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Thomas, I never thought of the folding and welding as a carbon reduction process. I really appreciate that insight as it "gels" several concepts together.

Basher, Well said. I recall reading on some of histories greatest minds. Many advances in science and technology have come from newcomers to the field. Institutional inertia can and does influence the perception of the problem which can influence how it's approached. Aristotle said : "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it". I know I've caught myself correcting something my kid said only to realize that they had a good point from their perspective. I have had only a few really good teachers in my life - I learned anyway. It may be off topic but I once took a class entitled "Art appreciation". At the end of the semester the teacher asked for feedback on how the class could be improved. I pointed out that course's name was misleading because we really covered the history of art in Western Civilization. The teacher countered by saying that understanding the historic relevance of a piece is critical to appreciating it. I replied that people appreciate art for many reasons beyond historical significance. This forum brings people with very divergent interests together. Explaining an aspect of blacksmithing from an unfamiliar perspective may illuminate the "piece" differently and expose under-appreciated details. I find I must resist a tendency to be curmudgeonly - I find that repeating myself and listening to others repeat themselves fills the air and dulls the sound of something new. Basically, I try to find something new to say or I try to remain quiet.

DSW and Chinobi nailed it. The reason there are multiple barrels in a typical door hinge is to multiply the shear planes on the pin. Each plane takes it's proportion of the shear load which reduces the maximum shear the pin will be subjected to at any point.

I recently read that the USA has 5% of the worlds population, and 50% of the worlds trained lawyers. The same article stated that said lawyers consume approximately 10% of GDP. I haven't encountered a situation where lawyers improved a problem that affected me directly. I would imagine even a 5% hike in GDP would show up somehow in my daily affairs. Least of all would be fewer advertisements from ambulance chasers.

Chinobi, The title of the thread includes Chainsaw chains. So it sounds like the OP was planning to weld chainsaw chain to bike rims in the hopes of gaining stainless properties from the rim plating.

Interesting thread. As I read along I found myself thinking of an observation I'd made some time ago. Drive around a town for a while and look at the signs for businesses. In my experience the majority of them will specifically exclude what the business does. McDonalds doesn't write "restaurant" under their sign, Home Depot doesn't say "lumber yard" and so on. There's a purposeful disconnect between company names and their vocation. Similarly the Politically Correct approach to job titles has sapped meaning from job titles. The term "Engineer" is applied to everyone from a garbage man to the dude blaring the train's horns. I don't see how that's better for anyone in the mix. It seems that lots of effort has gone into revising the terms we use to define working parts of society. The outcome leaves little relevant information to work out how it all comes together. I've literally googled local companies to try to figure out what they actually make. It's honestly impressive how many "tech" companies have a website that will absolutely not tell you what they do at all. Beyond all that, we've moved to a management society where it's genuinely difficult to define what most managers do beyond report to one another. There isn't much of a proud legacy to be the third generation second shift manger of sector 7 G ! If you don't make anything, and your forefathers didn't make anything, it's not too much of a stretch to expect dumb questions when confronted with a demonstration of how something is done.

I've noticed an improvement in my control with a better shaped hammer handle. The stock handle was clubby and tended to rotate a bit in my hand. Because the handle was fairly round, I didn't feel the shifting. A slightly octagonal handle really helped me on that score. Unintentionally hitting with the corner of the hammer face was causing the dents. Watch the Abana Videos on youtube for examples of the planishing mentioned above. It's amazing how precise the surface finish can be with developed skill. For me, the reshaped handle gave me a signal when I was doing something wrong.

Just to be sure, I want to clarify that I'm a huge fan of the stickies and have great admiration for the skill presented and the time commitment those members made for our collective benefit. I entirely agree with Steve regarding the nonsense of taking offense to replies on a forum. It's free help from people willing to sound off. You often get more than you pay for but the buyer must beware. I do appreciate the efforts made by posters here to set things straight should a bad/unsafe idea find an audience. It's a good mark of a community that it protects it's own.

It's an interesting question. I wonder if fullering in the hollows would help or hinder. I suspect that if you're freehand grinding, the fullered hollow would track easier. It would reduce the amount of stock removed via grinding. That being said, the uniform thickness of a flat blank would tend to heat treat more evenly. I've seen videos of smiths fullering grooves in sword blanks that were later ground for finishing. I don't know if that translates as well to something as small and thin as a straight razor. One jig I saw a while back was nothing more than a stepped metal dowel clamped to the tool rest. The dowel was placed perpendicular to the wheel's movement. The back of the blade was set in the step and the edge was rotated towards the contact wheel till it started cutting. Moving the blade laterally cut the hollow. Since the dowel only made contact at a single point, it allowed a smiling razor to be ground by simply keeping the dowel's contact point perpendicular to the curved spine. Of course the single central pin allowed both sides of the blade to be ground symmetrically without moving the jig.

I used to participate on other forums that weren't blacksmith related. There were "stickies" arranged to circumvent the most frequent questions from being asked. Lots of effort went into what was posted. Every day there was an example of one of those questions being asked anyway. I think the issue is that some members put together the display and want to curate their exhibit which works directly against the notion of a message board/chat/tech support situation. I quit going to those forums because it was REALLY rare that anything new came to light. On rare occasions I'd have a question about something specific, and my posts would go unanswered while everyone answered the newbie question for the 4,000th time. It's amazingly contrary that folks join forums to interact with others but often lack courtesy with respect to how they're coming across. It's kind of like kids who won't answer their phones when you call but will text illiterate gibberish whenever they need something. The grumpy old man in me wants to say it's just rude. The businessman in me wants to quit playing phone-tag with people who won't communicate efficiently. Like lots of stuff in life, the answer is moderation. I appreciate the knife making stickies and the posted links to previously covered topics. I try to confine my posts to areas of my knowledge independent of the site in the hopes that I'll add something for all I've gained. It's tedious reading repeated questions and answers from folks who are missing the point of reference material. Telling everyone to read the stickies reminds me of when I asked a parent how to spell a word. After a while I knew they'd just say "look it up in the dictionary". I still relish the memory of my Mom and I looking for "Pterodactyl" in the "T's" of the Webster's dictionary!

I agree with Smoothbore. The focus isn't on silversmithing -it's about a woman silversmithing. It's not about sculptural metal work including 3D printing -it's a veteran processing what he's been through. The Paley bit was about an artist going bigger and better but it had to marinate in the starving artist storyline first. According to PBS nobody is successful simply because they applied themselves it's always about overcoming some social injustice. In the case of the silversmith - there didn't appear to be any evidence to suggest that she encountered any injustice. Several of them made a point of saying her work was impressive. Every one of those smiths has my respect and admiration for their skill, vision, and execution. PBS just hammered them into their proscribed social commentary story patterns.

BigRed Bureau of Labor and statistics: http://www.bls.gov/ro3/ppimetals.htm An article that tells why this statistic is nearly useless: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c7807.pdf Here's another one showing pricing. http://www.worldsteelprices.com/ I gave a more involved answer because I figured you'd googled it yourself and didn't like what you'd found. It's been my experience that nobody considers an estimate to be worth the time till they're losing money on the job. Neither you nor your client needs to make a financial decision so quickly that either one of you lose your shirt. Looking back on the worst clients I've ever had - nearly all of them needed a price right away on something they wouldn't pay to engineer, design or draw. They were in a rush to do everything but pay the bill.

Frosty's comment about inventive fools reminded me of an old saying. "Never argue with a fool, they'll bring you down to their level then beat you with experience". BigRed, Doing stuff by the seat of your pants - risks the seat of your pants. Estimating, accounting, and scheduling are the tasks that often get treated like an obligation rather than a part of the job. Most graduates of Construction Management want to be Project Managers because they get credit for "building stuff". I genuinely believe that accurate estimating doesn't need to be a miserable way to spend your time. The hook is that you've got to spend sufficient time to develop a system that will get you what you need. I've refined my technique to the extent that I can now bid five times faster than when I started. It may sound counter-intuitive but the key is to reduce the amount of information you're recording for each estimate. Pricing steel by weight reduces your supplier variable to a single number. Building a spreadsheet that automatically calculates the weight isn't too bad. As Frosty pointed out - even if they don't think they're doing things by weight - it probably correlates really closely anyway. At that point you could make a little function that takes their quote for a specific piece of stock and interpolates the cost per pound. Going through the effort to build a spreadsheet that itemizes everything pays dividends when you can use it for a cut list, a proposal, an invoice, and an account statement. It's really easy to have worksheets in excel that copy the data over into various templates so your client sees only what you want them to see on the printouts..

There's a PBS application available for Kindle Fire's that allows you to enter your zip code and watch anything they've posted online. Perhaps they'll include this one since they're already promoting it online.

Structural steel is sold per the ton here. I've never sourced anything else. I built a spreadsheet that takes the beam dimensions and calculates volume which correlates to weight. Build a spreadsheet right and it'll have a single variable for the cost per ton which gets updated on bid day. In my experience website pricing for materials like steel can be a very difficult thing to trust. Lots of websites aren't updated regularly. Some of them are checking cookies before giving you an instant quote. What matters is how much does it really cost to get it placed at your shop? Unless you're buying from that website, you can't expect that price to have any significant bearing on what your local vendor charges.

The dimpling on the top of the guard is a really nice touch. Very subtle design with a lot going for it and it's very well executed.

Beautiful work. I've seen some modern fishing tips that have quite a bit in common with that design. Bowfishing isn't much for catch and release...

Antigoth, Nice work! I have a couple questions. Is that copper riveted to the blade? Second, how come you didn't sand the handle to match the cheek profile? It seems like I typically see the handle cut to match that pointy top, I'm curious if mortising calls for a different approach.

GNJC, I just got a chance to re-watch it last night and sure enough I'd remembered wrong. Sorry for that! He didn't really get into what problems he felt there were with ash. The show is largely about traditional woodworking and the host in particular expresses more enthusiasm for the tools and methods of the 1600's than other time periods. I have no idea what period the european axe he displayed was from his example of an American Axe pattern would be easily found on shop shelves today. You're very much correct that Ash is commonly used for baseball bats. I don't see it used much for tool handles here. There is an ash tree in my backyard which shades my forge.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2172600552/ This is the woodwrights shop episode I was thinking of. I can't watch it now to check if I've mis-remembered the European handle materials. If I did, I apologize.

Watching this I couldn't help but remember being a little kid with construction paper "springs" tied to my bare fee with yarn. As I mounted the stairs of my slide I was very confident that they'd be useful in my crime fighting adventures. Just because a spring "return's" a given amount of energy, doesn't mean any old spring's capable of the energy getting applied. To that end, our ancestors weren't stupid. Really dense hardwoods aren't as shock tolerant as something like Hickory. I watched Roy Underhill discussing the differences between Euorpean axes and American axes. The oak shafts used on some English axes required a lot larger shaft to accommodate the shock of the axe in use. Hickory allowed for a more slender handle that held up very well. I'd be interested to see some super high speed video of an axe swing. It seems like there's more flex going on that we can perceive.

Could you forge it instead of cut it?

Any chance your hammer and/or anvil needs dressing? Getting things to come out exactly the same is easily one of the better indicators of developed skill. After all, a single shot is always a "perfect group"! Aiming small is how we get to missing small. Applying that to Blacksmithing, I've tried to get the pairs matched each heat along the way. It's not easy for me either.

I've also found that wet hands make it worse.

I've heard that the sodium filled valves were hugely dangerous to forge. As memory serves they were used in Corvette engines but I'm certainly no expert.