TWISTEDWILLOW Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Looks awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWISTEDWILLOW Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 3 hours ago, JHCC said: Oh, they know it — they just don’t use it (or they don’t use it in public). Lol, I heard that in the song Galway Bay, sang by the Clancy Brothers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daswulf Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Les, thanks but Im sure others are way better with the forging advise. Either way, stick around to learn more of about everything under the sun and keep up the great work. I love seeing it. TW, I like the poker. I've made a bunch like it and my only useful advise is to make the handles more hand friendly. That includes knocking down sharp corners on the edges and making it fit the hand a little better. The wide end and skinnier front lend to a little less grip and with the length and how you use a fire poker it needs a sure good fitting handle. It is all good if wearing gloves but bare handed would cause fatigue kinda fast. Anyway the weld looks great on the poker end and the shaft twist and finial are all great. Nice John. Thats some clean forging, now to passivate it. Good job teaching. Knife looks good from what I see. I need to make a hammer rack like that. Atleast for all my less used hammers that migrate around on benches and in boxes. Nice work FB. No more feeding bears to that dog. Lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 John; that is a "Crescendo of hammers"; I note a boilermakers hammer and an old fender hammer in the rack. I have mine horizontally in two rows on a sturdy steel frame I picked up as scrap and mounted plain old black pipe in parallel rows on it, no heat/welding involved. (My earlier one was an aquarium stand---made to hold a lot of weight and fairly commonly discarded in the city I lived in.) When I moved to NM I had 100 "handled tools" I had to reset the handles on ALL of them moving from central Ohio Moistness to the desert. Now I have more; lots more even having traded a 5 gallon bucket of ballpeens to another smith who was making hawks from them...just in the last two visits to the scrapyard I picked up the true temper sledge head and the Woodings Verona 2.5# crosspeen. The armor tools rack has some 1.5" sq heavy "hardware cloth" from a shale shaker on it with the tools dropped in the holes. Looks like I have way too many; but please remember I have 8 Grandkids that I expect will need kitting out someday---I hope! (I also teach and it's nice when new smiths don't have to share hammers...) The diagonal peen in this pic is now handled Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 23 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said: I note a boilermakers hammer One of my great favorites. In the absence of a power hammer, it's tremendously useful for rapid drawing out or spreading of stock, rather like an oversized rounding hammer. I had one when I first started out back in the eighties, lost it in my parents' divorce and the breakup of our household, and recently found this one in a bin of tools I bought from the industrial surplus place. With a new handle, it's good to go and already proving its worth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SHC Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Found some actual wrought iron. I was making some coat hooks and noticed a texture I hadn’t seen yet, so I grabbed a piece of the stock I’d cut from and did that there green break test. Sure enough, matches the description and the pictures I’ve seent on the innerwebs. My forge was running low on gas, so I kept working and it took longer and longer because I was having to soak these pieces quite a while to make sure they were good and hot. When the gas finally ran out, I discovered a bad valve on my replacement bottle and it wouldn’t open. So, forging is done for the day. I jogged out behind the big shop where all the scrap metal is and started dragging out bits and pieces and checking them out. I found a few long bands, ten feet long and about 3/4”X1/4”. And a 3/4” bar about 4 feet long. Now it’s time to go inside, fix my toilet and then take a shower. Just for reference, I have a shower, I don’t bathe in the toilet. I’m actually mostly housebroken. After that, it’s off to the DMV to get my handicap Veteran tags and handicap Veteran driver’s license. I wouldn’t generally bother with the handicap tag, but it’s free for life and I can get a good parking spot on the bad days. I’ve had a bad two weeks lately, funky weather has the full body degenerative arthritis flared up. I’ve got the geezer shuffle going on. But I’m trying to stay busy. My mom has just recently been diagnosed with cancer and it don’t look good at all. I honestly don’t think she’s going to make it, but old cowgirls like her don’t ever quit. She’s going into the most aggressive treatments the doctor’s will give her, said she don’t give a darn about being sick and losing her hair. My step dad just recently beat prostate and bladder cancer, so they know what to expect. He’s still pretty weak from the ordeal, so My oldest boy is gonna move in with them to help manage the farm. Lambing season is right around the corner and they got a bunch of pregnant sheep gone be dropping lambs. sorry for going off topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Masterson Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Ok guys normally I go through and read a few pages and ask questions about peoples work and compliment your stuff but please excuse for me for not doing that - I’ve had a terribly stressful last five days. So I finally got my Etsy shop going. My family crest has a knights helmet so the logo is a cool knight helmet with the M I’ve been using as a touchmark already included. It’s really cool - at least I think so. The name is MidKnightForge on Etsy in case any one wants to check it out. Anyway 2/9 was my bday and I hate bdays for personal reasons I won’t go into but I’m driving home and I get an alert that I made my first sale. What are the chances and it was like only a month after I started the shop and on that day - finally a bday I enjoyed a little. So the item bought was the basket twist fire poker. Now I wouldn’t say when I made it for my stepdad as a Christmas gift it was easy but it went pretty smooth and I think I made a really nice piece. The picture of that one will be obvious. But now I am having so much trouble getting the basket twist forge welded to the shaft. Drop the tongs weld was just not working for me so I came up with what I thought was a great idea. The forge has two sides so I put the basket twist part in from one side and the shaft in from the and when they were both up to heat I stuck them together, pulled them out for a couple lite taps to set the weld - normal forge welding procedures from there. Worked great. But by the time I had figured that out where the basket twist and shaft meet was just too thin. That’s the pics with the red x’s. So then I said ok no problem - tack welded up another set of small bars for the basket twist and tried the same thing - would not stick no matter what I did. So then I cheated and tack welded the basket bundle to the shaft and then forge welded and got most of the way there. But now again I have a section towards the meeting point that is just a tad too thin and I’m looking for a way to save it. I’d like to just weld in there and build up weld then blend with a grinder but I’m not good enough at welding to do that. I’m also thinking maybe take a piece of thinner bar and tack weld it into the thin spot that has the gap. You’ll see what I mean in the pic with the yellow circle. No red xs or yellow circles is the other side of the one with the yellow circle which I can shape to look ok with a little work. Please give me some advice here. I really really don’t want to have to refund my first customer for not being able to complete his item. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Les L Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 SHC, prayers said for your mom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Masterson Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 Being a professional means being able to toss it aside and doing another one *right*. Figure out how to save that one later. Do what you contracted to do. If you are not able to repeat items at will, don't advertise those items on spec, only sell what you have to hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frazer Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I agree with that. Pat, don't forget you have to upset the end of the shaft before you try to join the two parts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 What Thomas and Frazer said. Also, for small items like this, it might be worthwhile to make a whole bunch, both to build up your stock and to improve your skill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluerooster Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I've done nothing at the forge, but I see ya'll have been busy making nice things. Blades, pokers, hammer racks, etc. I've been busy in the shop though. Boss Lady wants to replace the futon in the TV room with a couch. And she expects me to build one. So I got started on the project this weekend. Spent all weekend working on this mess, and finally have something to show for it. Still a long way from being done, but the progress so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Les L Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 That looks great Bluerooster Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad J. Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 I gave myself a sunburn using my welder yesterday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThomasPowers Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 It his 70 over the weekend with powerful sun, no need to use artificial means! (Killed a black widow spider in the master bathroom last night and have seen flies flying around outside---hopefully the 20 deg weather at nights will help discourage that...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M.J.Lampert Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 On 2/15/2022 at 6:27 PM, ChiefLittleBair said: Today I started a pair of bolt jaw tongs out or rr spikes, it was brought to an end when I brushed my left elbow against the hood when I leaned in to check the steel while cranking the blower. Got a really nice burn on my elbow now.... packed some snow around it and kept going for a while, then when I went in for dinner it really started hurting. Put some aloe and honey on it and wrapped it up. Maybe I'll get back to the forge after work again tomorrow. For now, its quits a trick i use is get it cold and then heat it back up as much as you can handle and then cool again do 2-3 times and blistering is almost zero when done right away 22 hours ago, JHCC said: Oh, also finished redoing the hammer rack: would show mine but that would be embarrassing to me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fire plus Bird Posted February 21, 2022 Share Posted February 21, 2022 1 hour ago, Chad J. said: I gave myself a sunburn using my welder yesterday. Been there, done that. Just taught myself to weld this summer with a little Century FC90 flux-cored machine. I went a little overkill in response and bought both a leather welding cape and coated cottom welding shirt. I though I'd get a lot of use out of the cape while at the forge (all of my shop aprons are canvas) but I've ended up just using the shirt 90 percent of the time. It gets dang hot in the shop when I have the forge running for more than 15 minutes, even using one burner. I definitely don't weld withouth arm protection anymore! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Masterson Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 Yeah - agreed guys. Will start over. also learned a few things yesterday. 1. Was using way too much flux. 2. Only needed any flux at all about half of the times I used it. 3. I made swages a while back that were two square bars - a v swage I guess you’d call it. Made two different sizes - one with 3/8 and one with 1/2” and although I did pull off quite a few forge welds using them to make little basket twist Christmas ornaments they were definitely hindering me. Found it much easier to just square off the end and weld each side little by little on the flat of of the anvil. I imagine a round swage would work better. I did upset the end before trying to weld and I know I also don’t yet know how to make scarfs that compliment each other when trying to weld. I just don’t understand why getting them to stick inside the forge worked so well the first and then just not at all the second time. Had I tried that earlier with the first attempt I would’ve been good. Probably going to take off work tomorrow to try to get this done. I’ve been totally upfront with the customer and he seems very understanding and said he’d be patient but I really don’t want my first sale to be late. Tonight I got myself set up to start up over early in the morning so hopefully things will go my way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Masterson Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 And just realized it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. It just keeps getting better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daswulf Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 All the best on it Pat. Go slow and methodical on it and don't stress. The weld fairies know when you stress and rush it and give you bad vibes. Go easy and with confidence. like dealing with a larger possibly dangerous animal. Lol you just have to clear your mind and get into it.... You got this! 2 hours ago, Chad J. said: gave myself a sunburn using my welder yesterday. Been there done that. Ugh. Never forget the ppe. Always weird in the cold dark winter wondering why your arms are irritated. "Oh yeah, I was welding without long sleves." Even worse when you tack weld enough by closing your eyes and looking away, then your face is sunburnt. DON'T DO THAT! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Masterson Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 Thanks Das. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daswulf Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 No problem. I atleast have been there when I nailed something then later it seemed I was failing at it. Take a step back. Breath. And try again with a relaxed state. Customer is ok and just wants a good product. Good, handmade, and not absolute perfection because we humans are imperfect. And that can be our charm and the charm in what we make. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 3 hours ago, Chad J. said: I gave myself a sunburn using my welder yesterday. A flashburn on your arms is bad, one on your face is worse, but one in your eyes is is an experience you will never forget. Take care out there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHCC Posted February 22, 2022 Share Posted February 22, 2022 2 hours ago, M.J.Lampert said: would show mine but that would be embarrassing to me Still can’t find my 3 pound straight peen though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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