My first blacksmith project

[oljoe]

I have forged many knives but this is my first true blacksmith project. I forged out half penny scrolls and connected everything with rivets, except the FOSTER and I MIG welded that.
Tell me what you think.

[Sam Salvati]

WOW, great job! Love the letters. The penny scrolls look VERY good.

[Alan DuBoff]

Wow, great project, and I spotted that power hammer back there...you already have a power hammer and this is your first project? Kudos to 'ya! :cool:

[oljoe]

Thanks for the nice comments.
I got the power hammer about two years ago. It has made a lot of knives.

This is the first project, other than a knife, that I have done and it was all done by hand.

Thanks again for the Kudos.

Joe

[Brian C.]

I think it looks great. :)

[Sam Salvati]

Thanks for the nice comments.
I got the power hammer about two years ago. It has made a lot of knives.

This is the first project, other than a knife, that I have done and it was all done by hand.

Thanks again for the Kudos.

Joe

Great work, how long were you working steel before you made the FOSTER thing?

[Strine]

Originally Posted by oljoe
Tell me what you think.

I begin here with the greatest trepidation; I want to start a revolution. A recent thread asking for ideas for 2007 discussed a critique section of the forum at my instigation. The idea of a new section was pooh-hoo-ed by Admin in favour of using the current forums to give honest constructive criticism rather than the all to common patronising, pats on the back remarks.

I'm taking Admin up on this suggestion with the following.

In my opinion oljoe's sign falls well short of displaying competent use of forging skill. I understand it is is a "first blacksmithing project" and so the above remark is probably expected. A number of areas I feel need looking at.

1. I think the layout would look better if the bottom area was slightly taller than the top. Having the areas equal in height makes the Foster appear to sit lower (and therefor lower in significance in the overall design). Golden ratios might be worth considering here.

2. I think it would look better with heavier stuff. The material used seems a little flimsy for the size of the project.

3. Your scrolls must appease your eye in the first instance as must mine. I like a reverse scroll to not have a straight section between the two end elements. I also prefer, or rather insist that all lines within a scroll element flow in a contiuous line. There is considerable disjointedness (if that's not a word it is now) as your eye follows the lines of the scrolls to the penny. Which reminds me, pennies are round.

4. The Foster round bit should also be round. It's the smooth lines thing again.

5. I'm not sure where you live but either the telegraph poles are crooked or the sign is. I'm not sure either whether this criticism is applicable in a blacksmithing sense. I suppose it is if you include installation in the whole process. Of course there is camera distortion I can't account for which might be throwing my view point all out of kilter

6. All things considered, for a first effort it is a reasonable attempt at 'true blacksmithing albeit perhaps a little adventurous. But who am I to judge? Perhaps a bit of practice with penny scrolls would do wonders for the overall look of the sign.

Please accept these comments in the spirit they were given ie in helping a fellow smith who is at where we've all been at at some stage.

Oh btw Foster has an S on the end but I much prefer Victoria Bitter.;)

[irnsrgn]

Oljoe, I commend you for very nice work for your first try at Smithing. Scrolls are not the easiest thing to master and your ability will increase the more you make.

The frame of a project is the foundation that actually holds a project together and the scrolls etc are just enhancements that make the frame pleasing to the eye, and focus attention to some particular feature.

When looking at a building we will focus our attention at the bottom and work up. When looking at an art form it normally is smaller so we focus our attention at the top and work down. In this instance the name FOSTER is the most important aspect as that is what we are looking for in this instance. We are looking for a definite place and the name clearly tells us this is the place. So it should be at or near the top.

Form follows function. This particular piece has two functions, it denotes who lives here and it holds the mailbox at the prescribed height. The scrolls just catch the eye and make it focus on the Name FOSTER.

In my youth I made most of my scrolls from flat iron also. Looking from any angle but straight on there appears to be some mass to the scrolls but straight on it appears as just thin lines. I have since gone to making my scrolls of square stock to make them appear to have more mass with the same weight.

As this is a new installation and the power poles are annegoggling this does make the piece look out of place, but it is in the same plane as the large transmission line in the background. Surrounding do make some things look out of place at times. But in this overall view it makes the single power poles stand out as out of kelter in this instance to my eye.

Keep up the good work and all you can do is improve with practice.

You will always be pround of this project and rightly should be as it is your first endeavor other than making knives in this field.

Respectfully

Irnsrgn

[Ed Thomas]

Oljoe: Thank you for sharing your work with us. Strine is braver than I am. Although I'm known for speaking my mind (polite for "he's an obnoxious fluxhead"), I worried that saying anything other than praise might scare you off. Since he already took care of that, I'll hope you read his and my comments and come right back for more abus... I mean help.

My biggest suggestion is to find samples of REAL forged work. Really GOOD forged work. The Dona Melach books are pretty decent references as a start. Your sign hanger looks as though the majority of your sources for ironwork were fabricated. As I've said before, the fabricators try to copy forged work... not the other way around.

Strine said it very well: Use thicker stock so the view from the side is more full. Fabricators can't make good scrolls. We can. One attribute of scrolling is continuous gentle curving... as though the steel is actually in motion or organic.

Don't mix and match if you can help it. Having a mechanically joined frame with obviously welded guts sort of snags on the mental eye. There is nothing wrong with fabricating but it doesn't usually mix well visually with forged work. There is also no such thing as a part of a project that isn't seen.

That was an ambitious first forged work and I don't blame you for using the welder for the part that is tough. But it really is possible to forge and mechanically join the letters in a variety of very pleasing ways.

The bars on the circle could have had tenons that passed through the circle and were peined over. Every time one element of metal meets another is an opportunity to do something pleasing to the eye, and something harmonious to the piece. Every time you simply glue it in place is an apology.

Again, thank you for sharing with us.

[Ed Thomas]

Oljoe: It is a tribute to the complexity of your first work that we can come up with so much advise. So please consider it a little bit of flattery if I rachet this up a notch and talk about design some more.

I am going to disagree with Irnsgrn on scrolls and frames. In forged work, scrolls are an integral part of the structure and just as important to the functional integrity of architectural work as the straight frame pieces. In instances such as yours, they should be the triangulation elements that keep the frame rigid and prevent it from racking. Structural members developed ornamentally in all sorts of fanciful ways without ever relinquishing their function. Scrolls evolved from their functional roots.

On the other hand, fabricators treat scrolls as icing and decorative tack on ornamentation, partly because welding has replaced a lot of the need for all those cross members. They are trying to mimic elegant forged work with glue. The only problem is... they LOOK like tacked on pasties when they are treated that way. If you think of them as organic structural elements, all of the sudden the design incorporates them in a MUCH more harmonious way.

Again, thanks for offering this work for our study.

[Ten Hammers]

Yeah, what Junior said. :)

[oljoe]

Strine,
No trepidation needed (for me anyway). That is what these forums are for, to discuss blacksmithing and I can use some constructive criticism.

I remember reading about golden ratios, but most of it has been crowded out by other things that I need to remember. It needs another look.

After I got the thing built I noticed that it wasn

[Strine]

On the scrolls Oljoe, jigs and tooling are fine. I think they use them a lot in China but the crunch will come when you have to make the scrolling jig. Darn it, it's a scroll :confused:

Scrolling a length of bar for me is a matter of feeding the end of the suitably shaped bar...fish tail, taper, point... over the far edge of the anvil and hitting it with hammer in a continual feed continual hit manner. The amount of hit and the amount sticking over the edge very much depends on, well, just about everything. Practice will get you there in the end. Once you can make the jig perfectly (the shape of the scroll will take on the shape of the jig) seems to me you wont need the jig .

With the penny, treat the end of the skinny part as the 'end' of the bar not the penny. This means your first tool will be something to replace the far edge of the anvil with something to get into the tight spot....sort of a well curved over hardy that comes to a reasonably fine edge.

That's how I'd do it anyway

[easilyconfused]

Scrolling a length of bar for me is a matter of feeding the end of the suitably shaped bar...fish tail, taper, point... over the far edge of the anvil and hitting it with hammer in a continual feed continual hit manner.

:confused: Do you mean hitting it in successive spots along the scroll?
One tip I got told and works for me is to try to avoid hitting the same spot twice in succession. This prevents flattening in one spot. I've also found that using relatively quicker taps in successtion prevents flattening too.

Like Strine said, practice is important. Scrolls require a feel for how the metal moves unlike any other project I've attempted. I have yet to be able to reproduce a scroll without a jig or more time than I have to spend.

[Strine]

I s'pose you're trying to reacreate the forces applied to material being fed through a roller to make a circle. In that setup the metal is fed evenly through the machine and the hammer, i.e. the top roller hits, i.e. makes contact with the metal and thus the anvil, i.e. bottom rollers at infintesimly small increments along the metal. The top roller is offset from the bottom roller as the hammer is to the anvil hence it curls up to make a circle. But our problem is we usually don't want a circle we want a spiral or an ever increasing radius.
So we have to feed our metal over the anvil at increasing increments and hit with increasing force to overcome the generally tapered end of the piece. The maths would be bad enough for a circle but horrendous for a spiral (scroll) which brings us back to... doh a dear, no that's wrong it brings us back to practise practise practise. But once you've mastered it's easy...like everything else.