What did you do in the shop today?

[AngryOnion]

Fire poker looks awesome Loafers 

[Daswulf]

Have an event lined up at Steel City Harley this weekend where I will sell and demo forge.  It is a rib cookoff and there will be live bands. Going to knock out this guitar sculpture. Going to be a little different from my past ones but I think it will be ok looking. 

Viewing the back side where I will weld most of it up from. 

[Chad J.]

That looks great Das.  What size chain are you using?

Almost got all the branches on and flared out.   Welding wire to bar stock is a pain.

 

[Daswulf]

It is motorcycle size chain on this one. I usually use manure spreader chain for the bodies on the les paul style. 

Loving the tree. It looks twisted and realistic. Great progress. 

Take your time with it. Small welding is fiddly. 

[Daswulf]

Pretty content with the filler at this point. Will weld it together tomorrow and weld up some pickups, knobs, string winds and frets. As well as beef up the neck just a bit. 

 

[Daswulf]

Worked on a couple started knives as well. The dagger on the left is cable damascus. I am totally winging that. And the file on the right will be a throwing knife,more inclined to the no spin technique. It is all for fun. 

[Scott NC]

  That's a great looking guitar Das.  I love the way you can make the parts all flow and fit.  My stuff looks pretty clunky... Should go fast....

  Nice tree Chad, I've yet to try one.

[Daswulf]

It's a little easier when you can lay it flat and move parts around to see how they fit and work. A bit harder when you have to hold the pieces in place and tack them to see if it works. 

[Rojo Pedro]

Nice work all. Going to have to try a throwing knife now

[Daswulf]

It's a rabbit hole Rojo. There are so many styles, weights and thicknesses. I just made something out of my pea brain that I thought would be a throwing knife and the guy loves them both. Cleaned up the second one at work and never got pictures of the finished knife. 

Love to see your take on it. 

[Goods]

Daswulf, one of these days I’m going to try a throwing knife. I’ve had one on the list for a while now. You might have bumped it up in priority.

I got a couple more hours in the forge tonight and got back to work on my carpenters hammer project. Way more material than I needed, but the steel moved more as I expected it to with the extra mass on the ends.

A lot of work to do yet, but the major forging is done. Next step will probably be putting it on a cut of wheel diet. Probably a pound of steel to loose.

Side question, how much of a radius do you like on a side set? I put about 1/8 radius on mine, but it would have worked out better on this project.

Keep it fun, 

David

[Daswulf]

To be honest, throwing knives can be pretty easy compared to handling a knife and such. There are still a lot of factors to work in. But yeah, they are fun so go for it. 

Goods, you are way better off with too much material than not enough. Easier to cut than add. 

Tho you could try forge welding more material to the last one. That might make a cool hammer if it works out. Nothing lost if it is already a lost cause. 

[Goods]

The first attempt is not scrapped yet. I was thinking it could be made down into a smaller hammer, even though the eye would be strangely large.

I never thought about forge welding material on. Not sure how easy forge welding the material is though. It fork lift tine. Crazy tough. Could be 4130, 4140, 4340, or even 8360(?)… Not I’ve got another thing to add to my list, forge welding trails?

David

[Daswulf]

Well you have options. Always a good thing. Just cause the eye is large doesn't mean you couldn't shave the handle down to match the head weight. No wrong answer other than quitting on it. 

 

Got talking with another local guy interested in forging so didn't get as much done on the guitar but it was time well spent. 

Got the filler welded in and strengthened the neck and headstock. 

[ThomasPowers]

Chad, one thing you can do is to forge weld one end of a bundle of steel wire and then weld the solid end to the tree branch.  Works better on trees that grow that way I'll admit.

Morning I spent a couple of hours with a hot gasser reminding myself why I dislike production work; but I'd like to have some stuff to sell at the state fair and anything leftover, there is a craft fair in November. Worked on two more rasptle snakes and a campfire cooking tripod. Afternoon I went back out and built a simple display stand for my chuckwagon cooking frame. I used heavily weathered wood and a couple of square headed rusty lag bolts.

Decided to downsize the length of our tarp structure; so it won't hang out the back of the truck on the way to quad-state.  Hoping to find some appropriate sized conduit at the scrapyard tomorrow.

[natkova]

Ian planing to make welder's hammer out of leaf spring I have one issue it is wide enough but not thick right dimension.

 

How you folks thicken piece of metal without bending corners aqwardly in, ita like upsetting bus perpendicular .

How does one achieve it?

 

[natkova]

So what will happen if I continue pounding this head , I want it to be thicker but I have con it starting mushrooming having u shape 

 

Ita will be ugly welder hammer 

I think this canrt be resolved 

[Charles R. Stevens]

My suggestion would be to use the overloads, mono leaf, round spring or anti-sway bar. As they already have the thickness. Upsetting flat bar the hard way is, well hard. 
If you are going to upset flat bar, forge a blunt bevel on one edge, get a good heat and let the other edge set on the anvil a few seconds before driving the pointed edge back into the mass. Flip and let the heat rise back up and forge a blunt edge and repeat. All assuming you can do that in one heat…

prevents the mushrooming and as your using carbon steel letting the anvil quench the opiate edge saves you issues. Get real good and you can forge both edges and drive both in at once but that takes a little more skill. 

[Michael]

On 8/8/2022 at 6:26 PM, Chad J. said:

Almost got all the branches on and flared out.   Welding wire to bar stock is a pain.

Nice tree Chad! Looks like you have a little shop tucked behind the house in the suburbs. Close neighbors? Solid fuel?

Just curious.

[Buzzkill]

 

1 hour ago, natkova said:

So what will happen if I continue pounding this head , I want it to be thicker but I have con it starting mushrooming having u shape 

How thick is the leaf spring and how wide is it?  Also, how thick do you want the hammer head to be?  Do you have a power hammer or press?

If the spring is around 3 inches wide you can gain a bit of thickness by decreasing the width.  You can also upset the piece lengthwise to gain some additional thickness.  However, if you are trying to increase the the thickness by more than double it will be a lot of work.  You might be better off forge welding a piece on for the hammer head.

I tried to do something similar to make a one piece tomahawk with a hammer head opposite the blade.  I gave up before I got the thickness I wanted.

I'll attach a drawing of the steps I used to make the hatchet.  You may be able to make a hammer head instead of the hatchet head.springhawk.pdf

[ThomasPowers]

Upsetting the bar to make it thicker is a two steps forward one step back process, You heat it as hot as that alloy will allow and hammer down on the edge. It will start to  )( a bit so reheat if it's cooled and rotate it 90 deg and hammer it on the flat to get the | |  shape again.  Do not hammer it so much that you start thinning it!  Repeat until you get the thickness wanted or run out of stock dimension, height,  that you are converting to thickness.

Most people tend to just go find a piece of steel that starts out thick enough a.fter doing it the hard way a couple of times

[Gandalfgreen]

Daswulf its beautiful so far excellent work. Everyone great work need to get fuel and i back at it. Going to just attempt a knife keep trying to figure out what to make and can not get away from a knife hah. Wont know until i try so time to get okan together and get some fuel.

[natkova]

1 hour ago, Buzzkill said:

 

How thick is the leaf spring and how wide is it?  Also, how thick do you want the hammer head to be?  Do you have a power hammer or press?

If the spring is around 3 inches wide you can gain a bit of thickness by decreasing the width.  You can also upset the piece lengthwise to gain some additional thickness.  However, if you are trying to increase the the thickness by more than double it will be a lot of work.  You might be better off forge welding a piece on for the hammer head.

I tried to do something similar to make a one piece tomahawk with a hammer head opposite the blade.  I gave up before I got the thickness I wanted.

I'll attach a drawing of the steps I used to make the hatchet.  You may be able to make a hammer head instead of the hatchet head.springhawk.pdf

Well i think its thick about 1 inch or litle bit more iam not sure and its wide 4 inches.

Iam planing to make welder chiping hammer but i wanted to eye look litle bit thicker.
Your idea is good but it would be to heavy now its heavy a bit to be honest for chiping hammer iam planing to forge it something  like this.

1 hour ago, ThomasPowers said:

Upsetting the bar to make it thicker is a two steps forward one step back process, You heat it as hot as that alloy will allow and hammer down on the edge. It will start to  )( a bit so reheat if it's cooled and rotate it 90 deg and hammer it on the flat to get the | |  shape again.  Do not hammer it so much that you start thinning it!  Repeat until you get the thickness wanted or run out of stock dimension, height,  that you are converting to thickness.

Most people tend to just go find a piece of steel that starts out thick enough after doing it the hard way a couple of times

Thats what i tought it will be one step foward "two step back" and i didnt rotated 90 deg i tought i will just shape it in back position if you know what i mean so it  can be done to get thicknes and get rid of ( in same time. Good thing is its is high carbon steel and it allow me to work it in litle bit brighter to orange color (cant get yellow out of this thick piece) or i dont know how , however that is different  subject but it can be done.

I did experiment this is frist time that i try to forge thick piece as this. And someone asked for power hammer , i dont have those or fly press even if i had i wont be able to store it.

 

[Buzzkill]

48 minutes ago, natkova said:

now its heavy a bit to be honest for chiping hammer iam planing to forge it something  like this.

You may be making this more complicated than necessary.  One end of the chipping hammer will come to a point and the other will be similar to a chisel on the end, correct?

If so  there is no need to upset anything.  You don't need it to be that thick especially if you think it's already too heavy.

If I was dedicated to making the hammer head from a leaf spring like that, I'd cut about a 4 inch length then split that in half lengthwise (either hot cut or bandsaw). After setting one of the halves aside for a future project, I'd taper one end roughly to a point and flatten the other to a chisel thickness on the remaining half.  After punching and drifting the center point for the preferred handle size it would just require clean up grinding, heat treating, and putting the handle on.

I don't know what you have in your resource pile, but I have several different thicknesses of leaf springs ranging from about 1/4" thick to about 1 inch thick, so you may not have the same options.

[natkova]

Previouslz i made small chiping hammer by stick welding two pieces of rod . and it was realy light.

I think heavyer wont be that issue.
I planed to squish one side that's why i was hammmering it and other  to make like chisel correct 

I might have issues with cuting  out stock to big and massive and having it later to suprise me how it spread bigger than i itended.

It is not first time. Even if it dont end well for welding maaybe it will be good hot chisiel or even twybil 

Aand one thing to add i had previously drilled hole by factory and i put rebar there and welded it to hold it.
So i wanted to use that hole (wich was drilled before as eye) and just elargen it.
This project will be expensive (in charcoal time but iits good exercise) dont know does it worth and how it will end up.
but good thing about forging is that you can almost allways reforge things in other shape compared to woodworking wich is imposible to reshape material.