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What did you do in the shop today?


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Once I went to a Salvation Army Thrift store and picked up a bunch of old table knives for US 25 cents apiece---they had sterling ferrules and real mother of pearl handles...I've also had luck picking up sterling silver jewelry pieces that were not stamped sterling or 925 but instead were hallmarked...

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Scrounging thru the scrap pile for some 1" pipe and came upon an old boom stand.  Some paint had scraped off and reviled it to be made of solid brass. Read in a previous posting awhile back that some of the tomahawks of old were made from brass. Might give it a whirl.

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Hans: Did you vent the bottom of that pan and have a large sprue? It doesn't look like there was enough metal to fill the mold and if there was resistance from air/steam/etc. that's about what I'd expect to see. The handle is a large volume and will take up a lot of metal as it cools. The pan bottom is like an upside down bucket under water if the air can't get out the metal can't get in and if the handle is drawing it back. . . 

How did you gate it? 

Mark: Really nice booth and inventory, you'll be our resident demo/show guru in no time. Sounds like good sales, did it put you i n the black?

I saved a couple hood springs that look like the spring shown for stock. It sparks like 5160 but is easier to forge weld. Maybe it's another alloy or maybe it's because it's thin. It takes and holds an edge nicely though the etch wasn't dramatic.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Ben, great hammer.. Love the cheeks and the clean forging.. Well done indeed..  If I am doing a bunch of smithing my hands have a tendency to get yellow in the callus any how.. :) 

What belt grit did you top out at? 

14 hours ago, Reeltree said:

Read in a previous posting awhile back that some of the tomahawks of old were made from brass.

Cast brass.. Not forged brass..  

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If you’re asking about the handle, I finish sand all my handles to 120 with a palm sander. Any finer than that and it gets too slick once oiled.  On my personal handles I rarely go finer than 80 grit on the palm sander, I like the slightly coarser finish once it’s been soaked in blo for a bit. I do nearly all the shaping of the handles with a bandsaw and spindle sander before hitting them with the palm sander to smooth any angular spots I missed.

For the hammer heads, the edges get a final pass on a 400 grit belt. The faces I jump from a 400 to 1200grit then finish with a cloth belt and some sort of yellow polishing compound I had laying around. 

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I hammered out a couple of bottle openers. I put a little pocket clip on these ones so you can keep it handy when you're doing activities that require a little more than one refreshment. I also made my first double hook today. It didn't turn out to bad, but I'd like to do better on the geometry of the top hook in the future. 20181019_165510.thumb.jpg.c1050fd9a1b0b5fced2df403639689a4.jpg

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Fixed up the stand for my new gas forge and NARB. 

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I was about to weld the forge to the stand when I realized that that would make putting in the kaowool and hard refractory a real pain. Instead, I will do it in a set of brackets that will hold the forge in place under its own weight.

 

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