Wrought iron hammer build.. Old school..

[Donal Harris]

I hate to somewhat necro this thread, but it is a subject of great interest to me presently. JLP, do you still think that punch you described is best for avoiding splitting. Do you have pics of it or is it in any of your videos?  I haven’t watch all, and for some reason wasn’t paying attention to the profiles of the punches in your hammer videos. 
 

Both you and Thomas mention the “jelly roll”.  It sounds as if you have found it make splitting more likely to happen?

[jlpservicesinc]

So here is some more info. 

I just use a round punch for 99% of the hammers I make..     The punch is dictated by how thick the metal is and how much material I want to retain ( I always want the smallest slug possible when finished punching).  I will start with a very small round punch, and then will follow up with round punches till I get to the right sized round for the hole size I want for the hammer handle.   Once I get to this size or close to it. I have a short tapered round punch I use to set the eye geometry top to bottom..  this is simply done by driving it in more on the bottom less on the top. 

Then I just flatten the sides and end up with a nearly perfect oval with the correct bottom geometry for the way I like the shoulder of hammer to handle.  I will then take either one of my handled hammer eye punches or will take a round punch and just touch the top to spread the eye just a little on the top sides. 


I use a slitting punch or even a hot chisel on thinner (narrower) materials like jack hammer bits and such to make handled top tools.  Usually these are slit/cut and then drifted out round and since they are top tools they are left with straight eyes with no taper at the top..  Just a little chamfer at the bottom. Again flattened to make oval after the eye is made roundish. 


I use a slitting chisel for deep hole work but rarely ever use one for hammer work preferring to punch round.   

As for the special chisel for cutting the end grain of wrought iron.. You literally cut threw the grain on both ends of the eye while punching it. 

I've found that massaging the eye around the punch negates a lot of the splitting. 

As for Jelly roll.. It is a tough way to go about it especially with old dirty pitted material.  Few do it the easy way which is to weld a round bar onto the end that has been tapered starting the roll on the taper. I like to use a 1/2" to 3/4" center bar/round and weld this in and then use this to jelly around it..   Starting a jelly roll is probably the toughest thing to do well as there is no good, fast way of doing it.  Putting in that center round bar speeds up the process markedly. 

I use an eye mandrel when the cheeks of the hammer eye are to be elongated like with a ball peen or engineers hammer or rounding hammer.  It depends totally on the eye length desired. 

Hit up more questions. Happy to help. 

[ThomasPowers]

I'll defer to JLP; as to me it was just a mention in an old smithing books about users preferring jelly roll hammers as they were supposed to "work" better.

[jlpservicesinc]

Thomas,   All the old books I have read say about the same thing.. 

Wrought iron is easier to weld together so it's seamless vs mild steels. You can lay strips on top of strips in a faggot weld type arrangement.. 

you can then take these strips and jelly roll which will give you a nice increase in weight pretty quickly. 

I always look at wrought iron as having the most resistance to deformation on the end grain much like wood.   So a jelly roll will move the grain sideways..  Does it make a difference I don't know.  

Wrought iron will compress and move so no idea.

I've seen failed hammers with the faces partially off.. Who's to say how long that hammer lasted before that happened.. Same with sway back in the hammers face.. I got nothing. 

[Donal Harris]

Thank you. All the videos and articles seem to be just talking about a different way to get an interesting pattern in pattern welded steel, but would the construction of the billet be essentially the same?

 

This is likely a silly question, but do you have to be as concerned about cold shuts with WI as you do mild steel?

[jlpservicesinc]

Wrought iron because it has a very well defined grain structure with inclusions it has a pattern all ready built in with contrast.  Mild steel will also show a grain structure just like in the Felling ax. 

Jelly roll if forged very well will show the grain going the other way.  Nice thing about wrought iron is the way something is forged is very clear because of the the grain and inclusions. 

I always look at the way to enhance the mechanical properties of wrought iron only..   Pattern while there is secondary.  

the aspect of cold shut needs to be worked on any material. 

If you mean an over forged area (stress cracking) it is higher in most wrought irons..  If you mean a true cold shut from bad technique it is even more of a problem with Wrought iron.. 

There are volumes or used to be volumes of information in old books on the correct way to bend wrought iron..   The fact is that any bend, one side is compressed and the other is stretched.  With the wrought iron you have to be paying attention how the base where this is pulled from is then adjusted to not create a sharp corner /stress riser..    

This same principal should be applied to all steels but even more so with wrought iron..     I can notch a bar of 1.125 sq wrought iron on 4 sides about 1/8" deep and it will snap in a vise cold with just a little pressure on the side.    Mild still would take a lot more force and/or a deeper cut to get the same snapping. 

[Donal Harris]

I’m going to start working it this evening. Wish me luck   And I certainly appreciate all the help. 

[jlpservicesinc]

So here are a few photos of the dogs head hammer which got out of whack when upsetting it and you can see the cold shut. 

This cold shut won't mean anything as it will simply be welded back together.. Something that is really tough to do with Mild steels but easy with wrought iron. 

This was made out of the 1.125" Sq wrought iron used in both hammer examples. 

Good luck and love to hear back what you think of it to work with. 

The last photo is of the hammer..  This was made with 4 pieces stacked and welded.. One can see there is no separation at the weld seam in the middle with very little segmentation or the grain structure. 

 

[Donal Harris]

So far I still don’t have even one rod taken to square yet. The one is mostly square, but it was a very hot afternoon and I had trouble with sweat in my eyes. That and I couldn’t control the hammer well. What would have been just a small mark to smooth out was often very deep with WI. I wasn’t expecting that. But after seeing the rather “rough” state of the the hammer in the first pics above, I think I may be letting perfect be the enemy of good. What I understand from your pics is I just need to get it “close enough” during welding and then worry about getting it pretty in later steps. And it is one of the much later steps I need to be worried about anyway. I may get all the way to the forge welding the steel face and peen step and never get it to stick. Maybe by tomorrow night I can at least get all the rods to square. 

[anvil]

Here's the hard news. If your hammer skills haven't progressed beyond forging from round to square, you will have a dickens of a time doing anything. Learn your basics before trying to tackle a multi piece hammer.  

If you can't forge 3/4 round to square, even if you could forge weld 4 into,,, wait for it,,, how will you be able to forge 1-1/2" to square? Bigger doesn't make it easier. 

By the way, concerning a post above, wrought iron won't "snap" in a vice. It will bend first. Heck, you could notch it nearly thru and it will twist cold before it snaps.

W1/1095 will snap easily with a light notch. The ability to snap when notched is a function of carbon content. That's one of the main reasons industry standards moved from wrought iron to mild steel,,, to keep it simple.

[ThomasPowers]

Charpy test results are given for some steels to show their "toughness".  A notched specific sized specimen is mounted and then a heavy swinging weight is used to break it.  How high the weight swings after the break shows how much energy was used to break the specimen.  A rather simple elegant test system.

[anvil]

I'm a little familiar with that. I'd say it's on the outskirts of my general knowledge. 

Wrt wrought vs W1/1095, wrought is tough and the other is hard. It takes only a little force to snap W1 where wrought takes quite a bit. 

My first OJT experience came when I was Making a Francis Whitaker tenoning tool out of a piece of 1095 or W-1from his personal stock. I can't remember which. He went thru the whole notch the corners and snap it off deal. We did not do wrought as a comparison as that was not the reason for the exercise.

I have dealt with much mild steel and a fair amount of wrought. For them, it really doesn't matter how deep the notches, it bends quite a bit before work hardening and breaking as opposed to hc steels snapping, which W1/1095 definitely do.

To be real, I don't know if wrought is considered "tough". I wouldn't put it in that category. I believe tough and hard have to do with carbon steels. I've learned that medium carbon steels are in the family of generally tough natured steels and high carbon steels are considered in the family of hard steels. To define simply the difference, hard steels make great knives and tough steels make great hammers. Also, that some, perhaps any of the hc steels that call for a water quench can be oil quench to make them a good tough steel.

[jlpservicesinc]

Anvil. Your experiences are probably different then mine.. 

While I do agree wrought iron is more ductile when notched depending on the quality it can easy be broken at the notch. 

I dislike having to defend knowledge based on experience and time and time again it seems you don't agree. 

If we quantify the reality of it, wrought iron comes in many different combination and the only wrought iron I find that does not break easily at the notch is some triple refined stuff. 

Otherwise time and time again the stuff breaks easily at the notch and demonstrate this time and time again to people when I demo and when I have time can show this on some 1" sq.  It breaks super easy at the notch.   

Here is some 3/4"X 2 that is notched only about 1/4 the way from one side.. Snapped easily. 

[anvil]

Lol, we do have that problem.

Looks like your 3/4" is notched about half way thru on one side and a smaller notch on the other three sides. Did you do that 3/8" notch and the rest hot? I'd assume so.

You stated above that you notched 1-1/4" square 1/8" deep all around. Did you do this hot? I picked up that you were talking of breaking this cold. If so, You do great vids. Love to see it.

You can notch the corners of W-1/1095 cold on the corners and break it cold. You can literally hear the "snap" when it breaks. Your pic looks like it was done hot and cut most of the way thru. Then tapped over the edge over the edge of the anvil til it breaks. Pretty standard procedure.  

Perhaps it's words definitions again. 

Just trying to clarify. I'd hate to see someone take a piece of, well most any  wrought or mild steel of size, and do cold what W-1/1095 will do cold on the edge of the anvil.

For what it's worth, Jen, I've never tried a 1/8" notch all around wrought 1-1/4" square and snapped it off cold in a vice. I would love to see you do that and you can bet I'd be as quick with an apology and a high five as I am with a critique.