Forged Skulls in a row.

[colorblind72]

Been working on some more skulls.

I am working on a way to do them both vertical and horizontal on the bar.

I messed up the vertical ones.

Forged the last little bit to a tapered point just for practice.

All feedback welcome

thanks for looking.

[Chinobi]

looks like some kind of canibal tiki flatware :) awsome styling on them too!  those look pretty vertical to me, so im assuming you meant that you messed up the horizontal ones?  if you want to make some oriented 90 degrees to the length of the bar you could start with a piece of flat bar (say 1/2 or 3/4 by 1/4) and fuller in a large-ish groove between where the jaws will be and a smaller groove opposite the large one to distinguish the top of the skulls.

 

when you work those, do you do it assembly line style where you do the same step three times along the bar before moving to the next step, or do you finish out one skull before moving to the next?

[toolish]

They would make great chopsticks or sticks for female hair buns. Would prob get a good price for them too

[colorblind72]

We were talking about them as chopsticks. You would need strong hands, they are fairly heavy.

Hair sticks would be cool.

@Chinobi, yep I messed up the horizontal ones. I used a tool I made a while back for my PH. It is a double bevel cutter that comes into square shoulders like you are describing. So If you can imagine this. There would be a cut which would partition the skulls and then square shoulders for the sides of the jaw. The issue I ran into is the bar was not tall enough in the X axis and then the material left for the skulls was so small that punching the eyes was almost impossible. They ended up too close together.

Under the PH I do the same operation in a row.

Once I'm punching and have moved to the vice I punch whatever section is loosing heat the quickest, because the material is so small it losses heat really really fast. So I cut the mouth slit on all of them first to give me a base for building the rest of the skull. Then I pin punch the eyes. Then I pin punch the nose then I widen the eyes with a large round tapered punch which pushes they eye sockets outward. Then I set a deep punch mark into the back of the eye socket with a long slightly tapered punch. 

Then I chisel the teeth in and lastly I take the pin punch and punch the nose hole again. Flicking the tool upward after the hammer strike to pull the bridge of the nose up.

Usually they are done at that point. I make and adjustment I see and then wire wheel them hot.

Thanks for the feedback.

Any ideas for making them into "Things" I'm interested in.

I'm going to do a bracelet and as the stems for the other rose/skull projects I'm doing I think they would be cool.

JJ

[Chinobi]

cool, thanks for the step by step :)

 

spent a good portion of my drive home meditating on what that process would entail too :) if i remember/take the time later i might throw together a sketch and some notes so i can test it out this weekend and ill put a copy up here too.

 

i figured the horizontal set could make a decent belt buckle, or if you did a long enough set you could bend it into a ring and use it as a hot pot riser, or with the addition of a dished plate inside could be a nifty bowl or ash tray (valleys between skulls would work well for that actually).

 

maybe give it a try on the anvil face for the punching, i find that the vice robs me of heat much faster than the anvil.  you will still have to vice it up to open up the eyes and pop up the bridge of the nose though.

 

could probably go on but i gotta get moving again, happy hunting :)

[colorblind72]

Very cool. Post whatever you end up making.

I can post a pic journal of the process.

I need to build an anvil stand for my Mousehole so I can make a third hand. Right now I'm working on a post anvil and the workpiece will fall off etc.

I like the ideas for production pieces. I could defintely do them bigger and make belt  buckles pretty easy.

[Chinobi]

ok im putting this up here for the moment 'as is'.  iv run out of lunch break so i cant explain the insanity it contains for another few hours.  to keep you from going crosseyed the proposed order of operations would be: A J B C D H I F G

B as diagrammed wont work and needs to be modified by J or somethign similar

E and K wont work

 

[Chinobi]

bah, my edit button has wandered away again...

 

so to try and keep the orientations clear and consistent i drew in coordinate directions (X, Y, and Z) to help identify when the stock has been rotated or turned.  places where it says "Z UP" means the Z axis is pointing up from the page towards your face, "Z DOWN" means pointing down into the page towards the floor.

 

(A) so im planning to start with 1/2" square bar because i think it will let me parse up the mass a little better than starting with a 1.25x.25 flat bar and maybe cutting it in half to .75x.25

 

(J and B) i dont know how well all of this will work but the intent is to flatten out half or so of the bar down to the thickness of the main body of the skull, leaving a bulge at full thickness for use later in the jaw.  i think if i just try to flatten it out directly im going to either cause a bulge as drawn that is going to be tricky to try and redistribute, or straight up cause it to roll/fold on itself because i would be trying to work closer than half the width to the edge.  so i think if i break the corner beneath it (J) enough i can give the mass above a place to go without causing it to bulge too much.

 

© im going to eventually need to cut through the thick part and im pretty sure if it isnt pre-cut from this direction its just going to stretch rather than cut

 

(D) lightly nick grooves in with a chisel so later tools can be indexed rapidly and accurately on both sides without needing to eyeball it

 

(E) bad, if i cut full depth all at once and later spread the jaw i think the jaws are going to end up too tight, need to try and force the individual skulls to separate a little more (H and I)

 

(H) i wrote fuller, but i think a chisel or some other V shaped tool would be more accurate.  cut halfway into the mass left for the jaw, leaving angled sides (these become the sides of the jaw)

 

(I) set a triangular tool on the anvil face, secure with hold-down or similar, triangle should be the same size as the notch required, so the bar will sit flush against the anvil face when fully notched.  use a somewhat narrow V tip or rounded tip chisel/fullering chisel in the grooves from the previous step, drive in until the groove reaches the edge where the extra mass blends back into the flat part of the bar and the opposing triangular notch has been fully developed.  this should cause the metal to spread in the direction of the arrows shown, causing the skulls to separate a little.  there may be potential for problems here if the force from the thin top tool doesnt transfer completely and the bottom triangle doesnt get notched all the way.

 

(F) use crosspein or the corner of a crosspein to knock down the previously isolated mass for the jaws, much like fullering perpendicularly to the length of a bar to thin and increase length while minimally increasing the width.  this will elongate the jaw to (hopefully) the right proportions, and redistributing the extra mass will (also hopefully) straighten out the angled sides.  otherwise theres no good way to gain access to the sides of the jaws to try and dress them, perhaps if i sandwich it between a couple pieces of bar stock that stick out beyond the piece and try to hammer them together

 

(G) home free here to punch and chisel in facial features.  define lines between skulls first and deeply enough that the bulges from punching eyes have some place to go without becoming siamese, put something the correct thickness behind the jaws when chiseling in the jawline and teeth to provide support.  the edge of the anvil could be used (also the vise) but trying to hold the stock at the edge and work on it without it moving around seems a lot more difficult than just laying it flat on the face.  and as discussed earlier the vise is a heat-thief.

 

(K) thought about isolating the mass for the jaws via directly fullering a groove down the center of the stock early on, but i couldnt reconcile a way to get such a thin lip to forge flat without first deeply breaking the corner beneath it, which then presents problems supporting for the fuller, and basically becomes a sloppy version of (J) anyway.

 

well, if you made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read through.  if you see anything that leaps out at you as being overtly boneheaded or wrong please feel free to call me out on it (nicely :) ) so i can adjust accordingly.  Ill be forging on sunday (finally!), but there is a curriculum project, so if it is simple or one of the projects i have already completed thats more time available, otherwise ill try and prototype as much of this as i can with whatever time i have left.

 

thanks for lookin!

[colorblind72]

I will reread this several times in reference with your diagram. Which I really like and am impressed by.

It seems to me that operation (F) is where your make or break is so to speak. Because it looks to me that this is where you are creating the elongation of the jaws.

The major problem that I have had is creating a cheek bone. Everything else is just using your chisels appropriately.

What I did the last time I make these is like your operations (D) and (E) I made an inlet to provide spade for the jaws and eyes.

And instead of focusing on narrowing the jaw to create a cheek I did a, pin punch with a punch that was very sharp and had approx. a 45 degree bevel, then I made a deep punch in the eye hole with a long punch that was approx. 80 degree bevel, then I moved the eye sockets out which basically makes a cheek out of the inlet cut from your operation (D) and (E). That punch is long and has a 15-20 degree bevel. That is really the most important punch for creating very big and wide eye sockets and on the opposite a cheek.

I then go back and forth with the 80 degree punch and the 15 degree punch. All of these are cheap harbor freight cold chisels/punches.

If you could post pics of your operation that would be really helpful.

Thanks for the feedback and interest.

JJ

[Chinobi]

Thanks, lot of inspiration from diagrams and sketches from other members, with a bit of engineering detail added, because well, im an engineer and i like detail :)

 

i kinda prefer to have a thinner jaw relative to the rest of the skull because it feels more in proportion, but theres no one correct way to go about it :)

 

i usually keep my camera in my back pocket while im working so ill try and put it to good use, and remember that its in there BEFORE i put my flat file in the same pocket :-D

 

hopefully it can be added to the list of successful processes rather than the 'lessons learned' pile  :wacko:

[colorblind72]

I'm sure you will get it pretty quick.

The photos would help.

I appreciate the diagram but school is long behind me and I didn't go very far in it.

thanks again.

JJ

[Chinobi]

class project took most of the class, and i need to make a new chisel to spread the skulls apart, they didnt have anything on hand that would work because it needs to have a rounded tip instead of a regular point to prevent stress cracking in the valley.

 

so ill have to get back to you on this one in a while. =/

[colorblind72]

Sounds good

[Frosty]

As soon as you guys get a fool  proof method worked out I'll give it a slash. <grin>

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Chinobi]

Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool :D

[Frosty]

Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool :D

Paraphrasing Heinlein at me? Got it in one.

 

Atta boy!

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Chinobi]

i always had that chalked up to murphy, ill have to look it up formally :)

[colorblind72]

Brilliant!

[Frosty]

It's in "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long". "Nothing is foolproof, fools are too clever." Robert A.Heinlein.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[colorblind72]

So I finished this one tonight. I have been using a fuller tool under the power hammer  to make the cheek to jaw transitions and then developing the eye sockets and cheek bones with the punches.

[Chinobi]

slick :) nice twist too, very tribal looking

[colorblind72]

Getting there. Got to get back to the horizontal attempt

[colorblind72]

I have posted a tutorial here.

http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index.php?showtopic=26388&p=249031

[Ironman50]

Cool pieces! Awesome skull designs and will be great as hair sticks or will come very handy as ice picks. Great job!

[FireCat]

wow.. very nice work....forge work like that inspires me to get my butt back at it ....