Cbennett0811

Wow. I want a power hammer. I drew one out today to about 16 inches and it took a lot of work... granted it was my 3rd time ever forging something though. I made a small snake out of it.

If you have some cast iron scrap you can heat, flux, heat to welding heat while heating the CI to near welding heat, then crayon on the CI to one side of the blade. Bevel the other side and leave the hardened side flat. The added carbon will make a rather good edge, but you cannot sharpen that side of the bevel.

This process was used for producing cheap knives for trade. I want to try this, but I am not ready to yet.

For super quench look at a phase diagram and select your before trying.

If its a decoration, don't try hardening. Polish it and put some furniture on and call it learning on a fancy letter opener.

Phil

If it's true mild steel you are pretty much out of luck---luckily you found this out *before* spending much time on it right?

If it's A36 superquench will help some but it will never be an edge holder like a higher carbon steel would be.

To case harden the blade you need to surround it with carbon in a *sealed* container and heat to red for a number of hours and then be careful not to grind through the case.

okay, ill try the superquench. thanks.

my problem is it is a kind of forced donation, any money you make during your senior praject HAS to donated to the senior project scholorship fund... or you fail, which means you fail highschool. i was told for a personal experience project with a finished piece to sell i needed to make 200 dollars, the knife is not worth 200 dollars, ill put it on ebay to see how much i can get but the rest has to come out of my own pocket.

i, this is actually my second attempt at forging (first was a file knife that melted) its made of mild steel and i was wondering what would be the best method of hardening it? ik it wont get very hard being mild steel. also let me know what you think, ill post pictures here when its all done. Thanks

A LOT better than my first try. I tryed to make my first knife out of an old file today and i accidentally melted it in half in my home made forge... Well at least i know now my forge gets hot enough. Sweet lookin knife you made though, hopefully my next attempt will look half that good.

Sweet, got the anvil home and its heavier than the guy said. according to my scale its a little over 130# face is quite smooth too. here it is home, i wire brushed the face and sanded/wirebrushed the horn.

I won the bid!
pickin it up tomorow
thank you everybody for the help.

Yeah. hopefully ithe price doesnt clime too much. thanks everyone. Is it all steel? or do you think it is iron with a steel face?

ahhh. cant get picture to show. maybe this will work.. sorry bout that

here it is

eBayISAPI.dll.htm

wait.. heres a pic

Ive found an anvil on ebay. its fairly close. does anyone know what kind it is or if its a good one?http://cgi.ebay.com/ANTIQUE-ANVIL_W0QQitemZ180462235707QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2a0463303b#ht_500wt_1182
thanks.

Thanks, and yeah yesterday i just blew the ash out with my air compressor.

sounds good. I may have some brick layin around somewhere but if i dont ill do that, or ill weld up somethin the shape of the inside of the forge to slip in to make it shorter

cool. thanks

Sweet!

what kind of store do i get good firebrick at?

For an anvil no---though a thick granite slab will to an extent. As a forge modifier: not a good choice as they degrade in heat rapidly and some may be prone to steam explosions.

As for an anvil: pretty much *any* heavy piece of scrap steel will work if it has a flat area you can hammer on. These imprompto anvils work a whole lot BETTER than a cast iron ASO and are usually cheaper to boot!

Over lunch I was wandering around the lot that Campus stores stuff to auction off and found an odd item composed of two pieces of 3"x12"x60" steel *and* it had a lovely fuller strip bolted onto it. Unfortunately the next sale is in June and scrounging up a cutting torch to subdivide close to a ton of steel would really up the price even if I could figure a way to drag it home...
(Over 600 pounds per side and the heavy front piece too)

will a flat cinder block work?

I suggest putting a firebrick across the bottom of the back of the forge so you get a deeper less large fire. Remember you want a lot of fuel *below* your piece to consume oxygen and lower scaling---*especially* if you are thinking of knifemaking!

Here it is fired up. i put a small knife i ground out of a peice of mild steel in there.

Also after this picture was taken I made the holes slightly larger and a couple more near the center

I would have built the firepot with sloping sides. Is it shallow enough to get work in horizontally or will you have to push the hot spot above the level of the table.

The ash dump should not be the same as the air intake. You don't want to have to unhook the air just to clean the ashes out---usually the ash dump tee's off the bottom of the air intake with a length of pipe so you can run a while without having ashes blocking the air path.

Air holes are way too small and not distributed in a good pattern for general smithing.

Is the plate with the air holes removable so you can clean up the ashes that fall through underneath it?