Another damascus Thor's Hammer

[HEAP of JEEP]

Keep getting orders for these things.  Was able to shave an hour off the time it takes me to forge one, so that's a plus, and thinking ahead, I made the billet large enough to get another one or two out of it for the next orders.  Maybe I'm starting to get the hang of this.

 

[7A749]

I've been looking at your knife work and man is it nice. For saying you haven't been doing it a "long time" you sure fooled me.

If you are ever doing any demos this summer, or plan to be at one I would love to check it out and say hello. 

I take it you are doing like a wax finish on these? Just wondered as far as rust goes. As you know here in MI, even plastic can rust under the right conditions (driving our road system in winter  )

Excellent stuff!

[HEAP of JEEP]

1 hour ago, 7A749 said:

I've been looking at your knife work and man is it nice. For saying you haven't been doing it a "long time" you sure fooled me.

If you are ever doing any demos this summer, or plan to be at one I would love to check it out and say hello. 

I take it you are doing like a wax finish on these? Just wondered as far as rust goes. As you know here in MI, even plastic can rust under the right conditions (driving our road system in winter  )

Excellent stuff!

Yeah, don't even get me going about Michigan rust.  LOL.  There's a reason why my 96 Jeep is a heap. 

I appreciate the kind words, and it does mean a lot, but I really haven't been doing this long.  I built my forge and picked up the hammer for the first time at the end of last summer/beginning of fall.  My forge is on a rolling cart so I can wheel it out of the garage when its in use, so with the mild winter, I was able to muddle through some of the learning curve as the snow fell, but its only been in the last couple of months where I felt like I was really beginning to understand a few things.

plus, my whole purpose in picking up this hobby was to learn how to make damascus knives.  Had a passion for folded steel since I was a kid and saw a Japanese sword smith do a demo.  So, my first forging experience was just heating and moving some metal around... my second was forge welding two pieces together.  My third was folding a billet two times, then three times, then trying to form a folded billet in to something resembling a blade,  and making damascus has been my main focus since then.

So, with all that time spent making, discarding, and remaking damascus, I've gotten pretty good at that aspect of it, but the rest of my smithing skills are lack luster, to say the least.  My tongs are some of the most hideous things ever to grace a forge.  If it wasn't for the belt grinder I built, this pendant would still be a lump of ugly steel.  I can forge a blade ok, but I've really been trying to focus on more of the basic techniques that I skipped learning in the beginning.  There's two main reasons why I keep doing other things in damascus.  One, people seem to really like it.  Each billet has its own unique beauty, so no matter what you use it for, a knife to a pendent, it is truly a one of kind piece.

Second, to make the pattern really show up, the finishing work had to be good, so if I don't want to waste hours at the grinder and hand sanding, I can force myself to produce pieces that are closer to "forge to finish".  It still takes a lot of sanding, but I can knock a lot of time, sometimes hours, off of all the grinding and finishing, just by producing a cleaner piece at the anvil.  And, even though I'm focused on that right now, I still have to clean up an awful lot hammer marks.  Its getting better, but I still have a lot more practice to do before I would consider myself anything more than a hack.

So, with where I am today, I don't see any demos for me this summer. 

If you're ever up in the Traverse area, (I actually live in Kingsely, about 15 minutes south), you're more than welcome to swing by my house, grab a beer, and we'll talk forging and smack some stuff around on the anvil... but even that is just a 70 pound Vulcan I was able to find on craigslist for a steal.  I've got to sell a lot more stuff to pay for the nice big shop anvil I've got sights on.

I was thinking of doing a booth at the Cherry Fest in T.C., or maybe one of the smaller festivals, but I don't know if I have enough free time to make enough product to fill a table.  Because I've gotten somewhat decent at the knives, I've been kept pretty busy making those.

So, who knows.  Some day maybe.  But for now, its still just a fun hobby that happens to be paying for itself, and might make me enough for some extra beer and pizza occasionally.

[7A749]

That's really cool man. I know what you mean about limited space. I work out of a 20' X 22' garage full time as a sole source of income, and it's packed. If you have pix of your forge, please point me to them. I have a propane forge I got from NC Tool about 5 years ago. It was a "divorce gift" from my mom lol. Not real big, but it does the job for most of the work I do. I have some pretty serious oxy fuel rosebuds for stuff that won't fit in it. I would like to experiment with coal at some point, but lack of space and time mostly will prohibit this. My setup is on wheels too, but it's pretty heavy so I don't move it much. I'm not a blacksmith anyway tho, just a hack that mostly fixes welders and bangs on a little metal.

Ive been metal finishing for all told about 22 years, so I can appreciate what you say about trying to get the best possible finish before taking anything to a sander or grinding machine. I did a lot of buffing when I first started out. I used to do a lot of gun work and learned from a real sharp dude back in the early 90s. I'm set up pretty well in that department with a 12" Baldor machine now. I'll definitely be asking some questions about doing Damascus-ish stuff, but mainly for the look to use on some light fixtures I have planned. I'm the type that tries to research best I can before asking questions on an Internet forum. I'm not the smartest guy around either tho, so I may miss things in my searches 

If I can offer any assistance as far as the metal finishing end of things goes, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm by far not a master at it but I got a little experience.

You mentioned you built your own grinder, I would like to see that too. I'm still navigating the site and reading a lot, so if it's posted someplace, I haven't seen it yet. I recently acquired an older Ryman brand industrial belt grinder from HGR down in Cleveland for a reasonable price. I'm going to rebuild it and likely put a VFD on it to control speed. I have two other belt machines I more or less built from existing Kalamazoo brand machines that came out pretty good. I'll post up a thread about the Ryman when I get to it and have some free time to make a new base for it, etc. 

It's too bad that stuff got lost in that update (going on what I've gleaned from reading).  I've looked at a lot of really interesting threads, but the pix won't open. I'm an admin on a welding forum and accidentally banned myself last year with the spam decimator program we use and wiped out over 11K of my posts and pics going back to the mid 2000s. I know what a heartbreak it is for sure. I feel for Glenn and everyone else affected. I truly know how that feels. That's life on the Internet tho, you just gotta move on.

I sincerely appreciate the invitation and extend one myself likewise. I'm on the north side of Lansing, just off Old 27 and I 69. I actually will PM you about some stuff I have you may be able to use (some decent wood)  No cost, I got a lot of it. If it can help open some doors where I can help someone out and learn a few things, I'm all for that.

Hope to meet you this summer. You have been most kind.

Steve

[HEAP of JEEP]

Fix welders eh? Hmmmmm... we might need to talk.

I don't have any pictures of my forge, but I will try to remember to take some this weekend when I get out there working... my wife has me building a chicken coop this weekend... it was our anniversary and what does she want?  Chickens.  I will never understand her.  So anyways, I'll be busy with that, but when I do find time to forge, I'll see if my brain will prompt me to remember.

I do have a thread about the grinder build.  Followed the advice of Jim Coke (forum member and fellow Michigander) in how to set up the pillow blocks and pulleys.  Good thing I did too.  If I hadn't, I can see where I would have been going through bent axles, like crazy.

http://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/45150-heap-of-a-grinder/