blank for chisels most of the time with the occasional knife here and there, repetitive and routine. the competitor has a big pritchel hole compared to the ones on my older anvil, so I will need to make some kind of separate block as some of my chisel types have bolsters forge welded on and they're fitted onto the chisel tang as a blank before forge welding them on. I think the older anvil is a "better" anvil so to speak, but the new one will suit my needs better. I can hold on to the old one for now, though - an unused 125 pound anvil doesn't take much space.

There is some nuance here. If you have something near the eutectoid limit with no carbide issue to deal with (how much carbon will be in solution, etc), you can pretty much get book by going to nonmagetic or ever so slightly past. Book as in book hardness and toughness that you'd expect with a furnace. If you're using a grobet file, it depends a little on what it is. If it's 1.2-1.3% carbon steel, it will harden at nonmagnetic, but it will need to get a little hotter than that to be able to see hardness out of the quench like you'd expect, and get sort of the biting edge you'd expect out of file steel. Hardness out of quench on files for me without grain bloat - presuming they're something simple - is 68 or so. Short story long, if working only to thorough nonmagnetic and quenching quickly to avoid grain growth, 1075/1084-ish stuff is going to be just as good as a file, and maybe better. If willing to experiment with how much more heat for a file, the fine edge quality and post-temper hardness of a file or something like 26c3 (almost identical to older file and razor steels) will blow away 1084 and 1075. Is it that important? Only if you plan to make a lot from files. By the way, putting a relatively inexpensive pickup tool magnet on the end of a hollow steel or brass tube is usually what I do for something that's sitting in heat. You can push the magnet tool into the fire very briefly and back out off and on to test things and you won't end up with a hot magnet, etc. It's a little easier than handling just a magnet or a magnet on wire. It may be TMI, but with higher carbon steels, you'll find a partial or near complete loss of magnetism and then sort of a transition in higher temps before all of the magnetism is gone. if you're working without computer control, you want the journey through this range to be quick to avoid bloating the grain. Files are nice because they do have more functional protection from carbides if we're talking about running the temperature up in a very short period of time.

I think there's some nuance to this. There are certain things that are very easy to do in the open air in minutes that take a long time in an oven, but I'm speaking as a maker and not as a buyer. I've also snapped a lot of samples and had some tested by larrin T (one matched furnace results, one set (26c3) was better - with individuals in each type heat treated separately, and not surprisingly, some other alloys that I never spent much time working up didn't come out well - imagine if you ran the furnace cycle for high hardness 52100 on 1084 and 1095, and you can get an idea of what I mean -good for 52100, but overhard and brittle 1084 and 1095 would result). I think there's no commercial value to any of what I'm talking about, though, which also negates too much discussion of it, which is fine. Nothing new, no magic, just trying to get an idea of how someone did some of these things 175 years ago with a little less control because some of the best edge stability I've ever seen is from tools made in England in the mid/late 1800s. Thus the hobby. I make tools as an amateur but generally only sell them to professional users.

this is an interesting conversation - I'm tuned in only due to having an older anvil with a hardened steel top and now a Competitor. There's a lot of things I don't know aside from my daughter taking a whack at the new anvil with a hammer when I wasn't looking and she did put a small crescent in it. I don't get upset about that kind of stuff. The soderfors-shaped anvil that I have (unmarked) has not taken mark like that and seems harder. But I have no idea why. I do have a hardness tester, and it would be interesting when testing something like this to see if some superficial work on a block of ductile cast could trick the diamond cone. No plans to hammer anything that isn't hot, so the Competitor seems hard enough and if it doesn't get harder, that's fine.

Yes on the anvil, though I have to admit I'm assuming it's swede. I'm stretching steel with a 4 pound hammer, and assume it could be 5 in the future, and the stand under the old anvil is a bundle of endgrain oriented 2x10s all fixed together (not just loose), so it's similar in effect to a log. A larger and dead flat surface will help me greatly to get more accurate chisels off of the anvil and do less follow up grinding. I seriously doubt I would've ever damaged the old anvil even with a 4 pound cross pein hammer - it was chained to the stand - more a matter of harshness. The old anvil was almost flat and I figured if I'm going to trade out, it'd be good to do it while it's in relatively good shape. So "assumed swede" i'm mentioning because I got it from an anvil flipper who was a smith, less than $3 a pound - so I wasn't exactly taken advantage of, but he referred to it as a soderfors anvil both in writing and when telling me "it's a 125 pound soderfors anvil". At the time, I was less interested in it being branded and more interested in using it to pein cold metal making dovetailed infill planes, and that never materialized. So here we are, I have an anvil that is probably a soderfors pattern copy and the casting has no markings on it that I've ever seen. Yes on the parting - but I'll probably sell it locally because I don't know what it is. I just know that it's pretty good, it's almost flat, it's got a lot of miles left in it, but I don't think it would be worth trying to explain it well enough to ship since I'm now a guy with two anvils and not someone who has seen 75 and put 5000 hours of time in. Since I don't know that much about anvils, I'm surprised someone would make an anvil as legitimate as it is and not mark it. it's not pitted to death and if it even had a light stamp or casting letters in it, they would still bet there. Thanks for the tip on the bearings. I noticed that sellers like to list them in groups of 10 or 50. If one bounces away in my shop (full between the grinding, woodworking and forging stuff), there's probably a 50% chance that it goes behind or under something I don't feel like moving. I do look forward to seeing what the rebound is like between the old and new. Subjectively, the little one does have a bit better rebound than the JHM, but the bearing will tell me a lot better if my perception is right and if so, how much.

I just bought a competitor a couple of weeks ago to replace a very good but too small vintage 125 pound swedish pattern anvil. When I was trying to find information on it, this post came up in my google searches, and like everyone, I was concerned about whether or not I'd wish to have found the perfect vintage anvil that was small enough that I could lift it onto an anvil stand and get it home, but big enough to so toolmaking work (no power hammer or press here, just hand hammering). The anvil rings, like mentioned above. It's not chisel hardness, but it's hard enough. I've put a couple of hours of work on it and will never be the type who is on the anvil for 50 hours a week worrying about rebound - it works fine for me and we'll see how it holds up. I should ever be so lucky to claim to have worn something out in honest use -I'm satisfied. That said, I saw someone claim 80-85 rebound and the size is more important as I was pummeling my smaller anvil. If someone will let me know what size of hardened ball bearing to buy to test rebound, i'll get one or some and report back with what I find. I found suitable vintage anvils at a distance, and overpriced ones local and just ran out of steam - I want to make stuff more than hunt and hunt and hunt to acquire the best and never really be able to justify the difference in the first place. By the way - I know this is a relatively old topic, but since I was directed to this thread about 5 times when looking around for information, I'd be glad to actually provide actual information so that people like me see answers to the questions.

asphaltum depends on what you're using - gilsonite powder is graded and makes a good japanning. Even better if you are willing to cook it at about 450F outside with linseed oil to crosslink it (at that point, you're making a varnish - the parts won't separate and settle in a jar). Bitumen and other more polluted stuff like roofing pitch is a hard no. Typically, a gilsonite-based asphaltum will bake to a cure and flow out before it bakes and look like a gloss. if you make a cold mix, you mix it before applying and the asphaltum and oil cure by the heat of the cook (as in, you end up turning it into a varnish on the piece instead of in a pre-done cook). Sewing machines and other higher value items often had an asphaltum or lamp black base (or both), but the subsequent baked coats are copal varnish. Gilsonite asphaltum has a little bit of a brownish cast, and sometimes had lamp black added to it to darken it. If you want to see an 1800s write up of this (it was unchanged at ford, except to note that the black non-metal parts were just varnished with a dark varnish and not japanning - obviously, it's a potential problem to bake a wooden part at 400-450F), you can find it in holtzapffel turning and mechanical manipulation III on google books (free - it's public domain). We see japanning like something on a stanley tool, but the old varnish making texts and finishing instructions refer to that as cheap japanning. I like it for tools, anyway. All of the nicer items used the higher end resin varnishes as clear over a dark base - thus things like singer sewing machines with a black base, then gold leaf decorations and clear high quality varnish over them. A good copal varnish is almost an indefinite finish in anything other than decades of sitting in direct sun. Darker color japanning on cars was popular back then - and probably paints - much because the pigment prevented UV light from destroying finish easily below a superficial surface layer. Lastly, there is a free public domain document about the japanning recipes ford used - i don't see it immediately with a google search. There is no perfect recipe - the more linseed oil you use, the tougher but softer the mix will probably be. The higher the resin ratio, the more brilliant and glossy it will be but it will become chippy or brittle at some point. Even basic varnishes like a clear copal varnish would've varied from 1 part resin to 5 parts oil all the way to 10 to 1 the other way depending on the goal. By weight, 2 parts oil to 1 part gilsonite is probably a good start, and then thin with turpentine or varnish maker's naphtha if turpentine is too expensive. No driers are needed if the finish is going to be baked - the curing of the finish is catalyzed by driers, UV light or the oven - they all do the same thing, it's just a matter of how bonds are broken in the oil and resin components. I'm not aware of a commercial varnish that matches copal varnishes, though. Boat varnishes aren't the same thing -they are made to be flexible, and they'll be stinky. A copal or amber varnish is a thing of beauty, but making them isn't as easy as making japanning. All asphaltum baking should be done outside. Gilsonite is pretty clean. The cheaper more pitchy petroleum asphaltums will smoke at a lower temperature and also give off hydrogen sulfides. I baked gilsonite on small items in the garage for a while and had a toaster oven lose its ability to regulate temperature and burn the japanning - it made me ill temporarily. Cold mix of gilsonite and oil will require a 400F or so baking temperature to actually get the components to link, though. Don't follow any instructions that say you can just bake it for a long time at a low temperature - all you get doing that is dried resin and oil that haven't bonded to each other and the finish won't last .

I was going to answer the original question here, but I noticed the suggestion came from James Wright. James is a youtuber. Another maker and I are experimenting making varnish (I've made 16 batches thus far from pine rosin to amber), and we're using Swedish linseed oil, and boiling it on our own. The stuff at the store has some metallic dryers in it, but very unlikely to be enough to be concerned with and a former Eastman chemist (who worked on things that we would handle or consume) who has warned me about plenty of other things has written that off. The trouble with unaccomplished folks like Wright or many others is that they parrot things they hear. Making varnish on the other hand, is "natural" and creates all kinds of toxic fumes. The parts are natural, but depending on components and temperature, things can be pretty unholy, even at a small hobby level. The chemist in question confirmed this, and I can tell you I've never noticed anything from consumer metallic dryers, but even the fumes from boiling linseed oil, which I have to do to prepare it for varnish, is far worse. That's the fumes, though, and not the boiled varnish. The boiled varnish is still stinky, but not in the same class. If it's a concern at all, just order raw flax seed oil from amazon if making a wax. I've had some on my shelf or 6 years now in the bottle and it's not turned or anything - raw flax and linseed are full of antioxidants, which get "washed" before making true boiled linseed oil so that the oil will oxidize while being cooked and polymerize. Point being, you could make a wax with it and I doubt you'll see it turn in your lifetime. To make paste waxes in general - back to the original question - you need to find good wax stock and understand solubility. Carnauba, for example, is generally soluble in aromatic solvents like turpentine or toluene or xylene, as well as limonene (citrus terpenes). I've used all of these. You generally need to heat high temperature waxes to speed along the process, and carnauba, for example, is pretty heavy duty on the wax side even at 1/4 carnauba to 3/4ths turpentine. While I don't care much about the linseed oil with driers, or didn't before I started boiling my own, the turpentine sold in blue cans is foul - the smell is almost hurl worthy, and good turpentine is expensive. Citrus terpenes are similar function and smell fresh and nice, but they're very sensitizing and you can develop a reaction to them at a lower dose than turpentine. Hydrocarbon waxes (paraffin, microcrystalline, blends of those) are soluble in mineral spirits, food grade mineral oil, naphtha. Hydrotreated versions of all of these are nice - they're not that expensive and they're low or no odor and mostly free of volatiles in cheaper stuff. The Naphtha sold at box stores is usually fine - search the SDS and see if it's hydrotreated.

I have one of the 15kw induction forges. They actually draw something more like 7kw continuous and the output on the coil is 800 amps full on, which is at a lower voltage (5?), so you're getting a fraction of the kw at the coil, and then you get a further loss if you're not using something optimized for the coil - which is more of a question of how much. Knowing that still doesn't give you your answer. Mine came from a US seller and not from one of the chinese sellers. it's the same basic machine, though I have seen some reviews suggesting wiring issues in some of the imports. All that said, you can check the US Solid page to see if they have a manual for the induction heater I'm talking about - there is one, but I don't know if it had information about a crucible as I don't have or use one with it. I see some of the direct ship imports come with a small crucible, but from now vague memory, the crucibles held a much smaller amount than 1 1/2 kilos and the spec list didn't provide anything that large in terms of metal in the crucible or I'd have remembered it because I'd do that. Following up - the manual says 1kilo of smelting copper, gold, silver, etc. Iron and steel aren't mentioned. My sense from using the machine to forge and heat treat would be no. It would take a LONG time for the machine to heat that much metal, too.