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I Forge Iron

Jesse James Blacksmith


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hi jesse i dont know who you are, anymore than you know who i am :) but hello and welcome, i cant see any of these videos, but id love to see your work :) a useful and a very interesting forum this is, you have obviously courted some kind of controversy - lord knows what, hope i see your work on here sometime! cant believe you lot say Meh!! my kids say that - looks so funny grown men using this word :) love it!!

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aha!! i just looked - its custom bikes and stuff - really nice :) like the radial hell or whatever - the blue chopper, and also the sour kraut vdub :) very cool and beautiful. i want to say zz top, but i guess thats wrong ! thats seeing with my uk goggles on :) please correct me ...

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Mr. James welcome to the blacksmith community. I have watched your TV show and the other guys who make custom bikes as well. You are the craftsman, they are the shoppers/assemblers. Big difference!One thing I have applauded is on nearly all the shows that have metal work featured somebody always lights an ox/acet. torch and never adds enough ox. they are making a big light for the camera, and as we all know cannot cut anything that way. I have never seen you do that. Also having been a welder many years I hadda laff when y'all were building a bike from a big truck, that HOTSHOT welder who T.I.G. welded the aluminum diesel tank, made leaks, lotsa leaks! You gave him silicone caulk to fix it instead of letting him patch the welds and possibly starting a big fire. HA!!

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Welcome Jesse !! Lookin forward to seen your work. I echo what some of the others have said that I like your work and craftmanship that I have seen. It will be cool to see what stuff you come up with using that goliath hammer :) !!! Again welcome to IFI !!!

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Well, I may have been wrong in my earlier assessment that your entry into the fraternity of smiths was not big deal. Some one found out what I did a couple of days ago and the first thing they did was mention Jesse James. I'm glad you're doing decent work.

I considered stretching the truth and telling him Jesse and I were online BFFs, but I had to settle saying I sat next to the guy who sold Jesse his power-hammer at a blacksmithing demo two summers ago. :-p

Cute press.

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Hey Jesse, glad to see you work hot metal....... :D I don't care for motorcycles much, classic trucks are more my speed. Hey, to each their own...... Hmmm, I never thought of adding blacksmith details to one of my classic trucks, I should explore this idea. Maybe custom door handles or something. What do you think?????

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That's a sweet press, makes it look like you are just squishing clay! Need to hook up a foot treadle to it thou.

My TV is only hooked up to the dvd player, so I'm in no position to comment on whatever "controversies" are out there, but it's great that smithing is getting some wider coverage. They say there's no such thing as bad press... Maybe it's time to raise my prices ;)

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Still looks hungry! Squashing from the end has more dramatic results, you can try different heat ranges as well (quench one end, middle, etc.) Also you can put design in the sides, Brad Silberburg work is amazing in this way. You may want to take inventory of the shop cause once you start squashing, things seem to come up missing :wacko:

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MANALIVE ! ! ! The things I could squish with that ! ....frankyluckman, practice on the Jigs thing if making any two or more of something alike,...but then again you might already know that..............that press rocks. It looks like you"re taking to it, like a duck to water. You have always thought like a blacksmith, realize it or not, but does it feel like you found something that was missing ?

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This in an interesting thread.
Thanks everyone.


We don't get more than a few TV channels & none of the fancy ones, so I haven't ever seen Jesse's work before.


The motorcycles I've owned have been stock & just bolting on chrome doesn’t appeal to me.
BUT WOW that's something else- I do like the airplanes too.
That's beautiful & unique- It made me look for more.

Jesse not only has great fab skills, he has the eye for nice lines

Until someone has tried to dream, draw, design, and build something that works well and looks good; they have no idea what it takes.



I agree that Damascus/pattern welded steel will be interesting for you.
Have a look at what Burt Foster is doing with that and san mai
He does this with different steel alloy's and nickel foil.
http://www.ammoland....Burt-Foster.jpg

http://www.burtfoste...inate_popup.htm

http://www.bladeforu...alists-Selected

It seems to me like “flames” in steel are just a step beyond that.

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I don't really have any intended projects for it. Right now My head is going crazy with ideas of all the stuff I can make. Today just made a set of 3/8 stainless knuckles to mount a set of E&J headlights on my 1932 ford.


So you are blacksmithing stuff for your classic car, cool. I thought you might. One of my classic trucks is a 1966 C60 2 ton, it's going to be my blacksmith shop truck when I build my new shop. I'm thinking of stuff to make for this truck. Nothing fancy, more tools and hardware. But for my other "show" trucks, I don't know??? Maybe detail stuff like cool shift stick handles or something......... Do you have any pictures of the knuckles you just made?
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Sweet press Jessie!

I ran flames down a piece of steel once a couple or 3 years ago, never managed to get them looking 'lit' like this again. Its was 3 steels, one of them 4% chrome - it should never have welded, but I diddnt know that at the time :D , of course it destroyed itself in heat treat and this shoddy photo is all thats left in its memory!

feathers_3.jpg

edit - this pic was just a rough ground billet - hence all the muck on it, it etched like that un-heat treated at 120 grit..... would have been nice finished..

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