Used them this evening. They are too short. 

And they don't perform like i want them to do.

Struggeling harder to make tongs for 6mm and smaller than from 6mm and up. 

I was gifted the book Iron Menagerie so I needed some eye punches for animal heads I'm going to try making. 

Left-to-right: medium round eye, wolf eye, duck eye

Lessons learned: 

1. It's much faster to cut coil spring with a cutoff wheel versus hot cut. 4 straighted and cut in one hour versus 14 in 20 minutes (cut, not straightened).
2. Using the ball bearing to create the eye recess doesn't save any time and actually takes longer. Plus, if you make the ball punch to create the recess, you now have a ball punch as well! I'll be rounding off some set pins I have in an old toolbox to create any further eye socket punches.

I did end up hitting the duck eye with the drill to deepen the recess since I removed too much when flattening.

 

Shaina, nice punches.. 

Today was the annual "Fitchburg Forge in".   

  Since all my accidents which seems to be in a continuous association these day.. 3 weeks ago nearly tore my left hand ring finger off when I fell..  Very sore tonight after the competition. 

 

I have never seen a fork/spatula like that. Is that your idea or have they been made for centuries and I just haven’t seen one?

 

I still need to make the sheath, but other than that, she is finished. 8 1/4” blade. 13 3/4” overall length. 5160, antler handle, wrought iron guard, and copper. 

I think this is my third knife. It is totally impractical, but I’ve always wanted a Bowie style fighting knife. Now I have one. 

Good GRIEF Jennifer, STOP DOING THAT!!

Beautiful pan, I like it very much.

Frosty The Lucky.

Donal Harris,  I should have posted better photos..   I love the knife and design.. Not sure about the copper on the back..  Saws yes, knives?? 

The "Fitchburg Forge in" is a forging competition and the judge decides what to make with the specs and stock sizes. 

Frosty. I'm in a spiral..  Sometimes they last a few weeks, sometimes they last years..  This last round is years. 

Jennifer, beautiful work. I hope you are on the upward now. Heal up and please stay healthy and safe. 

Shain, I agree, nice punches. 

Donal, I have to agree that I like every aspect of it but the copper on the spine. It looks well shaped and put together. Awesome work for a third knife. 

I mostly finished up a skull I started out of 1" square stock.( biggest I've used yet.) I learned a lot on this one. Also had to stop the other night and make some new punches due to the size. Anyway I think 3/4" is Way easier to work. Tho with even more punches made I could add a lot more detail to the 1" skull. These are too fun and I plan to make a ton more in varying sizes. 

Jennifer, do they have specs for those items?  I'd like to try to build them myself.  (Added)Oh wait I see it now.   Also, ummmm, ouch!  

Das, I love the skulls.  I have about a ton of questions on how to do them and what your setup is for working on them.   

Thanks for posting the competition specs Jennifer. I didn't see it mentioned, were them judged on results and time or a time limit?

Yeah Donal, nix the copper and you have an attractive knife. Well done.

Getting addicted to skulls eh Das? You'll be getting into Paley country before long. Albert Paley used jack hammers with special bits on some large projects. Hmmmm? I like them both but the one on the left looks almost like it's going fast and needs goggles. Minion skull?

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks Chad. There are a couple good videos on making skulls in this style. I'll see if I can find one to share on here.

Other then that, when I get out to my shop, I will try to get pictures of the specific punches and chisels I've used on these.  If/when I get a chance I will try to get pictures through the process and make a post on how I do these. 

Frosty, I was finding out that there is a big difference between the 1" and 3/4". The eye socket punch I just made for the 1" needs a little adjustment, plus I was experimenting with a nose punch I made to give the nose hole a center ridge, it could also use tweaking. 

I have seen some videos of someone using jack hammer or air chisel and bits to do shaping. I have a couple air hammers and bits. I have some junkier bits I could reshape. I would have to find more cheap ones for reshaping, new ones are a bit expensive to be grinding up unless I had a good specific use that I would use often. 

I made another sculpture. Started out as the heart which was a submission to a FB challenge group for "Anything as long as it passes through itself". I sketched out my idea, wrote out my steps, and got to work. Then at the last step (passing through) I realized I hadn't considered that I'd need to make sure the hole matched the width of the stock passing though. Sounds super obvious but I just missed it. I just forced it through rather than undo what I bent and drift open then re-bend. And it shows. And I wasn't proud of it. 

So I stared at it for awhile trying to figure out how I could camouflage the eye sore. Finally settled on making a long stem with a leaf on each end and coiling that around the ugly. Then I found some scraps on the forge table that would look nice with this. I cut a piece of board, torched and sanded. Mounted the sculpture and hit it all with a matte clear coat. I gifted this to a friend who had a birthday recently. 

Keep working your skills Shain. It passes the parameters. 

Funny enough, I remember trying a pass through on something and did about the same thing. Thinking about it now I havnt tried anything like that recently. I bet it might go easier. 

I bet your friend loves it. Don't wait too long to try it again. 

Oh yeah, 1" is 2x the work of 3/4" on the other hand it holds the heat 2x as long so it's almost a wash for labor. Your skulls make me want to go out, light a forge and make some skulls.

Pretty good Shaina, pass throughs aren't beginner joinery. Next time try passing it through from the back, it shows the pass through off better. I usually have to close the mortice up on the tenon. I'm misusing a couple terms the "tenon" being the piece that passes through and the mortice is the hole it goes through. Male and female works.

All in all it turned out nice, a little polish on the next ones and it'd be a marketable piece.

One heart I really liked the looks of the join at the "top" of the heart were two forged hands holding. The smith with that booth had a number of variations on his table but I was really taken with the hearts.

Frosty The Lucky.

Can I build froe from leaf spring?

Even I have that coil part which it make is easier to forge only blade.

Is that good steel for froe?

I thought about cutting that coil part but when it's already there why don't use it for eye of froe?

 

 

Sure Nat, a froe doesn't require hardened steel, it's only splitting short billets. The blade shouldn't be very wide, 50mm is plenty. Leaf spring will last many generations of hard use. EZ PZ.

Frosty The Lucky.

should i split it with grinder or i can drawn that thiner part out to make it longer but thiner but iam afraid i will make coldshuts with rying to forge it that way.

Making it narower then wider but longer.

 

I'd normalize or anneal a length for the froe and cut the handle with my bandsaw and grind the edge. I wouldn't forge any of it unless I had to. If I didn't have a grinder I'd draw file the edge. Without a bandsaw I'd use a hack saw or cut it with a chisel. Using a hot chisel would be my last choice so I didn't have to deal with grain growth. 

It isn't like a froe needs to be hardened steel or very sharp. 

One advantage of using leaf spring is it's thickness. If you grind a single bevel edge on the side you wish to pry shingles the single edge will wedge the shingle for a good start.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

I will definitely be doing another soon because another friend in that same group (the 6 of us have been getting together for cards/games/crafts/etc since 2004) has a birthday in October and she was jealous of this one. I've made her lots of stuff though so I don't feel bad. But it does take the guesswork out of a birthday gift, lol

Tuesday evening I'll start working on a fishing gig for the trade item at an upcoming BAM meeting. After that I want to work on the trade item for the FSBC meeting. Both in October. 

Did a small ornamental hanger from 3/8ths and a few more leaves for roses and got them welded up.  The hanger is a copy of one I did for a customer Saturday at my last show.   Might do a couple more before this weekends shows. 

11 hours ago, Frosty said:

I'd normalize or anneal a length for the froe and cut the handle with my bandsaw and grind the edge. I wouldn't forge any of it unless I had to. If I didn't have a grinder I'd draw file the edge. Without a bandsaw I'd use a hack saw or cut it with a chisel. Using a hot chisel would be my last choice so I didn't have to deal with grain growth. 

It isn't like a froe needs to be hardened steel or very sharp. 

One advantage of using leaf spring is it's thickness. If you grind a single bevel edge on the side you wish to pry shingles the single edge will wedge the shingle for a good start.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

I have big grinder for that but I feel like I betray trade by not forging out blade by grinding it. 

There's an old truism that applies to the blacksmith's trade. That is "Trade" not "craft" they are two different things. A trade is a career or job requirements. A craft is a set of skills perhaps used in a trade but often hobbies or just something to acquire to enrich a person's soul.

The truism is in relation to a trade rather than the craft. "Better, Faster, Cheaper." Improve any, improve profit. 

A blacksmith making a living in the trade uses the most efficient methods available. To decide to use old outdated methods for philosophical reasons is a betrayal of the craft and trade. However unless said person is plying the craft for an employer the only person suffering for the bad decision is the craftsman.

Just who do you think invented the powered grinder in the first place? Water, air, slave, powered is still powered. Hmmm, who? Don't say blacksmith though they put it to good use very quickly.

Frosty The Lucky.

Well frankly to be honest it is easier to forge this then grind 

 

I don't like eye it's to big to be honest I didnt made it I used it like it was made in factory.

And there's the real reason to forge rather than grind. As far as I'm concerned it's the most important when working for yourself. This is how YOU wanted to do it. It's as valid a reason as there is.

Re-reading my above post I realize I was lecturing you without realizing it till now. I apologize for that, I got myself off on a sidetrack I shouldn't have taken. 

You've made yourself a fine looking froe. Well done.

Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you

I forged what I could reach in my firepot it's 10 inch long so I can't dip it in fire.

And I used grinder to grind rest.

 

If I can count time it would be faster to heat pound and heat pound then to grind alone.

One small problem is froe is heavy because of eye which is 2 "1/2 inches in diameter.

It was truck spring or van spring something like that.

6 cm diameter need to find big pole for that it's bit heavy like axe but is nice to have it.

Hope it won't break .

I heat treated it in water as I was fought by my old Smith.

I get it toward red color , then dipped In water for 1 -2 sencos scratched surface with file, waited for blue color then cooled it in that color it's could be filed so it mean it's not so brittle.

 

Well of the is big it would be easier to pry wood of or split it without breaking handle.

To be honest I never saw this tool used in our country and I don't know name for it.

Frosty it is a good point and I have to remind myself of that sometimes.   I get annoyed  by knife makers who just cut out blanks and don't do any hammering and grind only using jigs then say handmade or they hit it three times with a hammer and call it hand forged.  I feel like that removes the soul from a handmade item,  the variations from piece to piece that make them each unique.   But then again they are working as a full on business many times.  I've often said that to be a good blacksmith you needed to be good at your business and use tools that make you efficient.  So if using a grinder works better than trying to forge it out due to equipment limitations then it's the best way to go.  I still like developing the skills though.