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I Forge Iron

Hi-Speed Nails + hammer swing math


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Incredeble! What propted you to make so many nails?

They're great practice and warm up work, been spending more time working to sell my house than smiting lately and they help get my arm back. Also I use them in projects and sell them at events but even after a few hundred of them they are still getting better as I practice. You can never have too many nails!

Made two sizes but the overall uniformity could be better
post-7113-0-14820800-1363353328_thumb.jp
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OOoohhh!  I LOVE nails!  Nice nails dude!  I see a lot of crappy nails made as demos... but yours are NICE!  As a woodworker/carpenter/artist I am amazed at the fine performance of my handmade nails!  They're not your hardware store nails at all!  Vastly stronger grabs and awesome looking as well!  Yours have nice long thin tapers and good sized handsome heads... what I like about my own nails!

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One suggestion is that I learned from an old video to just nick my stock on one side and then cut mostly through from the opposite side.  Then you can bend the nail at right angles to the hinge cut making it safer to heat for the heading as you can keep the thin part of the nail away from the hotter areas of the fire!  This is especially helpful when I am making nails with larger than normal heads, which I do sometimes for decorative purposes.

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Thanks for the luck Jim, Never tried the five, mostly just threes and fours.

 

BF Thanks for that tip, I can see how that would be handy. I hated bent shanks with my first few nail-header so the next few I made I hot fit the bottom end into the pritchel first so I can "set" the tool while I work and keep things from tweaking.

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I think for that one I started with 3/4 round, upset one end to give me some mass. Got a real nice heat of the upset section then hot fit it to my pritchel almost like crafting a hardy tool. From the top I used my E-head nail punch from my shoeing tools to give me the proper square shape with a slight taper, this was only about 3/16-1/4 deep. From the under side I picked a slightly larger diameter bit than the desired nail shank and drilled till I hit the bottom of my punched section. This way I get a snug square grip under the head but the rest of the shank is free to drop in and not catch the sides when worked why in my videos the nails drop loose with only a slight tap if at all. Hope that makes sense lol 

 

post-7113-0-75214200-1363459174_thumb.jp

image shape is a bit exaggerated 

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Even though I'm sure y'all know, a little trick to cut some time: have two or three pieces of stock heating, and that way you don't have as much down time in between heats. Work through the line left to right or right to left, so you know what has been used, and to avoid burning your metal.

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I think for that one I started with 3/4 round, upset one end to give me some mass. Got a real nice heat of the upset section then hot fit it to my pritchel almost like crafting a hardy tool. From the top I used my E-head nail punch from my shoeing tools to give me the proper square shape with a slight taper, this was only about 3/16-1/4 deep. From the under side I picked a slightly larger diameter bit than the desired nail shank and drilled till I hit the bottom of my punched section. This way I get a snug square grip under the head but the rest of the shank is free to drop in and not catch the sides when worked why in my videos the nails drop loose with only a slight tap if at all. Hope that makes sense lol 
 
attachicon.gifheader .jpg
image shape is a bit exaggerated 


Great looking tool mate! Really like that idea.

Andy
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