What did you do in the shop today?

[Daswulf]

Jest wondering now if you could get a hexagon shape punch to make a deep and close enough impression to look like a bit of the flat honeycomb in copper without cracking/tearing it. Probably wouldn't have to be too deep to look good. 

I don't have any repousse  setup but now I'm thinking of other ideas in that regard as well. 

[JHCC]

Thank you!

Since posting the above, I have hardened and tempered those tools and made another couple of texturing tools. 

[DNADave]

I made some hooks for a charity auction.   Hope they go for $30 but I’ll start them for $10.   
 

[JHCC]

3 hours ago, Daswulf said:

Jest wondering now if you could get a hexagon shape punch to make a deep and close enough impression to look like a bit of the flat honeycomb in copper without cracking/tearing it.

Certainly, and an Allen wrench is already the right cross section. If you really wanted to get fancy, you could weld seven of them together (with a little bit of space in between) so that you’d be making a hexagonal cluster in one shot. 

I’m thinking that the next time I do honeycomb, I’ll use a slightly domed round embosser rather than the center-punch-like tool I used here. I’ll also take some time to mark a regular hexagonal pattern before I start adding the texture, rather than eyeballing it as I did here. 

[Duckwalk]

Forged out a tiny cold chisel and butcher out of some garage door spring for some annealed mild steel. Doing a guard on a simple little knife. Got it SUPER close to fit before even filing. 

 

 

[Frosty]

Nice hooks DNADave, they should do pretty well. You might want to draw less of a point on the hooks so the finial scroll is a little fatter maybe even flatten it slightly making the finial scroll wider and less likely to damage delicate clothing. Pretty well done, I like them.

Nice chisels Duckwalk. I have 2 old coil springs from an overhead door they have hundreds of feet of useful stock, handy.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Shainarue]

I haven't been active on the forum in awhile. Still keeping busy with blacksmithing though! I try to get out there at least a few hours every evening after work. And if we don't have plans on weekends then I'm usually out there all day. My stubborn self even tried to forge when we were in the midst of severe heat advisories! I waited until the sun went down and set a timer for 30 minutes. But the 2nd night, I ignored the timer thinking I was so close to done. I ended up making a bunch of stupid mistakes, threw in the towel and went inside only to discover I was sick from dehydration even though I had finished an entire 40oz tumbler of water in that 45 minutes. Ugh.

Anyway, here's a few pics of stuff I've been working on:

The garden candle holder thingy was made as a donation to my local blacksmithing club to sell at a fair last weekend. If I'd have had more steel, I would have made a set. I underestimated how much it would take to make one, lol. Basically about a 40% loss from original length once all the coils/curls/corkscrew elements are added. This one stands at 39" once it's in ground. Future ones I'll make shorter so I can use a 4ft piece of bar and they'll end up more of a seated-height at 28" in ground.

It was my first time doing one of these and got the idea from the Lorelei Simms book Backyard Blacksmith. Overall it's fairly straightforward and easy. It was tricky getting the circumference just right so that the glass vessel fit inside just at the base of its lip. Probably spent the most time on that. If I decide to make these more often, I'll need to make a jig.

I volunteered as a silent demonstrator at the fair - the more talkative members were up front. I made my first meat flippers. I was already starting on the second one before the first one was finished cooling - and then the first one sold as soon as it was cool enough to put on the table! The second one (a left-handed one) was still on the table when I left a few hours later. The two S-hooks were the last items I made. I had burned the tips multiple times and then turned the hook in the wrong direction. Just dumb mistakes. I decided I should be done for the day. The horseshoe heart was not mine - it's just there as a paperweight for the club's pamphlets. 

I'm also working on the ABANA National Curriculum Level 2. I've been practicing forge welds lately. Their first project is a fire poker with a basket twist handle & collar finial. A few examples of my practice (newest=left, oldest=right). 

Far right 3: over the span of a few weeks and troubleshooting with a local smith via pictures of my in-process.
4th from right: first fully blended and welded 3/8" bars using drop-tong on Friday evening. You can just make out the edge of the scarf - it lines up with the end of the scarf of the bar next to it.
2nd from the left was my first collar weld on Sunday which I did on the 1/2" bars from my first successful drop-tong weld (not blended). So technically, that one is a combination of the oldest & newest.
The one on the far left is what I did this Sunday and will likely become an actual fire poker - just not one that I will submit for review, lol. But a good faggot weld for the basket, a fairly well blended drop-tong weld and a decent collar weld.

[Daswulf]

Doing great Shainarue. Keep up the work. Practice makes good. Lol. I don't believe much in perfect like the old saying. Good is good. Well, there is perfect I guess but as craftsmen at least I never see it. It is done when we are either done or it is enough  or good in our minds eye. 

Sorry for the ramble. 

[GhostTownForge]

9 hours ago, Duckwalk said:

guard on a simple little knife

already looks great! (much better than what I've done;) is the handle all brass?

[Frosty]

The trick to knowing when a piece is done is knowing when you're done with it.

Frosty The Lucky.

[TommyVee]

I worked a few days at the New Mexico state fair this weekend and churned out my very first steak flipper, a meat fork to match it (also a first), a handful of hooks, and a couple of leaf keychain fobs as live demos --- hard enough to work on stuff normally, harder with an audience and fielding questions.  

Sold most of them, too, on top of some of the things I'd made in advance (hooks, leaves, bottle opener).  The steak flipper sold while I was trying to make its mate, and the meat fork sold before I was even finished with it, so no pictures to share.  Instead, here's a picture of the NMABA's portable smithy at the fair.  I'm the one in the yellow apron.

The fair goes on until the 17th, but I probably won't go back to work the booth more until Wednesday.

 

[Daswulf]

Exactly. 

Last night I made my first forged skull. I have no idea why I hadn't before but I was asked to do a forging demo by PAABA for a pittsburgh local iron workers group to maybe inspire some interest. I am all about drawing interest even tho I'm not the most social. I try when it comes to blacksmithing. Anyway they mentioned possibly forging a skull among other things so I need to try and practice before I jump into it. The other ideas I am more familiar with.    

Here is my first attempt. Will make it a key chain. First idea was a bottle opener but that wasn't going well because of fatigue. Yeah full time job, kids and other duties leads to less alert time in the forge. So I cut it and drilled it to accept a key ring.  It is ok. A few more and I might be able to make them better. 

Definately props to a few tutorials on yt. 

 

 

 

Nice Tommy, sounds like a great experience. I like the booth. 

[Rojo Pedro]

Real nice Das.

Lots of detail and perfect size and shape for a keychain

[Daswulf]

Thanks Rojo. Now that I got one done and will make more soon it is just another tool in the toolbox and I hope to get better expressions. Also want to get the keychain ring to look like it is held in the jaw on the next. 

[TommyVee]

Das:  The booth is actually a small trailer that opens up into that whole thing.  Two forging stations with coal forges, post vises, and 200 lb. anvils *and* space to display items for sale.  I was really impressed by how much smithy they'd packed into such a small trailer (you can see how big the trailer actually is by looking at the distance between the two chimneys.  Everything comes apart and gets stuffed back into that package, including the coal bin (which is assembled around and hides the trailer tongue).

[Daswulf]

That Is impressive! Also just setting up at the fair and letting smiths demo And sell is something I'd like to talk to PAABA about. Will have an audience with the higher ups this weekend. 

[Shainarue]

3 hours ago, Daswulf said:

Practice makes good.

100%

Also, that's a really cool skull. 

Tommy, that booth setup is pretty slick! 

[Daswulf]

Thanks Shain. 

I agree.

 

Well, made another skull tonight. Lightning, patience and or skill didn't strike in the same place twice. Maybe i am a few too deep and out of energy and rushed it. Cracked it at the mouth where I wanted to drill the hole and didn't get the eye sockets or teeth how I wanted. Second is done tho. Now off to do other un-fun things. 

Still wound up with a finished product. 

[Shainarue]

If you hadn't pointed out your "mistakes", I wouldn't have known, lol

[GNJC]

On 9/10/2023 at 8:45 PM, JHCC said:

Certainly, and an Allen wrench is already the right cross section. If you really wanted to get fancy, you could weld seven of them together (with a little bit of space in between) so that you’d be making a hexagonal cluster in one shot. 

 

A long time ago I did something like that with allen keys, although I was working with silver. I scrounged and found quite a number of old sets and experimented with various sizes, numbers and patterns. I found that 5mm and 6mm sizes allowed for the best combination of effect and effectiveness.

Unfortunately my preferred set-up of seven together (one central and the others surrounding it) wasn't a goer, since that pattern required a xxxx of a hit to make an impression and, because I was striking by hand, it was hard to achieve even impressions.

My most successful set-up was with three together in a triangular pattern; I found this allowed for even impressions of sufficient depth. It also allowed me to more easily overlap subsequent hits. I tried with slightly larger allen keys too but, again, they didn't penetrate sufficiently; and smaller sizes didn't give the right look - I was trying to imitate the natural appearance of honeycomb as accurately as I could.

I haven't tried to do it on other metals, but reading your post has made me think about having a go with steel. I think that having a treadle hammer will make a better job; I can't remember the distance I settled on between the keys, to allow for the cell walls; but I guess it was about 1mm. I won't waste time with any pattern other than the triangular one, since it allows for the most efficient pattern repetition.

Sorry for the metric figures, but I only think in imperial down to units of 1/8", but the principles are the important things.

Good luck.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Mod30
spelling

[Chad J.]

Made some drive hooks, a large hanger, and a laddle a I have the little doyle anvil it's first workout.   I have a couple of demos coming up and need to restock.   The shape of the horn really worked well when I was drawing out some stock and in spite of the fact that I may have been trying to ding the face it was spotless when i finished. 

 

[JHCC]

GNJC, thank you for your observations. That all makes excellent sense. 
 

A treadle hammer would certainly work, as might a fly press. One might also make a three-hexagon stamp out of a single piece of steel without too much trouble. 

[Frosty]

GNJC: What are you using to space the hex keys? Hexagons have been one of my favorite shapes for at least 50 years. I imagined and "designed" an entire type of earth to orbit space craft based on interlocking hexagonal polyhedron that could later be easily disassembled and used to construct orbital habitats, etc. 

Oops, almost got myself sidetracked on an old story device. 

Anyway, how do you space them in your texturing punch? I spaced them with pasteboard and welded the struck end which required normalizing at that end.

I hand sanded the business ends to ease the edges and prevent cutting.

Frosty The Lucky.

[GNJC]

Frosty, I haven't used them for about twenty-five years, I seem to remember spacing using off-cuts from a small piece of sheet I had lying around, maybe 19 or 20 guage (UK), and then just tack-welding, and then welding a lot. I was not and am not a very good or elegant welder, but if the welds are strong and not for show, who cares?

The ends were polished to mirror-finish, because I was working with silver; it's a pain to get them to that standard, but pretty easy to maintain once reached.

JHCC, '...without too much trouble.' is an entirely relative concept...  But yes, a treadle would be my choice now. Fly presses are good, but would maybe need different tooling, whereas the same could be used by hand or treadle. But I haven't a fly press and have only used them off and on over the years, so I am open to correction on that.

[GhostTownForge]

I worked at the NM State Fair quite a bit last week. I'm planning to go back on Thursday.

It was the most fun I've had in a while!