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I Forge Iron

My first forge welded hatchet


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I made this from an old piece of wrought iron found in our old barn and a piece of farrier rasp forge welded as the bit. I was my first time working with wrought iron and my first successful forge weld. It was a learning experience, wrought iron is a different beast all together, kept splitting when I let the temp drop and had a heck of a time with the bit weld. Was a great learning experience and look forward to making some more hatchets that are a little more refined! The handle was an old piece of wheel barrow handle. The edge was quenched in oil and differentially tempered. It feels nice to handle and is actually quite useful for a little guy. I am working with a propane forge and used Borax as a flux.

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I ditto the, "NOT TOO SHABBY" it looks pretty darned good. My only suggestion is to make a drift the size and shape of your handle stock and use it as an internal mandrel to forge a tighter eye. wrought can be an . . . interesting material to forge. My experience with it is limited but it welds the mistakes back up easily enough. Hot HOT HOT is the secret I believe. The tongue oil lent good color and character to the haft.

 

Well done.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thanks guys, I used it today to chop some small branches and it seems to work quite nicely. Frosty, great idea, I never thought of that and I just made a drift before I did the hatchet! Definitely need to try it again.
Eddie, once you get a weld to stick you will be very impressed, I know what it's like to try and not have it work. I was working on a wrapped farrier rasp hawk and the weld would not work, still have not gone back to it.

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