Here's a few things I forged the other day using LDW's V-block that forges a pentagon, candle cup, rivet, nail, and finial. I'd never thought about forging a pentagon before, but I have avoided laying out pentagons with my normal forgings. This tool just gives it to you.

Sam, I don't know if this is anything new, but I'd never thought of forging pentagons before. You could do as you suggest and make different angled V-blocks to forge other multiple faceted forms.

So the angle of this block is 108 deg?
does the size of the block determine the size of stock that can be forged in it? It looks like you are forging 5/8 or 3/4 stock, so is the v block the same size? Can the same block forge more than one size stock?

Remarkable, your method is simple and very aesthetic
thank you for sharing

My math figures that the angle is 72 degrees. 360/5=72. When I saw the title of the thread I thought that you were making a 5 sided bar. At on of our NWBA conferences there was a workshop before the conference that a group made a sculpture that cosisted of 4 or 5, 5-sided, TAPERED bars. Bend your brain around that.I didn't go to the worksop so I never saw the tooling. Needless to say, I was intrigued. Anyone got the answer?

The answer is tooling of course. I dont know how they did it, but if I had to I would build a two sided top tool to hold under the hammer that worked two adjacent sides with a third angle on top that matched the opposing flat on the lower die or anvil, the whole tool would have the taper that you wanted built in so you just keep moving it down the bar. At the narrow end you would have to have flop it upside down and use a second tool to seat down in the valley...


Super cool stuff.... It is clever and your forgings look fantastic as always...

Here's a jewel I made yesterday with Lyle's v-block

Brian in there a top tool used with the v block? or is it just carefully done with a flat faced hammer

at first I couldnt really understand how this was working
but I think I understand most of it now

your fine forging is always amazing, Hopefully I can get back to work and come down to work with you. The only positive thing is I am getting to do lots of smithing right now.

Thanks for the step by step on that, Brian. That looks very neat. I'm gonna have to try to do that.

Brian in there a top tool used with the v block? or is it just carefully done with a flat faced hammer

at first I couldnt really understand how this was working
but I think I understand most of it now

your fine forging is always amazing, Hopefully I can get back to work and come down to work with you. The only positive thing is I am getting to do lots of smithing right now.

Bryce, That one was done with the flat die of the tredle hammer, but you could also do it with the flat die of your hand hammer. You just have to hold the material at the appropriate angle.

thanks, Bryce, and I hope you do get down this way.

My math figures that the angle is 72 degrees. 360/5=72. When I saw the title of the thread I thought that you were making a 5 sided bar. At on of our NWBA conferences there was a workshop before the conference that a group made a sculpture that cosisted of 4 or 5, 5-sided, TAPERED bars. Bend your brain around that.I didn't go to the worksop so I never saw the tooling. Needless to say, I was intrigued. Anyone got the answer?

If you subtract 72 from 180 degrees you'll get the correct angle of 108 degrees.
For Regular polygons the interior angle is 180-(360/s) where s is the number of sides.

If you subtract 72 from 180 degrees you'll get the correct angle of 108 degrees.
For Regular polygons the interior angle is 180-(360/s) where s is the number of sides.

The exterior angle is 72 deg, the interior angle is 108 deg, the tool needs to be 108 deg ( I think this is right ) here is the link to the info on angles
http://www.mathopenref.com/pentagon.html
Brian can you show more pictures of the bottom tool?

wow, that is fantastic. Thanks for sharing that Brian.

Mark

Here are some pictures of the V-block Lyle and I forged last night. It is 108 degrees.

I guess I should have taken some pictures of the underneath of it. It is a hardy tool, and we offset it to be able to forge out on the edge at an angle.

Thanks Brian, that is just wicked cool! The potential is imagination inspiring!

Frosty the Lucky.

how did you make the v in the swage? was it milled or filed in, or did you make a strip with a 108 degree angle and hammer it into the die?

also to forge a taper on any angular stock with odd sides, all you need to do is forge a round taper then use the swage. but the swage either must be shallow enough to forge it at an angle, or made in a taper. for example, a triangle swage would need to tapered because it is too deep of a "v", but a pentagon probably wouldn't need to be tapered because the "v" is so shallow. hopefully this made sense.

Ed Steinkirchner

so the original swage was fabricated, welded?
Phil

LDW's or Lyle's original v-block in the first pictures was welded together. The last pictured one was forged from 1 1/4" round 4140. We first forged a bar in the original v-block to get the profile, then hammered that into the new v-block.