I've never known of a honey pot ant. Now I do. Thanks.

14 hours ago, CreekSideForge said:

30-45 minutes or until the mustard turns dark brown then wash it off. 

I'm thinking its the mustard, vinegar is more likely to clean a patina off than make one. You might like to try making a paste from Coleman's powdered mustard and water. Be careful, it's WAY hotter than the Kraft yellow substance. Vinegar is added to mustard to set the heat at the desired level. 

Be careful not to stir up dust when handling Coleman's dry mustard, it makes pepper spray look like Visene. 

18 hours ago, jlpservicesinc said:

Frosty:  the  Handles before the last ones were very much close to the shape of yours..  I like the straight tapers i have on 2 of the hammers.. 

Yeah, I adapted mine from Uri Hofi hammer handles and a farrier friend of mine's hammers. The tapers make it so I almost don't have to grip them, friction is almost all the grip I need. You need to break the edges after cutting them out of course or they'll cut your hand. I noticed at a demo the audience was pretty impressed when I spun my rounding hammer without looking to change from pein to face. It made me think a little more flash would be nice but some of my hammers are so well balanced I can't tell from the weight shift so I sanded the pein edges of the handles more round so I can feel which way the hammer is pointed without looking.

It's a crowd pleaser when I put 3-4 revolutions worth of spin when the hammer's over my head. It's just for show but demonstrations are theater, little tricks like that set things in people's memory. It's how I teach.

The tapered slab handles just turned out to be very advantageous at my anvil. Guy's gotta get lucky once in a while you know. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Forged several largish nails yesterday to use in a skit at our church last night.  It was a shadow play and I used my spanish dog head hammer as being the one least likely to show as "modern".   I was told the sound effects of driving the nails into a piece of wood were "spooky".  Another odd blacksmithing job to add to my list.

Drafted an idea for a gate.

That'd be a great gate for an entrance hall, wonderful perspective opportunities. 

I like it, it really tickles my imagination.

Frosty The Lucky.

I don't see any collars so rivets?  Or will you just arc weld it?  I do like the concept.. Sizing? 

Planning to do collars. It’s about 35” wide, to keep the dogs in the family room. 

Finished a set of Poz Tongs today for 3/8" stock, derived from the instruction from Black Bear Forge. I really like the style and they turned out decent enough. I'll make another set sized for 1/4" soon.

 

Great job on those Poz tongs TRR1143:  I watched that video as well, and have been wanting to try my hand at his design. 

Here’s a pair I made to those instructions a little while back. 

Forged a few letter openers from some old floor mesh off cuts like the one in the middle. These are the pieces of floor mesh that are cut out around plumbing fittings before the concrete slab is poured. Our builders at work just throw them in the skip bin, so I rescue them, cut them to the size I want and make these. I like recycling stuff.

 

Fun!

Finished my drawknive, i forgewelded a piece of c45 carbon steel to mild steel for the edge and shaped the handels ware shaped before i welded the insert. Forge welding is a steep learning curve, it took me 5 atempts making this blade. Burning the insert al least 3 times. Its not perfectly shaped but i'm happy with the result and it holds a decent edge. The handles are made of some scrap wood pieces of oak

Looks pretty good..     When I was in VA at Colonial Williamburg  The lead smith said that Peter Ross figured out that they kept having to correct for the curving when they would make draw knives.(weld seam).  Peter said it didn't make sense since of the extra work needed in the process..   He Then decided to weld the strip of HC steel to a square cross section and then forge this on a diagonal..   This kept everything in line and it both forge welded easier (the HC steel protected by the direct contact with the wrought iron) and then only needs to be drawn out regular fashion vs the thin cross section of the HC steel..  

Makes perfect sense and if you look at old composite ones the weld seam is straight both at the handles and across the blade..   Kinda a Duh moment.. LOL.. 

In addition to doing some corrective work on a hammer head and straightening some sections of coil spring for punches (currently annealing in the hot box and therefore not shown), I made a fork (which still needs some filing):

Modified some old twist tongs that never really worked into a pair of punch-and-chisel tongs:

And made a scroll former and a test scroll:

(with a spiral based on the discussion HERE).

Finished the octopus. It's an octopus. If you decide to forge octopus tentacles out of rebar, you better have a good reason lol. Thought I'd utilize some of the texture but didn't. So it was way harder forging and bending the tentacles than it should have been. 

Rebar is for suckers.

4 hours ago, JHCC said:

a hammer head and straightening some sections of coil spring for punches

Voila. The hammer head still needs some more forging and grinding, but a major flaw has been largely eliminated.

I'll leave the suckers to the MIG welder and stick with regular old mild steel for the tentacles. 

Nice fork John. The tines turned out great. 

Thanks, Das. I was talking with a donor some months back who was complaining about the lack of period-correct forks for American Revolution reenactors (her husband is a member of a fife-and-drum corps and sews all their reenacting clothes by hand!), and then I saw an old fork in an antique shop that inspired me to give this a try.

Here’s a photo of that original. I love the decoration, which is all done with the corner of a chisel.

I made rough split crosses and nails for my three kids for Easter. I left the crosses rough because I wanted them to be reminded that the cross wasn't done nice pretty thing, hopefully helping remind them of the sacrifice that was done for all of us to be free. I made the nails to help with that reminder. 

Drilled and ground a couple of eye punches, to be hardened and tempered later. 

21 hours ago, Daswulf said:

Finished the octopus. It's an octopus.

I love it. The body makes it look like a cyborg octopus: Borgtopus, Octoborg, Octobot, Roboctopus? A couple brass gears and it'd be a SteamPunktopus. 

No rebarcotopus. Thank's Das, that's in my book of mistakes not to make for myself. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Well if you ever thought about making octopus tentacles......Lol. 

I like octobot or roboctopus better. 

Made a couple snakes and started tome leaf key chains and a feather. Certainly never enough time at the forge anymore and I do what I can when I can when there. 

A fine octopus, Das. I feel your pain with the rebar.

Interesting snakes. Can we have a close-up of the head with the copper (?) tongue?

Very useful eye punches, too, John. Drilled first and shaped? Looks too neat for the ball bearing method. I would like to find a way of forging an eye punch that has a spot in the middle. I don't think it's possible.

My demo today was ram head bottle openers. Nothing special enough for photos. Also did a couple of 6mm round bar knots into key holders. Tried one in 6mm stainless and it finished up in the scrap bin. Painful stuff to bend into a knot.