It seems as if the new year is the upset corner time of year....
A friend of mine asked me to make her a dozen hooks a couple months ago.  I was finally inspired over the holiday week and came up with an idea using 1/2" x 1" (12x25mm) flat bar.  I forged out 3 quick variations

and wouldn't you know, she liked the one with the upset square corner the best.  So I forged out a dozen blanks with square corners:

And realized there was enough material in the 'wings' to play with and Phoebe encouraged this, not wanting 12 identical hooks,

and so far have finished half of them:

As an aside, as I was forging the corners, I had a realization that confirms a deep seeded belief I have in the laws of Karma and reincarnation:  Most of you would probably agree that forging upset corners is a PITA and try to avoid doing it as much as possible.  In my life, however, for some reason I have always enjoyed them, mainly for the challenge and the satisfaction I feel when I get one as perfect as I can.   1-1/2 years ago I purchased and induction forge and with the heat control this provides, this process has gone from challenging to very easy to do, which makes them even more fun. 
So my flash was of me being a blacksmith in the past, having to do a bunch of these and as I was doing this, I was hoping/dreaming/praying for an easier way to do this.   This desire was so strong that my spirit waited until the 20th century to return to this plane of existence to fulfill that truly deep desire of my soul:  to have a tool that makes upset square corners easily.  
The moral is:  be careful what you wish for, because you will get it.   Sometime.

Here's hoping 2025 turns out better than expected for everyone!

 

Billy those are some great hooks!  I love the playfulness of the designs.   I know I need to work on my upset corners more and my collars as well,  then there are the upset corners on the collars...  anyway those look great.  

Here is my finished plant hanger.   Didn't make the tennons long enough so I riveted then hit it with the welder for insurance, made the collar too long so I made a couple cuts to shorten it and hit it with the welder for insurance...

Billy, i like those hooks, may steal the design . However, i think if i were doing a bunch of them i would have cut them out rather than forging. 

When i do upset corners i use the vice to hold them with the corner sticking straight up. This makes it so you can upset both sides with out having to flip the work around. 

Chad, Mark Asprey has a really good video on doing collars. Nothing wrong with using the welder, it was a blacksmiths creation after all. 

Billyo, I like that hook style - very clean lines. You definitely have a knack for the upset corners. 

Chad, I think that hanger turned out nice. I've had to do the same with tacking short tenons before. Another tip I frequently forget with tenons is to make the hole square so that the tenon upsets into a square hole and fastens more securely. 

George - unknown crud. Chest congestion, VERY sore throat, overall achiness and fatigue. No fever, no discoloration of mucus (so far). I am indeed enjoying the view out my window. I have been isolated to the bedroom until this passes and the bedroom windows overlook the wooded area where the deer pass through and the birds congregate. Pretty boring in the evening though, lol

Frosty- the forge was plumbed by the manufacturer. If the mixing tubes are too long what effect does it have?

I have put the pics with measurements. 

 

The only thing made by a legitimate burner manufacturer is the casting you connect the propane to. The mixing tube and whatever connects to the burner mount were screwed on by a 3rd. party vendor looking to make money from other peoples product. 

The short burner tube should be 4" long and the long ones should be 6". Max.

Using too long a burner tube will reduce how much combustion air it can induce per unit of propane. This means the burner can put a lesser amount of the flammable mixture of fuel and air in your forge per second. Whatever unit of gross energy you prefer, say Joules, calories, etc. is irrelevant what is relevant is it will produce less heat. Not lower temperature, just less of it.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Thanks for that info Frosty.

I will ask the guy that built them to see what his reason for the longer pipes is.

The bloke that makes them comes highly recommended even from some professional blacksmiths that had used his forges.

You could just buy a couple 6" nipples and check out the effect. The guy who makes them will say it's the best length and if end users have never used different. . .

Frosty The Lucky.

Happy New Year,

Welcome from Vancouver Island, Canada, the Forging world is always changing!!  I know Australia is a big place, I also know there are an awful lot of VERY Knowledgeable Blacksmiths!! Don't be shy about touching base with someone like Glenn Moon (Braidwood, New South Wales). If you talk to him, say "Neil says Hello!!"

Welcome to the world of "Try different things", to find out what the difference is. Some people call it "Nothing ventured, nothing Gained". There is nothing unsafe with trying different mixing tubes. Don't stick the end of the tubes into the flame face, keep the tips back into the Insulation. When you start the Forge, you will need to enrich the mixture to get it going. As the firebox heats up, you can turn down the gas pressure. Adjust the Air dampner by ear, after the firebox has come up to temperature. Make notes in a scribbler (school supplies), this way you can keep track of what works and what the changes are

Does your Forge have a fire-brick for the floor? If you are doing any welding, borax likes to deteriorate the brick. Try garden Lime instead (like Dolomite Lime).

Neil

Cheers Neil, Vancouver Island is a special place. I visited in 2013 and loved it.

I think Glenn did a hammer in last year and I was hoping to go but was in WA on the other side of the county. I will try to get to the next one.

The forge has a brick base and I plan on avoiding borax if I can. Someone suggested soaking the metal in kero before forge welding and when it burns off it carbons up the surface which gives a clean weld. I will be trying everything until I work out what works. I hope to find some local smiths that I can learn off but in the mean time it will be trial and error + YouTube vids + reading forums and trying to find some good blacksmith books.

I plan on getting a thermocouple and a pressure gauge as I am a sucker for being able to see the numbers as then it's easier to record the settings as 12psi than 3/4 of a turn.

I am waiting for the gas bottle to be delivered. It's like waiting for Christmas. Any minute now it should arrive and I can fire the forge up.

 

 

I gave the forge a run and heated up some metal and started to make some hooks. It was a lot of fun. 

There is a lot to learn on how to tune the burners so I will be researching that as I'm not sure what the ideal flame looks like and need to work out what to change to get it right.

On the making of hooks I made the easy mistake of not planning out what I was making. I just heated it up and walked to the anvil and started hitting the metal and working out what I was doing at the same time. I think I was just a little bit too excited to get started.

It will be a few days before I can light the forge again to finish the hooks off so will work out a plan before then. Installing the post vice will be high on the list as it would have helped having it today. I will also make some hardy tools.

 

 

 

 

18 hours ago, BillyBones said:

However, i think if i were doing a bunch of them i would have cut them out rather than forging. 

You're right, there are faster ways to get to the blanks.  If this were for a commission instead of me having fun and using the anvil time mainly as an exercise (I hadn't been able to forge anything for the few weeks prior) and instructional demo for the new smiths in our shop, I'd probably just use a butcher and top tools to fuller out the square U-bend.  

10 hours ago, Tap Tap Bang said:

I just heated it up and walked to the anvil

If you have to walk to the anvil, it is too far away from the forge. You should be able to turn from the forge to the anvil in a step. While you are walking to the anvil the steel is cooling down.

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

14 hours ago, Tap Tap Bang said:

There is a lot to learn on how to tune the burners

Two tips for tuning burners. First, is that all the hotter the forge got? Secondly the flames look to be on the rich side to me.

Unless you took the pic less than 10 minutes after lighting the forge it's not developing the kind of heat that combination of burners should.

Take a look at the flames in the last pic. The close burner has a long flame with a long nearly transparent dark blue center and a proportionally long pale blue almost opaque outer flame that has a thin tail. It screams "TOO RICH" to me, meaning too much fuel for the quantity of air it's inducing. 

Open the choke plates a LITTLE at a time until two things occur. The flame shortens, the opaque light blue takes a larger proportion of the total flame and loses it's tail. The more transparent core becomes much shorter. The other thing you WANT to hear is the burner roar and loudly if it begins to shriek it's becoming too lean.

A sure sign the flame is burning lean is scale forming in the forge, if that happens close the choke plates a LITTLE until it stops scaling your work. Be aware your work WILL begin to form SCALE immediately when you remove it from the forge exposing it to atmospheric oxygen. Well tuned burners consume all the oxygen induced through the burner making the interior completely anoxic. Scale can not form without free oxygen. Make sense?

A serious word of warning here. A propane burner WILL produce carbon monoxide This is a B A D thing so you must have good ventilation and preferably not operate one in an attached garage even with the vehicle door open it can infiltrate the house. Running a burner rich turns one into a major CO machine.

Okay, I'm starting to ramble excessively I'll let you think about what I said, play with your burners and forge and be ready to answer any questions you have. You'll REALLY like it when the interior is running at high yellow temps rather than mid orange. Honestly you will.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Thanks for that info Frosty it will be very helpful. The pic was as it was heating up and I was playing with the pressure and air but with what you have said I know what to look for now.

The anvil is about 3 steps from the forge. I have the anvil in the shed and the forge just outside. It's all a temp set up until I work out where I want everything.

I watched a few vid on making S and J hooks and I was wasting a lot of time doing it the way I was so looking forward to being more efficient next time. Trying to work on my basic skills before tackling more complicated work

Tap Bang, Food for thought; In my smithy, I can crank the blower, wipe off the anvil, swap hammers, set a tool in the hardy hole, etc. all while still cranking the blower without pause.  I need to turn at the waist, but take no steps.  Some folks may think of it as a cramped space, but for me, everything is within reach from one spot in front of the forge.

Blue, your set up sounds like mine, nice and compact not cramped. Efficient. My problem is the rarely used parts of the shop collecting clutter and having to take a day some times to get it straightened out, it is still organized chaos though. 

Got more snow falling today on top of the 13" we already have. so i put my truck in the barn so i do not have to clean it off. My wife takes care of the feeding and watering of the barn cats. We have bowls and chicken holes to keep the water from freezing but for some reason she also puts out just bowls of water. I ay build an igloo after seeing this in the barn.

Got some work done. A coworker wants to make a knife, basically finish and handle, and asked if i could give him a blank. So i hammered this out of a piece of coil spring.

Then i made this little guy, 5.3 oz, was supposed to be a ball pien but i messed up the ball so it is a chihuahua faced hammer now. It is either 12L14 or 1018 steel, can not remember which, i quench in water just to give it a bit more and it skates a file, was not expecting that. I was looking for a small light hammer to tap something at work and could not find one so i made this one. I really like it i think it looks like it is 100 years old. 

Did you draw a temper on it? An "as quenched" hammer head is a potentially dangerous thing. The face and edges will work harden further and become embrittled. The snap you hear when hardened steel chips is the sound of the chip breaking the sound barrier. 

Don't take unnecessary chances with your eyes and especially not with someone else's!

I like the chihuahua face hammer, I have lots of light hammers and uses for them.

Frosty The Lucky.

Yep, i only quenched about the fist 3/4" and let the color run. Then i heated again for linseed oil. I was just surprised being that low carbon it got as hard as it did. 

Before I address hardening steels, alloys, etc. I have to say this and it goes to everybody reading this. If you know someone who isn't reading the forum have them read this, print it out, and pass it around. 

NEVER NEVER NEVER put ANY steel with an L in it's designation in a forge or weld it. The L stands for LEAD. Lead is added to the alloy to make what I grew up calling a "free machining alloy," it's included as a lubricant to make it easier to machine, reduce tool wear, etc. Forging welding or otherwise working it hot means YOU and those in your shop get to breath lead vapor. You might want to read what breathing or otherwise ingesting lead does for your brains/nerves/etc.

Being as where you work and that you made a hammer I expect it's your L grade steel, Do NOT do THAT AGAIN!

I know it's "traditional" for a blacksmith to be able to make things from found or salvaged steel but that just is NOT SAFE to do anymore. Too much steel is imported from countries that have zero concern for safety and happily dump literally ANYTHING metal in their steel production stream. Remember a couple years ago when it was discovered the shiny gold colored children's toys were gold colored because they were coated / plated with pure Cadmium? A true carcinogen prolonged exposure will cause cancer. 

You said it skated a file. That is NOT low carbon steel.  Quenching 40 pt steel from high critical in cold water MIGHT skate a file. Unless you used an old dull file that is.

You can never assume you know what salvaged or drop steel is, that's why we do test coupons. Even new steel can be pretty inconsistent if used for something it wasn't speced for, say a knife, chisel, prybar, etc. 

Modern steels aren't analysis speced, that's why "real" x1018 is an expensive custom order steel, there's no telling what "mild" steel is other than it has a tensile strength under IIRC 40,000lbs/sq in. I know I don't remember the modulus of deformation but it's not high. It gets bridge strength primarily from it's shape, angle iron and other shapes are tremendously strong IF used properly.

Anyway, mild steel is NOT 1018 and hasn't been for a few decades and there is no telling what is in it anymore. There are custom makers who sell specific analysis steels and irons. I don't know the company names other than Pure Iron and don't know if that one is still in business.

Below is a Wiki link for Carbon Steel to give you an idea of what it's like in today's steel market.

Frosty The Lucky. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_steel

We are still running the job so i will take a look at the spec sheet on the material Monday. But it did come from one of the screw machines and those do not run any steel over 30pts. 12L14, 1018, and 1030 being the most common. Some of our customers have been pivoting away from the "L" series becuase of the lead. Even machining the steel is not good for you. 

We have to know what our materials are made of. Even a slight increase in one element can make it near impossible to machine. Brass seeming to be the most sensitive. So a lot of our material, not all mind you but most, get an analysis. It is cheaper to do that than have a week of down time trying to figure out why the parts break off only to learn that it is bad material and another week till we get more.  

We still call it free machining steel/alloy. 

5 hours ago, Frosty said:

Anyway, mild steel is NOT 1018 and hasn't been for a few decades and there is no telling what is in it anymore.

I say this to new metalworkers weekly and I don't think it can be repeated too much.  Has it been a few decades?  I always say a couple....

Thanks Frosty.

I'm not sure Billy but I haven't bought much steel in 30 years or so and analysis was getting sketchy then. I stopped making helms and basket hilts for SCA fighters maybe 5-8 years earlier because I couldn't trust "mild" steel not to break when whacked with a ratan stick. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

 

Today I made a stand for my gas forge. 

I will add some lower bracing when I work out what wheels I am going to put on and also a tray at the front with an adjustable rest.

It's good to have somewhere to put the tongs.

Made two axe handles , drawn out three axes and sharpened them.

This is before and after