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Dave, years ago I was in a welding class where they talked about the weld being stronger or as strong as the parent material. Many, many years after that I was in a structural materials course. They explained that the weld may indeed be "stronger" as measured in terms of shear, bending, torsion, or elasticity. The problem is that the weld never acts the same as the parent metal under all of those conditions. It's very common for a welded joint to fail in the parent material NEAR the weld. Like a lump in the gravy it may well be made of the same stuff, but there are times where it's presence signifies failure. In the context of a homogeneous solid, welding is going to mix things up. The normalizing is an effort to re-sort the deck.

I don't see what all the fuss is about, it's just an ambidextrous hammer... Stash, your comment reminded me of Robin Williams on the Swiss Army Knife as taught by a drill instructor: " Many of you have never opened a Chardonnay under fire..."

Alec, thank you for posting that video! I have a question for you and / or Brian. Don't the off camber blows torque your wrist? I had to watch with the audio off so I apologize if this was answered in the movie but it seems like there were times that the right side of the hammer was striking the right side of the stock when the leaf was being drawn out. It would seem like the force of the blow would serve to push the stock into the center as opposed to moving it out to the edges.

I get a lot of students who seem to think that what is sold commercially must be the *best* design made from the *best* materials. I try to drill it into them that often it's the *cheapest* design made from the *cheapest* materials the manufacturer thinks they can get away with. This is a patently false and cynical perspective. If such were the case there would be no difference in quality because all companies are capitalists subject to the above reasoning. Tool makers are keenly aware that they must compete for customers who make immensely personal decisions based on how said tool feels to them. Tool users as a group aren't idiots, nor are they spendthrifts. The root reason for a tool purchase is largely to expand on what you can do, or to repair what you have. While there are certainly price points in place to attend to the strata of spending potential, the truth is that high quality is more the norm than the exception. Warranties and recalls are expensive. While we all pride ourselves in re-purposing old stock into new things, we rarely invest the time and energy to determine the metal's chemistry and subsequent "perfect heat treatment". An industrial scale manufacturer has the resources to make the most of the material they use while reducing their waste and impact on the environment. I love handmade things as much as anyone else. The cynical notion that manufactured goods are substandard by virtue of capitalism is framing politics as reason. The truth is quality can come from anywhere.

I've read a few times that LEO's use knives for weapon retention. Getting shot with their own gun happens entirely too often. Good looking knife. If the customer is happy - you did a good job!

If you take any trade that uses tools and have a look at what professional level examples of said tools will cost, you'll likely find that Blacksmithing is one of the least expensive trade to begin with! For example I'm an Electrician. A fairly full tool set for a typical Electrician is easily $400-$600. Yes it's technically possible to get the job done with homeowner grade tools but the greater durability, leverage, and precision of professional tools pays dividends when you consider that they will literally last longer than your lifetime. Assuming you don't blow the up!

I use a coal forge however if I stick the metal down low in the fire pot it scales much more rapidly. I've read this is because unburnt oxygen is oxidizing the metal. The coal solution is to put the metal higher in relation to the pot. I suspect you might have a means to adjust the air / gas balance. If so, it may need to go towards less air.

The glass thing looks like my wife's wasp trap. You put sugary water in the bottom lip of the reservoir and cork the top. The wasps fly into the center hole, get trapped and drown. Perhaps the comb shaped thing is to hold hats by the brim?

Me Six! Thanks for the information!

You could call it "Sawyer Forge" . The Oscar Mayer Weiner truck is probably not fuel efficient - Advertising has little to do with function. That said, it's not my cloths getting hung up on the saw blade so I'm free to dream. Post photos of whatever you come up with.

I've found myself struggling as well. Two things that have helped me immensely. #1 use dry coal or coke. Damp coal or coke takes it's sweet time getting to combustion. #2 build a significant fire. As Glenn put it "build a fire a Boy Scout would be proud of" a real fire as opposed to a tinder blaze gives a rookie time to get the coal going. I've tried the various paper tricks and they've never panned out. Reading Glen's post, it may be I'm working the bellows too much. I must resist the urge to bring on the hurricane! With only a few hours once a week to forge, I'm rarely patient about getting started. That said, the frustration of not getting it lit is worse. I hope this helps.

Personally I think the circular saw bent to form the table would look awesome. I recognize that it's not an economical use of quality steel. The image of the saw teeth draping each side like a table cloth is particularly appealing. Good luck!

I built a box bellows out of a single sheet of plywood, a ball of string, a yard of felt, and a box of wood screws. I learned that a 12" square piston on a 42" stroke puts out WAY more air than a hobby forge needs. If you can get 4" diameter PVC you could gang several pistons together with fairly short strokes. A very simple way to cut PVC pipe is nylon string. Just wrap it around the pipe and pull it back and forth shoe shine fashion. It cuts quite well. Another advantage of the PVC pipe is that you can buy straps, brackets, and fittings for it. Electrical conduit is roughly the same size, all the brackets will fit. To make pistons you can buy pipe caps and trim them to fit the pipe's ID. If you use a propane torch, stove, or campfire to soften the plastic, it cuts much smoother and faster. I've also ruminated about the potential of recycling HVAC round duct since that's VERY easy to come by. Gundog is right that forging is more about air pressure than speed. Blowers are way different than fans. Hand crank blowers are the ultimate evolutionary solution to your problem. For me, $100 for a hand crank blower was too much. Since this is my hobby, I can't "charge an hourly rate" to what I build. If I were trying to make production, $100.00 is no hurdle.

That's what she said!

Frank, now that you mention it, I recall seeing Peter Ross on a "Woodrwights Shop" program and his cross pein was pretty flat like yours. It just goes to show that blacksmiths always have a reason for what they do. Thank you all for your responses, it's been educational for sure!

Larry H, I'm not sure I understand your question but my hammer is a 3lb cross pein no-name brand I've had for a decade or so. The stock is a harbor freight el-cheapo ball pein that I'm forging into a tomahawk. Peacock, good analogy with the hot cut. I didn't really consider that it would be such a hinderance. J Newman, I've never had it give me a cold shut, but I can see how it could happen. Thanks all for your help.

Bigfootnampa. John B, it sounds like the main reason for the wider pein is to reduce the sharp indentations that take so much work to remove. As I think about it, I can draw out stock much faster using the rounded edge of my anvil as a bottom fuller than I can with the pein. Making tomahawks has focused my attention on the pein since I'm spreading the metal across the bar rather than along the bar. I'll redress my pein wider and see if that helps things. Bigfootnampa, you may be correct about the hammer being medium carbon. I can say that it hardens in water and it sparks like HC on a grinder. I'm not knowledgable enough to determine the difference between high and medium carbon. For the purposes of a throwing hawk, it doesn't make much difference since I temper them fairly soft to avoid chipping/spalling when they accidentally hit something hard. Thank you all for your replies.

Rich, I understand the PSI example you gave. To answer your questions, the metal is a hammer head so it's an unknown high-carbon steel. I'm using a coal forge and working the metal when it's bright orange in daylight (my smithy is outside). My anvil is a new NC Tool 70lb Short Sugar, it's been great for everything thus far. It's mounted on a firm stump and it doesn't move under the hammer. It's entirely possible that these hammer heads are red-hard. I've successfully drawn out hawks before with less difficulty. I am however, eager to learn as I've little experience compared to others. So if the wider peins are applying less pressure and are hence moving metal more slowly, What advantages does this offer? Blacksmiths seem to always have a good reason behind every aspect of their tools. What does a wider pein do better?

On Saturday I was forging hammer heads into tomahawks using my cross pein to spread out the blade area. I'm fairly new to blacksmithing and I felt like my progress was slow. After two hours of forging, I still don't have the head area spread enough. My cross pein comes to about a 1/8" radius. It's a fairly typical 3lb cross pein hammer like you'd find at a hardware store. I've noticed that several cross peins available at Centuar Forge have much wider pein's. The hofi style pein seems to be nearly flat for 1/4" with a small radius on each side. I know that everybody has their own take on things but I'm curious if the flatter pein has an advantage? Thanks,

I've made most of my handles out of hickory. I used some Brazilian Ironwood decking into a handle by laminating a couple pieces together. I learned that Brazilian ironwood is best used as a "pick axe" type handle as any attempt to drive a wedge split the wood. It's far more brittle than springy. Despite it being incredibly hard, it cuts very quickly with a surform rasp ACROSS the grain. I switch to a bench scraper that planes it smooth. Generally speaking I have very little sanding to do after that. All totaled, it's about an hour a handle. Lately I've been re-forging cheapo ball peins into hawks. I salvage the handles and re-shape them to my liking.

I searched long and hard for a solution to the same problem. I ended up getting the Grizzly. It's a 1HP motor without speed control. The 2 x 72" long belt doesn't heat up the stock anywhere near as fast as the 4x21" belt sander I used for a few projects. The no-weld plans seemed like a good option until I figured out that all in, you're spending more than the Grizzly costs. The no-weld machines are more flexible, but this is my hobby and my time to puruse it is short as it stands. I'd rather be smithing than building a grinder. I can certainly see why it appeals to so many, it just wasn't for me.

I am no match for Phil's webjitsu! Seriously Phil, thanks for putting the links up. My pot looks just like the first photo of the first link. The 2" diameter water pipe nipple is centered in a hole in the bottom of the pot coming straight up about 2". The water pipe is welded to the pot with the remainder of the nipple threaded into a Tee fitting. I believe I used a 4" long nipple for this. I've got a weighted trap door welded to the bottom of the tee so I can ash dump and the other side of the tee is tied to my bellows. I used standard black iron pipe so I could buy a cap for it. The cap has a 3/4" hole drilled in it's center. I put some anti-seize on the cap before I threaded it on and it's still easy to remove after 10+ fires. In use the clinkers flow down the fire to the cap where they flow down past the inlet and collect around the base of the pot. The clinkers just congeal together there below the fire. Sometimes small pieces of coal fall through the cap and get hung up at the tee. I just open the ash dump and poke them out from above. About the only difficult thing about this arrangement is cleaning out the pot when you're done because the dust collects with the clinkers at the bottom corners of the whole thing. I love that I don't have to fuss with clinkers at all because the design is almost entirely self cleaning.

I had a scrap 1/2" thick plate that my neighbor welded into a square/pyramidal fire pot. The difference between this an my old brake drum forge is profound because the cone shape lets the fire consolidate on it's own. The heat of the fire has a similar shape. With a brake drum the fire shape is upside down meaning there's a lot of hot coal at the bottom and very little up where you'd like to be working. Simply sticking the iron down into the coals gets you past the neutral zone which amps up the scaling on the steel every heat. It's absolutely amazing what a difference this makes. I also tried a trick Phil wrote about in that I put a water pipe 2" above the bottom of my fire pot. the pipe has a cap threaded on it with a 3/4" hole in the center. This allows clinkers to trickle down past the air inlet and collect below the fire. I don't need a clinker breaker because the fire doesn't plug up! The clinker is doughnut shaped and easy to remove once the draft is off. I don't know of a commercially made fire pot with this type of tuyere. Now that I've tried it, I don't know that I'd go back- it's really great.

Novicesmith15, you might consider making a box bellows. Mechanically they are less complicated and they take less material to make. Double bellows aren't impossible to make but it's not fun to change anything once it's assembled. In contrast, you could make a box bellows out of an old trunk or a drawer, or whathaveyou. If you google "Japanese box bellows" there's a website with pictures of a fancy one being built. The concept is simple, it's up to you how nice you can make it.

I thought I'd follow up on my earlier post since I got to try out my box bellows over the weekend. It was a learning experience for several reasons. First off, this thing pushes a HUGE volume of air. In fact, it's actually possible to blow so hard you put out the starting fire! This isn't really a big problem since sedate cycling is much less strenuous. My "cylinder" is 12"x12" with a 36" stroke. That's 3 cubic feet of air for every stroke! I had three hammer heads in the fire and all three would get red hot within minutes without tiring me out. In fact, I found the heat cycling time so reduced it reminded me of a propane forge. The fire was more than hot enough to weld. I accidentally burnt a bit of steel because it came to heat so quickly I didn't expect it. I have a 2" water pipe leading into my fire pot with a cap on it. The cap has a 3/4" hole in the center, the whole thing is about 2" above the bottom of the pot. I think I got the idea from a post Phil wrote a while back. The clinker that formed was a perfect doughnut shape resting around the base of the tuyere pipe . I couldn't be happier with how well the fire maintained heat, or how quickly I can re-heat a forging. Plus it's really nice not to have clinkers clogging up the works while working. If I were to make changes, I'd put my fire pot closer to the bellows handle so I can better see the fire whilst cycling the piston. I would also consider making a fire pot that's longer with several tuyere's like the Japanese forges -I'd probably make it with movable partitions to use only one tuyere as wanted. The reduction in back pressure on the bellows would make it easier to cycle, plus it'd be handy to heat long bars on the rare occasion that's necessary. So far this is the best bellows I've made. I can see that a crank bellows / blower is better in just about every way. I could never find one that was affordable so I went the home made route. Good luck with your project!