Thanks for that information! I'll keep that in mind after I get a few more projects under my belt (and now that the weather is getting nicer, that should happen soon!)

I made these for digging Ramps but could also be used for shucking oysters.

Ramp season is almost here I'm ready for some fresh ones.

 

Railroad spikes are cheap and fun to practice skills with.

What is a Ramp?

A Ramp is a wild onion of sorts. They mostly only grow in the mountains

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Regarding ramps - not just in the mountains. I'm in Northern Indiana a long way from the mountains and they are common in my woods. I read once that  the name "Chicago" is derived from an Indian word meaning something to the effect of "place of the stinking onions!"

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I made a nice lever handle for the "Long, Long, Trailer"!  I left the head on to keep the look, but forged the sharp edges back to soft rounded curves. 

First attempt making a corkscrew for a new client that provided me with a bucket of spikes pulled from a decommissioned line by their business. I'll probably have to make some adjustments on the helix. He wanted me to make some items where you could recognize that it was once a spike, starting with a corkscrew.

This is just a prototype, I watched a Mark Aspery video after the fact where he shows a method way better than "mine". Still kind of cool for a proof of concept. Gives me an excuse to go pick up a bottle of wine for *ahem* testing purposes.

    

Cooper approves.

 

One way to make an even helix is to wind it in conjunction with a "helper" rod, the helper rod providing even spacing.  Then reheat and unwind the helper rod leaving the primary in an even helix.  Helps to have the primary longer than needed so you can get a proper hold on it when winding. Trim it cold and point the end.

I was thinking of making something like that for making batches going forward. Especially after fiddling around with this one trying to even things up after wrapping it on a piece of round stock without any sort of guide. I am going to try Mark Aspery's method of closing up the coil on the step and then wedging it open with a chisel and compare that to just wrapping it around a form as you describe and compare which is faster/looks better. 

You got me thinking of how to mount the helper rod to the interior mandrel so you could wrap fast and then "unscrew" the mandrel and go on to the next one. Unfortunately most bolts the appropriate diameter have much finer threads.

I was thinking either tack weld the wrapped helper rod to the mandrel at either end or maybe even an appropriately sized drill bit.... But I don't know if the drill bit would give a nice round twist considering the cross section. It was just something that came to mind. 

I was thinking some careful tig welding...

That'd probably be better. I have a little flux core hobby welder, gotta work with what you got. With a little grinding/filing I'm sure it'll be adequate. However we are perhaps a little off topic from RR spikes.. I'll let you know how it goes if I go that route.

I like the idea of the split head; very creative.

use a lag screw for the form. They have a wide pitch to the thread.  Start at the head end and wind towards the point so it is more centered and the lag can be easily unscrewed.

Good suggestion; you may want to cut off the tapered part of the screw so it doesn't accidentally get used.  (I'm still amazed at how shocked some students get when I tell them to modify a tool to work better for them.  Over a million years of tool using hominids in my family tree; I'm happy that some of us are still banging the rocks together!)

Banging rocks is fun, do you have a preference? Most of my experience is with obsidian from the beds along 395 in California. Locally I have some so so chert but haven't really looked. 

I like the lag screw tip I'll have to give it a try. It's pretty challenging to forge and true up a cork screw on the anvil face.

Frosty The Lucky.

Well I used to live fairly near Flint Ridge in Ohio and I have a bunch of low grade agate slabs; probably from Brasil. However in general I like to preprocess my banging rocks with heat to make them  easier to work with---have you heard of the terms "hammer and anvil"?

I think we lost a lot of the "tinkering" once common in America when Cars started getting hard to work on by yourself.

Heat doesn't do anything good for obsidian and the agate I'd be willing to sacrifice has lousy conchoidal fracture patterns. The local chert I don't have to climb a mountain for fractures pretty straight and clean but doesn't dress well. Heating didn't do much either. I didn't experiment with  it much though and the good lens may be 50' away.  Of course, hammer and anvil makes the core of the craft. 

If Deb and I get down Flint Ridge way I'll see about collecting a couple nodules but my portion of the RV payload is LIMITED.

Frosty The Lucky.

7 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Flint Ridge in Ohio

I used to live on a Flintridge dr. in a little town right outside Wright Pat called Fairborn. 

BigGun, that's a good idea. Thanks for the tip!

Here's how I do a coil.

1: make the tip and bend it in the proper direction.

2: heat your parent stock and clamp tip and mandrel in your post vice and wrap with tight wraps. Use as many heats as needed but don't heat mandrel. On a small one like in the pics, one heat should do it.

3: when done with wraps, remove mandrel and heat to a nice yellow, clamp tip in post vice and pull it open. With practice the twists should come out clean with no or little adjustment.. Use a screw driver or similar to tune up where needed. 

Heating in a gas forge where you can get the entire length the exact same temperature would probably help---like for twisting sq stock.

Frosty; save your payload pounds for Quad-State if there are things you might want to buy for smithing.  It seems that every Q-S I find *something* that is a good buy and stock up on it.  Meanwhile a lot of the other stuff has gotten powerful high for me. Of course it's hard to pay 5 times what you used to pay for something on a regular basis nowadays.  My kids can't believe me when I tell them that gas used to be 32.2 cents for years when I was young!  (Luckily, as my wife pointed out last night, I have a lot of stuff already!)

Anvil, that's pretty close to what I did, I just think my execution could have been better. Also, I am only set up for coal at the moment, but I think I can make it work. 

I do like all the suggestions. I sent a picture to the guy and he said he wants 50 of them, so any way to make them quickly and easily I'm open to, and I feel like I have gotten a lot of good feedback so thanks everyone.