Hello!  I've been reading the forums here for most of a year, and figured it is time to come out of the shadows and participate a bit more. I've been doing some woodcarving recently, mostly spoons and bowls and cups.  I've reached a point with that work where I need some pretty specific tools which are either quite expensive, or simply not available, so I figured I should learn how to make them myself.  Should be pretty easy really, just heat up some rebar, and smash it with a giant sledge hammer right?  well maybe not, but I figure I should be able to produce something workable, and there are loads of things to make in the meantime to practice hammer control, and fire management. 

I don't have a ton of experience with smithing.  I had a quick demo, and bit of practice back in college (can that really be 15 years ago), and last year took a 'fundamentals of smithing' class at the Steelyard hear in Rhode Island.  They have open shop hours, and I had been planning on going back to use their equipment, but it has turned out to be a bit harder to manage than I expected. I've spent the past few months putting together a little back patio smithy. 

Anyway, I'm really excited to get started making some useful stuff out of steel, and definitely glad I found this forum.  It's been a fantastic resource for building things on the cheap that will actually work pretty well.  So thanks to everyone here who has made this forum what it is.

And we have fire!

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Weygers has a whole chapter in "The Complete Modern Blacksmith" dedicated to the forging of wood carving gouges with special shapes to make them better for inside work.  I strongly commend this book to your attention!

Thanks Thomas.  I've been keeping an eye out for that one.  I got a copy of "the making of tools" when my library discarded it, and he has some on gouges there, but I've seen mention of the Complete Modern Blacksmith having more/better info particularly about the carving tools.

Perhaps I should just put in the order.  Its pretty cheap over on Amazon.  And I just found that the public library has a copy.  Excuse me while I go request that

Check into the  New England Blacksmiths Assoc.   Connecticut Blacksmith Guild  and other in your area.

You can download a free copy of The Modern Blacksmith by Weygers here.

https://ia600201.us.archive.org/28/items/The_Modern_Blacksmith_Alexander_G._Weygers/The_Modern_Blacksmith_Alexander_G._Weygers.pdf

Thanks!  I wouldn’t have thought that was old enough to be on archive.org.
 

Glenn: I often forget about the Connecticut groups so thanks for the reminder. I’ve been hoping to catch up with the NEBA group, and just haven’t gotten there, yet.

It's the edition prior to The Complete Modern Blacksmith but still a good read.

I found a copy at bamsite.org along with a lot of other good PDFs.

Pnut