August 8, 200520 yr New thread for tooling: The creaser is nothing more than a railroad spike flattened into a chisel shape with a piece of flat stock welded on the side to provide a stop. Can make several of these pretty quickly for a variety of sizes or put some time and thought into a nice adjustable one - you can see which direction I went. This idea came out of Otto Schmirler's book Werk and Werkzeug des Kuntschmiedes. The rope tool is the head of a railroad spike forged into a rectangle. I used a small jeweler's hack saw to mark the lines (could also use a cold chisel or scribe the lines) and then filed out each mark with a 6" fine cut. One could make a right and left - but I only have the one tool, so applying it to both sides of a piece will show results in the same direction. In use, you heat the stock, apply the creaser for whatever length you like and then come back with the rope tool. Don't worry too much about overlapping the little ridges, it will look appropriately random and the average person won't see any mismatch.
August 8, 200520 yr Hello, I not sure how the adjustible chaser works. Any way you could post a picture of how?
August 8, 200520 yr Author I don't have an adjustable creaser but there are several ways if I was gonna make one. The first one that comes to mind is to drill a hole in the chisel, insert a bolt and stack washers between chisel and material stop, then tighten with a nut. I'm sure there are other ways to skin that cat...
August 8, 200520 yr Author No, they are not hardened since all I hit is hot steel. However, they are WC/HC spikes so higher carbon than mild steel and resist deformation a little better. If you want to harden a spike, try heating to a dark, pulsing, cherry red (sounds like one of those Internet spam sites, doesn't it?) and quench in water. It should almost slide a file at that point and you can draw back to whatever hardness you want. It must be a WC or HC spike - mild steel spikes won't get hard enough.
August 8, 200520 yr I'm sure there are other ways to skin that cat... ...than choking it with butter. Sorry to interupt, I just had to finish that one off :wink: It's something my father said often. Fifty years on I still can't make sense of it.
August 9, 200520 yr Hello, Ok, but on the chaser you have, I'm not understanding how you use it. Do you have a way to show a step by step of how you use it? I'm sure its simple but sometimes you gotta bounce a hammer off of the side of my head before I get it! :shock:
August 9, 200520 yr meco3hp: Here are some shots I posted before this board went down. At the time, Hollis and I were sharing information on tongs more than the tooling. As you can see, the tongs are designed to hold the tool easily for use under the treadle hammer.Groovy Tool held in TongsGroovy Tool Getting in the GrooveGroovy Tool Showing Its Profile As you can see, the long edge of the tool is used as a guide on the forged object. It is relieved everywhere so there are no sharp cuts as you move it along. If you go deep enough in this one, you can see that it will form a rounded edge. I usually prefer to make separate tools for separate jobs, rather than one adjustable tool. The adjustable stuff just never seems QUITE right. I like to make tools like this if I have the time. But if you are in a hurry, you can just weld a guide bar on the side of a cutter and it will do the same thing.
August 9, 200520 yr Hello, Now I see, I thought that might be what you would be trying to do with a tool like that!
August 9, 200520 yr Author The nice thing about welding a guide bar to a grooving tool is that you can quickly and very accurately set the distance between the two, i.e., if the border needs to be 3/8, set the bar to the creaser accordingly and weld it - maybe not pretty but done. I like Ed's version but it probably took longer to make than simply flattening a spike and welding a bar on the side - course, Ed's a pretty fair smith and quick to boot so it'd be a good race... BTW, I have many pairs of tongs shaped like what Ed shows for holding. All my set tools are approximately the same length and fit in one of three different size tongs - depending on what tool is used. I much prefer this over either punching a hole for a handle or wrapping wire or fullering a groove, etc., etc.
August 9, 200520 yr Hollis: I doubt I could get that tool made in even twice the time. But thanks for the kind words. You probably remember that I made the tool for two reasons. For one thing, it was to show what could be done with one of those RR springs I got from JerryV. But the real reason to make a tool like that is if the top of the groove matters. In my case, I had something in mind where I wanted to drive the tool clear down to get the 1/2 round trim. If you weld a guide on, you can't use it that way. As it turns out, I use the tool as a grooving tool more than I expected when I made it.
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