Walking my way to a rubix twist

[Jack-O-Lantern]

So I saw this done and really wanted to give it a shot. The smith that I saw used a short wide chisel. I tried and and my chisel bounced all over and marred up the spike nasty style. I then tried my foot long inch wide chisel and it worked really well for me. I don't know if the method is called "walking", but what I mean is when you scoot the chisel along whatever line your working. Dig? Anyway, I thought that method would be much harder but for me it was easier and helped me pull off this.

 

[DSW]

Nice. I hadn't seen it done quite that way before. Most times I've seen it they "cubed" the whole thing. I never really cared for that look. Yours with the "solid" sides is a nice contrast.

[matto]

You can make a walking chisel, kind of like a veining chisel. You just take a chisel and round up the corners to make it look like a crescent moon. That way as you work down your stock you can rock it into place. Just remember to hit it when it is in the vertical position. Then rock and move. Shape should look like this " ) ".

[billyO]

Looks good. Fun to see it come together at the final twist, eh?

Not a critique, but a suggestion that I figured out when I was doing a number of these. Every how-to I've read about these says something to the effect of: "cut the cubes with a hacksaw...", but I found that if you lay out all the cuts with a cold chisel prior to heating the bar (even the longitudinal cut), then with a good hot cut chisel, after you walk the long line down the bar on all 4 sides, with the bar on the diamond set the cubes where the cold chisel marked on the corner cutting down to the longitudinal line, and after you've cut the cubes on the diamond hot, you go back to the anvil and finish the cubes on the flats. Oh yeah, make sure your hot cut chisel has an even grind on both sides.

Doing the cubes hot gives a bevel on them and feels a little better in the hand.



PS - If you do a better job cutting the cubes evenly than I did on this test piece it'll look better.

[Jack-O-Lantern]

Thank you kindly gents. I cut the cubes with a grinder. I don't have a vice so intricate stuff is all that much more of a challenge. I pulled of the twist with my plier tongs and a monkey wrench rigged to my weird 7 holed anvil. I will say that figuring this stuff out with sub par tools teaches you quickly. I cant wait to get big boy tools. Or make em. And Billy that Bull Rubix is awesome. I have yet to successfully pull off a forge weld. I use charcoal and really wanna get the good stuff.

[beammeupscotty]

I use this twist quite often on my bottle openers and I am also of the school of hacksawing, rather than cutting the cubes with a chisel.  They come out much crisper looking that way.  Having done a lot of these twists, here are a couple of tips I can give you.

 

I always set the area to receive the twist off from the rest of the stock by scoring around the perimeter of the stock with a hacksaw at both ends of where the twist will reside, then I cut that a bit deeper with a chisel while the stock is hot.  In the case of these openers, I use that score to index my hacksaw when I cut the excess off.  In the attached photo you can see the score around the other end of the twist.

 

After cutting those points of demarcation as well as the grooves down the length and the cubes themselves, but before twisting, I clean the surface of the area to be twisted up with a smooth file on all four sides.  This will make the cubes  much smoother and cleaner.

 

If you want to progress as a smith, you really need to get yourself a leg vise.  It is an essential piece of equipment for a blacksmith.

[Ironman50]

It really looks great, I can hardly make that, I guess.