Made a small adjustment to my new forge last night.   The burner was not oriented the best so I cut it off, angled the piece a bit,  and remounted the pipe that holds it.  Made a huge difference in the warmup time on the metal.   Also welded on a piece of angle to help hold a fire brick in place in the front fire a door.  I need to get some projects done before the next set of shows but I'm going to try doing a medium sized billet forge welds afterwards.  

 

My first real fabrication project. 3’ x5’ gate. I am pretty happy with it and it swings with my 185 pounds riding on it. 

That is a god looking gate, it should keep wanted critters in and unwanted critters out. Good job.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.~ Semper Paratus

Thx IFCW, also lit the forge for a bit and made another S hook and did some general fooling around as some would say  :-)

Thanks for looking.

RP, I really like the transition from the square twist to the round section for the hook. It's very clean. Is that just hammer and anvil, or is there some kind of guillotine tool or spring swage involved?

Thanks hefty, yes hammer and anvil only.

I am on a 6 day weekend from work right now. Yesterday i tested positive for covid so i have spent the last couple days curled up under a blanket. Feeling a bit better today so hopefully i can get at least a little something done in the shop with all this time off. 

Ugh, that sucks. Don’t over-exert yourself! 

WOW, you guys have been busy in spite of the heat and all I did for the last 10 days was loaf in a campground in McKinley park. The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm highs in the 60s lows in the 50s and only a strong breeze for inconvenience. Well, wed just started eating glory hole pork chops and we got a pretty hard rain squall and had to finish dinner in the RV.

The biggest excitement was a large grizzly bear checking out the camp site across the road from us, maybe 80' away. Inspecting for a grizz often means taking a couple bites . . . from the picknick table. Unfortunately it was a bad angle to get a pic for the greenery between us, if Deb got one I'll post it. 

Well, there WAS a bit of excitement on the drive home when a semi passed us on the right going probably 80mph. right after Deb had signaled she was changing to the right lane and missing us by a foot or two. Yeah, right past my  window. We were in a passing zone with NO traffic in the opposing lanes! That was about as close to forging anything as I came. Being forged  that is.

I'll stand by my estimate of 80mph+, we were rolling 65mph and the tractor trailer cleared my window in maybe 2 whole seconds. It was going at least 30fps faster than we were.

Heck, by taking the early 8am bus as far as the park road is open there were only 2 others aboard who we dropped at a campground. We picked up 2 others on the ride back who were headed out to the park headquarters, showers and laundry, they'd been camping for a week. BOY do I understand that! Heck we'd only been on the road maybe 8-9 days and I positively luxuriated in our shower when we got home,  took another long one this morning.

On the bus we saw a sow grizz and two cubs on the hillside above the road, several ptarmigan and a couple few Spruce grouse (we used to call them Spruce Hens) Both are tasty eating and dumb enough to be easy hunting. No, NOT in the park of course. I got a brief glimpse of a Harrier hawk high through the windshield as it sped past.

As Deb and I were driving out of the park we saw a small herd of caribou on the hillside and several more small flocks, (I know, not what groups are actually called and I'm not looking it up. Bird group names are species specific.) of both ptarmigan and spruce grouse. Squirrels are everywhere once you get away from town.

Didn't see wolves, coyotes, fox or lynx but almost nobody ever does, nor moose but its the rut so the bulls are fighting high, near tree line and the cows are hanging low near the rivers and streams. We see moose all the time here at our place so. . . 

I think that about covers what I was doing recently. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Spent last week at a summer camp workshop led by local blacksmith Kees Klaassen. I had asked him to teach me how to forge tongs, and I had a blast.
Learned that it really is a lot of work to forge out the reins, especially in spring steel. But that I really like the feel of more tapered reins as opposed to the common cylindrical reins in the commercial tongs that you find around here. Learned to appreciate the help of a striker with a big hammer!

Made one miniature pair for practice, and one full-sized pair in spring steel, and got to use them both for work afterwards.

Nice tongs!

You can always reforge your tonghandles.

I make them from 12mm round and weld them on. But now i taper them a bit to the end

Nice job for your first 2 pair of tongs, they look much better than mine. Yeah, spring steel is MUCH harder to forge than mild steel but it is much more rigid so you don't need nearly as much for the same strength and gripping power. 

Fun making them wasn't it? Not nearly as much as using them though eh? Few things feel as good as using a tool you made with your own hands. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Nice tongs Prag.  It's a great skill to develop,  I need to practice it more often.  I got a full day in the shop yesterday and I am feeling it today.  Made a bunch of leaves from some 3/4 inch round stock for the roses I've got piled up to finish,  a brooch/hairpin, finished up a cross that I had started a while back by making the cross piece and forging the circle, made a hamburger press with a wrench handle,  a double hook, a new viening tool and single bevel chisel for the freidrich's stars I'm developing, and i can't even remember what else.   Tonight I'm going to try a russian rose. 

Chad i like that cross. 

Got a little forge time in. Finished shaping an herb chopper i started a couple weeks ago. Now i just need to heat treat, grind and polish. It is for a freinds daughter that has recently become a chef. I am thinking a nice piece of cherry in the loop will look quite nice on it. 

9 layers of 1095/15N20. I do not make many knives much less patern welded. I put a few drill points along the billet to maybe get a raindrop effect. No it does not have an edge yet, just an optical illusion of one being there. 

Thank you all for the nice comments. I had been apprehensive about starting tongs, it was very encouraging to have an introduction from an experienced smith.

Gewoon ik, I'll definitely explore welding the reins later on, sounds fun in its own right. For now I will take my teacher's advice and ask a local blacksmith to forge out the reins on the ends of some sticks to give me some preforms. Gets me talking to them, so kills two birds.

Definitely very motivating, Frosty. Can't wait for the next chance at the forge to make some more!

On 9/2/2024 at 4:50 AM, pragtich said:

one miniature pair for practice

Not for practice: for smaller workpieces.

On 9/2/2024 at 4:50 AM, pragtich said:

one full-sized pair in spring steel

Just remember that quenching hot tongs (as we often do, when they get too hot to hold) can be a problem with spring steel tongs and can lead to cracking and breakage.

 

528E12, that fish was a beaut! 

JHCC, I like those tap handles. Also cool that they're giving you artistic license for what you create!

BillyBones, JHCC, and Goods - I also watched that video and got right out that same day to try it out. Definitely fun and I'm going to try to incorporate it into a shelf bracket soon.

Rojo, I really like that square-to-round transition on your S-hook. No swage or monkey tool even? I can't imagine getting all four sides necked in without assistance of some sort of tool.

Pragtich, those are some prachtige tongs! (see what I did there  )

Chad, dang man - you were BUSY! A lot of good lookin stuff you cranked out in one day.

 

I've done quite a bit since my previous post. 

I finished up (for now anyway) the project piece I was making to bring to demos and fairs. This is intended to show the variety of things that can be made from a small piece of steel (one inch of 1/2" square in this case).

 

This week, I've been working on leaves, leaves, and more leaves. Started out doing a few for a Weekly Blacksmith Challenge group on Facebook and then decided I really wanted to get more efficient at making these. In the event I ever actually accept an invitation to demo, it would be nice to know I had something I could reliably do in under 30 minutes. I'll be working on these again tonight - and likely the rest of this week. I ordered some keyrings so some of them will become keychains and some will become pendants. The rest will go on a windchime for my sister - as soon as I get that forge welded ring project done, lol

 

Cool stuff Shain. 

 

I've been asked to forge a skull at an up coming PAABA meet. This will be the first time I haven't demo's using my own kit,  in someone else's shop and with their forge and vise and whatnot. I'm pretty stressed lol. I know there is no need to be. 

Anyway I've been trying to remake some of the punches and chisels I use in making them with longer handles. I've been using old star bits I've collected from fleamarket finds. Once I'm good there I plan to practice so I don't look the fool in front of people that know what they are doing. I can mess one up out in the field and people still like it. I know people with more knowledge deserve a more precise demonstration taking less time than I might normally take.  I can do that I just need to practice before hand. Plus need to test out the new tools. I am so much more comfortable in my home forge. 

I won't lie in saying that I thought " why would you want Me to demonstrate?" at the offer. In all honesty I am very glad and honored to do it. 

What I did in my shop today is finished the wiring and mounted these wall lanterns. I have been working on this  addition to my shop for the last 2 months for a dedicated forge area .

Took all day but I am super happy with it. I really feel like I have advanced to the intermediate skill level.

Need some longer screws and touch up paint but wanted to proof its function on my new well house. Thanks for looking.

Rojo, that looks really nice! 

Daz, the main push behind me working on efficiency for these leaves is because a member from my local club suggested I demo them. I had the same thought as you - disbelief but also honored. I was also asked to demo forge welding awhile back but I declined, thinking I shouldn't be the one to demo because I only had 10 or so successful welds under my belt. Then I found out that the member who agreed to demo had less than that and basically had to crash course in preparation, lol

But a demo for blacksmiths is 200x scarier to me than a public demo, lol. I need to know exactly what I'm doing and as efficiently as possible. Then I need to record myself doing it while giving a pretend demo. I have insane fear of public speaking but I've been told I do it well. My process requires me to rehearse to the point that it's ingrained, so that when I get nervous and my brain goes fizzy, I can still do it.

I'm getting close with the leaves. We'll see. 

Tonight I just did one more leaf, and turned it into a small wall hook. I remembered at a demo by Matt of Cloverdale Forge at the Missouri conference that he added chisel marks between the fuller marks to add dimension so I tried that. I like how it turned out. He used opposing teardrop shaped fillers but I haven't made a big pair of those yet. 

Only one because I got started late and the sun setting earlier than expected ended my session early. I need to figure out how I want to light that area. 

 

Everyone's stuff if looking great tonight!

HOWEVER...

My first attempt at a Russian rose is kinda ugly.  1/4 x 1 x 12 inch piece for starter.  it turned out ok for a first try.  I'm going to do a bit of modification on subsequent attempts see if I can come up with my own tweeks.

Ok, so this is the prettiest set of tongs I've made yet.  My first attempt at scrolling tongs,  5160 coil, forgot to measure the length but around 8 inches on the reigns and I worked them over my anvil top swage to make them half rounded.  These should help next time I try another Russian rose.  I did minimal cleanup,  some hot rasping and hitting it with the surface conditioning belt on the grinder. 

Very nice!

Your scrolling tongs look good, how do they work? My one attempt at a Russian rose didn't work so well and it turned into other things.

Frosty The Lucky.