I have access to 1" x1" square stock in 1080. Is this too large to shape into a hawk?

 

Nope

forge it and see, We have no idea of what you can do

With forge work and indeed most any metal and wood work the parent material can never be "too large"...you just reduce it by forging it down or cutting it away….

Sometimes a skilled smith can tease a larger object from a given parent piece than an unskilled smith, because he can work it more efficiently.

The Australian Arbotech disc cutter (an angle grinder disk with chain saw teeth around the perimeter) was sold with an advert phrase along the lines of... "how to make a rocking horse…take a lump of wood and an Arbotech and remove the non rocking horse wood…"

Alan

You can work 1' sq stock if your powerhammer is large enough!   However if you are working it by hand 1" square in high carbon steel is a lot to work.  Do you have trained strikers?  Friends with power hammers where you can break down the stock to where you can take over by hand?  How good are you with a hand sledge?  Do you have a propane forge so you can get an even heat and not worry about burning it up?  Have you made a bunch of them before with other materials so it's not all new at once?

"Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes!"

Edited September 23, 201510 yr by ThomasPowers

1" square is the size stock I use when teaching folks to make small axes/hawks/adze by hand on courses. If you work well then you can easily get 3" long cutting edges with that size without any additional upsetting. It's a good size for hand tools only

Thank you all. 

1" can spread out into a very respectable blade width.  Certainly a better starting point in size and alloy than the railroad spikes that a lot of folks seem to want to use.

I have forged 'hawks from 1" square 4140, and it is a good size for such.

you can also try and hacksaw or split the stock for your blade- now you have 1/2" x 1" stock. 

I wonder how it turned out for him....the original post was from 2015

His last post was asking about 3/4" square 1080 in December 2015. His last visit to the site was June last year. That said there's no telling what ever happened.