This week marks the 3 year anniversary of my getting into the hobby.   I've gotten to spend a lot of time on this in b that time.   Anyway I've been working on spring related items.  Shepard hooks of various designs,  a simple decorative chain,  fire pit tools,  knives, and I've started in on some orchids that my girlfriend, who is a horticulturist at a botanical garden,  helped me design for relatively realistic looks.  I've got them cut out and started shaping them last night. 

Those are going to be beautiful Chad. Looking forward to seeing them finished. Look kind of like the Cymbidium orchid but without the middle part ... I know there are many varieties of orchids though.

My first step whenever trying to create a thing that exists in the world is to see if I can find a paper pattern for it. People make all sorts of things out of paper (especially flowers) and it looks like it would translate easily into sheet metal or forged metal. 

 

Dhad, those look great.  I'd like to see the original layout shape before you started doing any raising or bending.  My wife, Madelynn,  wants to know if that is gold spray paint we are seeing on the flowers and anvil?

Thx.

George

Thanks George!  It was just the shadows, I'm going to try to get some heat oxidation on some of them in the toaster oven and catch them in the blue ranges.   Also going to go black and v hot bread brush a couple.  Here are the blanks...

Goods, it is quite useful. Another example of where i have used it is designing a fire pot. 

I have taken note that there are not a lot of mathematical formulas here. Maybe i will start the thread. Things that would be useful in our craft. Pretty much all of us know how to use Pi to get the circumference of a circle.  But there are others that are not as well known. I will see what i can come up with this weekend. Using the right formulas can save a lot of wasted material. 

Chad, i like your Orchids. Those would also look nice made of copper then "painted" with a torch. 

23 minutes ago, BillyBones said:

Pretty much all of us know how to use Pi to get the circumference of a circle.

Just remember that 22/7 is close enough to Pi for almost all of our purposes. When I made the semicircular arches with a seven foot diameter, the arches had a circumference within 1/2" of eleven feet.

Wouldn't the circumference be 22' or are you talking arc length?

Not to be picky. I can't do math in my head and think in reverse polish notation :-)

4 hours ago, JHCC said:

the arches had a circumference within 1/2" of eleven feet.

6 minutes ago, Rojo Pedro said:

Wouldn't the circumference be 22' or are you talking arc length?

you are both right

Rojo you are thinkin full circle while JHCC was talking about semicircular arches (half of the circle)

C= 2*pi*r so 2*3.14*3.5=21.98 about 22' half of that is the 11' that JHCC had

just a highschool math lovers 2 cents

M.J.Lampert

Chad, thanks.  I have always had good luck "painting" with a propane torch for oxidation colors.  You do have to keep water handy to quench at the right color and sometimes pull the heat hust before you get to the desired color.  It can be fussy at first but after awhile you get a feel for it.  I have never tried an oven.  Just make sure you don't have to do much to the metal after coloring.  The oxidation layer is only a couple atoms thick and is easily damaged.

GNM

You can also use pi x diameter.  Pi being 3.14159.

For rough numbers, 3 x diameter plus a little.  If you want to get closer, then are you measuring the diameter at the inside, middle, or outside of the circle?

Some bladework: heat treatment and basic grinding of some long-neglected knives. The Viking knife was left behind by one of my students when they graduated; I drew out and shaped the handle and am finishing it up as a surprise.

The bottle opener tongs were great for holding the loop handle while heating and quenching.

For a while now Debi has wanted another knife making jig to be able to hold the blade while working on the handle. We finally got around to it the other day.

It was a joint effort with Debi picking out all the steel from the resource piles. She did all the layout, drilling most of the holes and all the welding. I picked out the slice of RR track for the mounting base and heated it to make the bend.

A picture of a Seax I forged out at a demo, with the blade held some day I'll get it finished. The nice thing about the jig is it will rotate 360 degrees while working on the handle/scales without worrying about marking up a finished blade or getting cut.

I also made the wood inserts with leather glued on to hold the blade by tightening the machine screws down.

I also got to drill and tap the end plate for the stud & big wing nut I found in the pile. Loosen the wing nut to rotate the jig or take it off the mounting bracket.

The knife also fits in like this, so one can work on the spine. All that's left is Debi wants to paint it with Rust-Oleum hammered grey paint.

Tonight I worked on tapers for evaluation by my ABANA National Curriculum coach. From left to right: original bar, chisel taper, square taper, octagon taper, round taper, and diamond taper.

 

Not bad Shaina. I'd make suggestions or have questions but I'm not familiar with the ABANA curriculum and not qualified to stick my nose in. 

If you don't mind, let us know what your coach says please, I'd like to compare thoughts.

Frosty The Lucky.

The magic of Mathmatics:

Pi Ar Round!!

Cake Ar Square!!

Circumnavigate Circular Contraptions

Neil

Some Cake Ar Round

Does that mean that sometimes Cake=Pie?

Or, is the cake just a lie?

The cake is a lie...

Or a Portal to your heart......

 

 Pie are round! Cornbread are square!

Not if you have any imagination.

Frosty The Lucky.

More ABANA NC stuff. Tonight I worked on S hooks and leaves. 

The evening started off not great with focus. I was making dumb mistakes. First S hook I started to hook the second side in the same direction as the first side... Oops... Straightened out and hooked it the other way. Then realized the curls I'd made weren't facing the same directions. One faced in and one faced out. I dropped it and moved on to the next one. 

Second hook I tried my first fishtail curl. That went okay and the first side of the hook looked good. Start the fishtail on the other side... And then realize I didn't rotate the piece so the fishtail is now perpendicular to the other. Oops... So I decided I'd just square the center and twist so it looked like an intentional design element but would also fix my error. Win! 

Leaf is a little fat but overall I was happy with it. No cracks, mostly equal sided, and I even got a bit if a center ridge and some waviness! The video shows off the leaf better but I included the pic as well for those who don't have the bandwidth to watch video. 

 

Good Morning Shain,

Instead of making your round material square, so you can twist it, knock 2 flats where you want to twist it. Use your Handled Hot-Cutter to make a fairly deep line, the length of the Flats, on both sides. Now when you twist it, it will look like 2 pieces of round that were fire welded to the ends and then twisted. Very simple to do, VERY different and attractive effect. K.I.S.S.

Neil

Oh NO you turned a hook the wrong way! Welcome to the club, it happens to everybody. A twisted shank on an S or wall hook is often an indication someone turned a hook backwards. It's a simple effective and very much traditional blacksmith "fix".

Leaves just take a little practice.

I find that upsetting the "end" back flat makes reverse or fish tail scrolls suit my tastes.

Nice S hook, next time it goes backwards, give Neil's suggestion a try, it's fast easy and looks attractive.

Frosty The Lucky.

Neil & Frosty, I've done the rope twist and other chiseled twists before - and for me it's not more simple (especially on these little fiddly pieces) but it is definitely more attractive! Squaring & twisting took me 2 heats (the twist should have had another heat, as evidenced with the uneven twist,lol). The chiseling alone would have taken me at least 4 heats, possibly more - just because I'm still so slow at it, lol

I tracked my heats on the leaf because I had seen an Instagram post by the same person who instructed the first class. He had put out a challenge to create a wrapped leaf in less than 10 heats. This leaf took 20 heats - and 10 of those heats was just drawing out the stem square (then one heat to octagon and two heats to round). So I really need to work on getting more efficient in that department. I'll give Brian Brazeal's video another look - I remember he showed how to forge a tong blank in one heat, including drawing the reins. There are a ton of various methods for drawing out but I remember trying his in clay and thinking it was pretty efficient. Could also be I'm just not using full swings so I'm not moving as much metal as I could. I have a bad habit of that. I need a pre-recorded message that just plays in the shed every 5 minutes or so "Full Swings!" 

More practice is definitely on the way. I used up all my 5/16" stock practicing staples. I even bought an extra bar! Sheesh. So I'll pick up FOUR bars of that tonight - that oughta do it.

 

Side note: Last summer both my anvil and forge were outside the shed. This is my first summer with the anvil inside the metal shed (forge still outside) and GOLLY GEE is it ever hot already! And it's not even summer yet! It was 80 degrees outside yesterday evening - and at least 10 degrees hotter than that in the shed. I never did get the foam sheets installed in the roof - that will be happening this weekend! Last night though, I just turned on a little fan and kept it on the top shelf - really close to the roof - to help circulate the air and that helped immensely. It was actually a little cooler in the shed for a short moment before the sun finally dipped down below the horizon!

16 hours ago, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said:

 Pie are round! Cornbread are square!

I thought Cornbread are triangle?

 

All this math is making me hungry.