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I Forge Iron

Fork-N-Spoon


Daswulf

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A hand operated drill (one you crank by hand with gears) works wonders for polishing concave surfaces. then you can use any stones with a shank you desire.. Also polishing bob's or felts as well as rubberized abrasives.. 

 

I used to be a purist.. I wouldn't use any modern machines for anything I made.. Well except a drill press if drilling lots of holes..  Anyhow, you don't need electricity to make anything highly finished or polished.. You just need the skill set and the education to carry at the task at hand.. 

 

Dinnerware as in the picture (the fork with more than 2 tines) is a relatively newly deigned piece..  for many years it was a 2 tine fork for cooking, carving but not for eating.. It was a spoon (spork) and a knife.. Multi tined forks once they came onto the scene (the rich first) and were being mass produced is when everybody had them.. 

 

A very well made small 2 tine fork can do most of what a multi tine can do. :)

 

Is there a reason the finials on the latest set point towards the face of the fork and spoon? 

 

Sadly forks and spoons were not something I took pictures of regularly so can't share any examples..

Cleaning the bowl of the spoon before shaping is is a great way to do it. and if you take a light heat in dishing it ,will be easy to clean up.. 

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Good point Alan. :) No it isn't cheating. I have a garage full of modern tools for a reason. It's just fun to try different methods.  I'll have to work on some tooling. 

 

Thief, thanks. 

 

JP, I'm not trying to be a purist. Sometimes, even if it isn't worth it, I like to try to do things differently. As of yet this is just a hobby for me. I'm learning a lot more on this one then I thought I would. 

As for the finials I was just trying something different to see how it would work.  I think I liked the other way better.  I also liked the softer edges of the first set. I'm not against 2 prong forks. The 3 prong fork was just to do it because I like the look. I think with some practice I could get it looking better. 

 

 

 

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Great thread! Two different basic techniques being discussed mainly. Dishing and plannishing Vs. Die forming. Both have advantages and disadvantages as does everything. About die forming, closed or open it's hard to beat production technique for producing nearly blemish free products ready for finishing. Next step would be making dies to cut blanks. The downside to die forming is dies are limited to THAT product. Sure you can make more versatile die sets but then you're getting into cleaning up blemishes before polishing stages.

Dishing and plannishing is an open book for what is made every time you go to work. Making truly matched sets takes a lot more skill and time. In any case it's more labor and time intensive.

I'm with Alan about not putting marks into the work just to have to clean them up before the polishing steps. A ball pein isn't a forming hammer as such it's a forging hammer think of a rounding hammer as an evolved ball pein and you're on the trail. Take a look at automotive body hammers for good sheet metal forming hammers, you won't find ball peins though. You'll find shrinking hammers sort of a pointed ball pein with a plannishing face. Then there are the creasers, like straight and cross peins, again with a plannishing face. Then there are the forming peins different radius round peins, some actual sphere sections, others in larger and larger radius.

With practice and a little reading in a body shop how to book and you can make a cheap set of body tools dance a pretty jig. You can find sets in cheapo tool stores and most include the body dollies used to back the sheet against the hammer to plannish.

There are whole trade specific sets of tools for working sheet metal and most all of them can be used to hot or cold work steel, gold and silver smithing hammers are too fine and soft to be much good. Tin knockers tools work just fine and there are a LOT of varieties.

So, the take on both techniques I learned in Father's spinning shop goes like this. Tailor your tooling for the job. If it's a large enough production run to profitably justify making special tooling do so. If it's one off or short runs go to the extra work per part and charge accordingly.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Thanks Aus. I'll be away for the weekend so unfortunately this adventure will be on hold possibly until I get back. This, like many projects, has been and is a great learning experience. I had a friend laugh at my trying to make a better spoon and taking some time to work on it. She was mostly kidding, but I look at it as more than a spoon. it's a skill, it's knowledge...... and a spoon :) I'm not trying to perfect a spoon, but to build my skills. and to me, it's fun.

Frosty, I am a body man :) I have hammers and dollies. not much dishing in the business. now the metal is mostly thin enough to use pick rods and such, and with the ultra high strength steels, ins. companies replace panels more often. I'm one of the few that tackle repairing heavier hit panels and take pride in using as little filler as possible. 

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On ‎16‎/‎09‎/‎2016 at 8:43 AM, Daswulf said:

 

Frosty, I am a body man :) I have hammers and dollies. not much dishing in the business. now the metal is mostly thin enough to use pick rods and such, and with the ultra high strength steels, ins. companies replace panels more often. I'm one of the few that tackle repairing heavier hit panels and take pride in using as little filler as possible. 

Das, you would be a handy fellow to have around our place at the moment. Next to my forge is our car garage and we are restoring a 1933 Continental Flyer. A very rare American car in Australia. The mudguards (OK, fenders) are heavy old steel and our restorer is doing a great job stretching and shrinking the metal and using only a small amount of metal filler. We also have a 1934 straight eight Packard which is due for restoration one day and the steel panels on that are like armour plate!

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2 hours ago, ausfire said:

Das, you would be a handy fellow to have around our place at the moment. Next to my forge is our car garage and we are restoring a 1933 Continental Flyer. A very rare American car in Australia. The mudguards (OK, fenders) are heavy old steel and our restorer is doing a great job stretching and shrinking the metal and using only a small amount of metal filler. We also have a 1934 straight eight Packard which is due for restoration one day and the steel panels on that are like armour plate!

Forging, scrap metal art and classic/antique cars? Sounds like paradise! :) 

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  • 3 months later...

From another post about how to forge a fork and spoon, I meant to do a little pictorial on how I do a spoon. Well I was forging and barely remembered to get enough pictures. But here are some. This spoon I gave a generic "stair?" Twist. With how it was I instantly regretted it but finished it out how I started lol. 

I started by upsetting the end of 3/8" square bar. Then made a sharper but shallow taper on two sides about how one makes a leaf but I kept it to around a 1/4" length on the taper. Also not too sharp. 

After that I followed along with the leaf process and hammered under the upset area around about 1 3/8" from the tip and with half on half off hammer blows I isolated the upset part and thinned the spoon bowl portion. Again on two sides, like some make a leaf.  Now the pictures begin. :rolleyes:

the next part is flattening out the spoon portion. Atleast in the process I used This time. Other times I have formed the handle first. That may actually be easier. So either or. I'm still learning what I'm doing but sharing some ideas of what worked for me. 

After that I started dishing on the stake I made shown earlier in the post with a wood mallet. Well, I needed more dish so with a ball peon I dishes more on a stump then went back to plainishing it a bit on the stake with a smooth face hammer. I did hot file a little to improve the shape but not a lot.

After cutting the stock and doing the handle I continued plainishing and shaping the spoon cooler on the anvil with the ball end of the ball pein and on the stake with the regular end of the smoother face of the ball pein. 

Is that white smithing? I did a lot of plainishing. It was a fun experiment of something I hadn't done as much before. 

Final pictures show the spoon, stake, and ball pein I used. I dig it. Of course the pictures are Mixed up and I'm no computer guru  

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On ‎17‎/‎09‎/‎2016 at 11:26 PM, Daswulf said:

Forging, scrap metal art and classic/antique cars? Sounds like paradise! :) 

We also have a Ford Mercury which would be a great restoration project for you, Das.

So when are you going to visit my Paradise?

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6 hours ago, ausfire said:

We also have a Ford Mercury which would be a great restoration project for you, Das.

So when are you going to visit my Paradise?

I would love to visit. When? Well it's always about money and time. When I have the money I will make the time :) 

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  • 1 month later...

Here is my latest fork and spoon set. Still working at them when I have time. The cube twist could be better. That is still something I'm working at.

These are forged from 3/8" stainless steel rod. I'm upsetting the end for a little more mass for the business ends. 

 

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Cracks in eating utensils can harbor pathogenic bacteria.

For example, many jurisdictions have laws that prohibit, restaurants using dishes, (especially cups), that have fine cracks in them. Why? well the tetanus bacterium (Clostridium tetani), can shelter in them and survive boiling water and detergent. (the common name for it is lock jaw.

Other bacteria do the same. If you see such a cracked "cup" tell the waitress, She should remove it immediately.

Any eating utensil should no have such imperfections, Especially if the smith is selling same.

Cold shuts could cause real problems.

Just sayin',

SLAG.

Sorry to be the party pooper.

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Slag, it is good information. And I have also been working on getting the " into the mouth" parts as clean as possible. I think we can tend to get overly worried about things tho. I have seen rougher utensils sold by better smiths for reenactmentsand such.  Also wouldn't wooden utensils hold more bacteria? 

I'm not arguing. It is a very good liability point to keep in mind. 

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Das,

I am not trying to make your life difficult nor to show that I am clever. This post is, solely for information, and fostering awareness.

Wood utensils have antibacterial chemicals in them. They are naturally in there. When the wood dries the bacteria die stat. That is why good cutting boards are made from wood.

The plastic cutting boards are crawling with bacteria and other micro-organisms. (for example yeasts = fungi, etc.). I strongly recommend that people trash their plastic cutting boards. Some of the contaminating  bacteria cause food poisoning such as Salmonella, Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, Pseudomonas, Campylobacter and many others, can be readily be found after such cutting boards after thorough cleaning. The last bug just listed, causes very serious infections in susceptible people such as babies. (it can easily kill babies) and immuno-compromised people. I have seen two very serious cases of pediatric campylobacter, when I was doing medical research. The children's skin and sub-cutaneous tissue was peeling off. The medical staff moved heaven and earth to save them. They were successful, thank the Lord. It was an unforgettable & disgusting experience

Tetanus is a disease that is extremely serious. Untreated, or if treatment is started late can be fatal.

I am not being alarmist. Please have a look at this tetanus article (especially the depiction, there, of a tetanus victim in the early 1800's) Checking the article will be well worth your time & effort.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanus

Tetanus can avoided by getting the vaccine for the bug and also the poison that it makes. (tetanus toxoid).

Incidentally, I strongly urge everyone to get those shots. Especially blacksmiths. Why? Because the bacteria spores (= "seeds") are everywhere. Especially in soil but also in rust.

Those two vaccines work well. But huge numbers of people are past due for booster shots. And many people have never had the vaccine in the first place. Those persons are vulnerable.

In the past, booster shots were administered every 5 years but the latest vaccines last for ten years. {But everyone should consult their doctor or department of health for the recommended time interval).

The re-enactor smiths that sell such utensils, are dicing with disaster. Such commonly accepted practice flies in the face of accepted medical practice. If such trade is a regular occurance, there will eventually be a fatality. (They are rare. but, I, for one, would not want to live with causing such a mess.) Causality would be very hard to prove so the seller would probably be found not liable. But the attorney bills could be ruinous, The practice will come to  an end, shortly after such a fatality.

.Please understand that this is not a personal attack on you. But the situation should not be taken lightly. It is a serious matter.

Regards,

SLAG.

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SLAG, your last post was most interesting for me. I would like to know more, do you have some reliable sites where I can read a bit? Especially the wooden utensils part. Is it any wood, or we have to be really careful as to what wood can be used? (Not counting known toxic woods, of course)

Also, I would assume that the modern 'bamboo' cutting boards are the same as plastic ones, right? Or are they as good as the normal wooden ones? I read somewhere in this forum that they were actually mostly glue/plastics holding *some* bamboo together, so I'm quite curious about them.

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soo... we should not touch or eat from or be around metal? I will say your info is good but we can't fear everything. sure there can be cases of safety that we need to be aware of but I think this can be going a little far. minus the elderly and infants, how many would perish or get sick from my utensils? from your post I could be afraid to eat at all. Liability is everywhere in everything. but really?

No, I dont want to harm anyone, but I'm thinking I should quit everything and live in a steryl padded room by that notion.

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Das,

Tetanus is not going far nor is it a remote possibility. Your utensils are fine if they do  not have cold shuts, micro cracks, and rough surfaces that render the utensil impossible to be fully cleaned. Liability is peculiar to each situation. Blanket condemnation of such utensils was not what I was saying. Please reread my post.

This question (polemic), may be irrelevant. There is a good chance that Penn. prohibits the sale of such culinary utensils, with the above noted problems. They are not your utensils they are any utensils that have those problems.

As for me, the debate is ended. Let us agree to disagree, & remain friends.

Regards,

SLAG.

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Senor Bello,

I would surmise that all, or most, woods are bactericidal. Wood is polymer of primarily cellulose and xylan strands "glued together with lignins (& their relatives, e.g. lignans etc.

The first two chemicals are hydrocarbon polymers. (enormously long strands of repeating chemical subunits. Many of the lignin breakdown units kill micro-organisms. For example poly phenolic units, turpenoids, quercetins and heterocylic molecules, and very many other constituents.

There has a very major discovery in this chemistry, announced just 3 or 4weeks ago.

Their chemistry is complex especially lignins and breakdown phenols and others. That gentleman is always on the ball.

Big Gun suggested a very good research phrase to use for a preliminary Google search.

Bamboo is composed of the above mentioned chemicals & should have the same bug killing properties.

Plastics are a whole different class of compounds and most of them are not capable of killing microbes.

Wikkipedia should also be a good place to search. I have a lot of success searching there.

Argentina is a wonderful place for exotic woods.

I particularly like Macacauba, Vera Wood, & many others.

I am very jealous.

Regards,

SLAG.

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We will always be friends. I'll never be mad at someone who points out facts. I just don't see the harm.  No problem. it helps me to improve and I learn something. just to say, I lean on the other way because I have seen some less sanitary people that lived just fine. food safety in the business world may be Very cautious, but in reality we are generally not that sensative. I appreciate your warnings, and safety concerns. maybe I'm a little tougher in the gut lol. Your concerns are real and I was a bit over reacted to it. we need the yin and yang to figure it out. :) 

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