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I Forge Iron

What did you do in the shop today?


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Being tired and bored with the lucky horseshoes and stuff, I needed something different. Here it is. Sculptural shape study (does this sound right?) inspired by the lines of female shoulder and neck.

Height is about 20", starting stock was 44x8mm flat old MS (from the roof of a 100+ yo village house) and a triangle shaped plowshare for the base.

Bests:

Gergely

2017 07 plasztika1.jpg

2017 07 plasztika2.jpg

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2 hours ago, Tubalcain2 said:

an armless female?:blink:

:) It's actually the arm you can mainly see in it. I did manage to hide the realistics, didn't I? :)

2 hours ago, Millhand said:

I like the deaf mute part of her, hehe!!!

Nice work i like it! 

Hehe! :) Thanks!

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4 hours ago, Gergely said:

Being tired and bored with the lucky horseshoes and stuff, I needed something different. Here it is. Sculptural shape study (does this sound right?) inspired by the lines of female shoulder and neck.

Height is about 20", starting stock was 44x8mm flat old MS (from the roof of a 100+ yo village house) and a triangle shaped plowshare for the base.

Bests:

Gergely

 

Interesting pieces.  If the steel/iron is that old, there is a good chance it might be wrought iron. I don't know about in Hungary, but wrought iron is getting harder to come by on this side of the pond unless you can do some indepth scavenging.  

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Not too much forging lately, have been working on finishing up some knife blanks I forged earlier (you know, the boring grinding and finishing part) and trying to get the tooling setup for my fly press.  The latter is a recent craigslist find that I'm giving a temporary home to while my brother gets his shop setup.  I've been struggling with the heavier material fabrication needed for the press, but hope that now I have a slower bench drill press, (other than my previous hand cranked post drill), that I can speed things up a bit. 

Almost had a 4.5" grinder cutting wheel explosion to report as well, but only had some chipping when it bounced out of a cut in progress on some 1" thick steel plate.  Fortunately I was pretty well protected: grinder safety shield intact, safety glasses with side shields, Lexan face shield, heavy leather apron...but was still stupidly wearing shorts.  Got to learn to love to sweat more I guess.

I tried to upload a small picture of my press, but think for some reason has rotated.  Used to use photobucket, but understand that is not a good path for the future.

fly press2.jpeg

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Made some progress on the table today...temps in the shop were more reasonable - Fri, Sat and Sunday were too hot to work after about 10 AM.  Discovered the thermal limit switch in my power hammer magnetic starter will shut the hammer down when it decides it is too hot - had to direct a fan on it to keep the hammer running - the switch was obviously smarter than I was !!  A shower and two beers (New Belgium VooDoo Ranger) restored my fluids level...

 

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4 hours ago, arkie said:

Interesting pieces.  If the steel/iron is that old, there is a good chance it might be wrought iron. I don't know about in Hungary, but wrought iron is getting harder to come by on this side of the pond unless you can do some indepth scavenging.  

Wrought is quite rare around here, too. I always hunt for it, but still I have only a ~100 lbs reserve. This flat stock I found in a small village, it's mild steel but very early made. I like it even better than WI, cause it forges like butter without the problems of WI. I bought all the 40+ m / 120+' for wine bottle holders, although it works fine for many more projects.

What I think as difference between US and here related to WI is that here I find almost only very highly refined WI. It hardly delaminates/brushes out - but it's still WI so needs more care.

Bests:

Gergely

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Finished a pair of ABS-style bladesmith's tongs:

IMG_3271.JPG

Also started punching the eye on a small hammer, with my son striking. He was having a lot of trouble focusing though, and needed a reminder where to put his feet.

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Nice. I need to make a set of those tongs. Hmm.. maybe I should try the chalk marks some days :) 

Today a friend brought over more metal goodies for me, and I traded him some small forged trinkets. We shot the bull and brain stormed some ideas while I got a good start on a demo vise stand that I gathered parts for yesterday. will get pics tomorrow.

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@JHCC was he having trouble hitting hard? Accurate? If he was having difficulty with accuracy I would suggest stepping him down to 6 pound sledge with a short (20-22 inch) handle. I always thought I had to swing a 8#. But when someone who came to forge some tools with me brought his 6# with a short handle, I fell in love! Time for me to forge one myself, oh dear, the torture :lol:

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@EJRailRoadTrack: no, he's on the autism spectrum with attention deficit, and he was very distracted yesterday. He actually was doing pretty well for a while with the hammer he calls "The Mastadon", which is a 16 lb. Atha stonecutter's maul on a short(ish) handle. (His accuracy is pretty good, and he gets decent striking force with a comparatively gentle swing. He doesn't do as well with a lighter hammer, because it's easier for him to swing windly.) He just hit the wall after about 6-8 heats, and it was safer for everyone to send him back inside.

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14 minutes ago, JHCC said:

@EJRailRoadTrack: no, he's on the autism spectrum with attention deficit, and he was very distracted yesterday. He actually was doing pretty well for a while with the hammer he calls "The Mastadon", which is a 16 lb. Atha stonecutter's maul on a short(ish) handle. (His accuracy is pretty good, and he gets decent striking force with a comparatively gentle swing. He doesn't do as well with a lighter hammer, because it's easier for him to swing windly.) He just hit the wall after about 6-8 heats, and it was safer for everyone to send him back inside.

Oh okay, I see! My mistake. Look forward to seeing how the hammer turns out!

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same here, I find it easier to accurately swing a 12lb than a 6lb, and the one person who im friends with who I strike for sometimes looks down on anything under 10. I understand why though, but it is all about preference and what works best and safest for everyone. 

                                                                                                                                   Littleblacksmith 

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1 minute ago, JHCC said:

Sorry, "wildly". Yes, even the Grammar Hammer makes the occasional typo.

:o

                                                                                                                       Littleblacksmith 

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15 minutes ago, littleblacksmith said:

same here, I find it easier to accurately swing a 12lb than a 6lb, and the one person who im friends with who I strike for sometimes looks down on anything under 10. I understand why though, but it is all about preference and what works best and safest for everyone. 

                                                                                                                                   Littleblacksmith 

And I'm sure I could swing a 12, but I don't like to. I feel being consistent  is more important. But yes, Whatever gets it done the safest .

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Got about half a dragon done over the weekend. Made many dragon heads, but not the full thing. 5/8 bar, about 2 hours for the head in the coal forge and another hour each for the feet/legs/wings.

Went back out Sunday for an hour or so with the gas forge to refine the shape of the legs, make them a bit less chicken-like.

I'll wait till I'm almost done to cut the horns, need a little practice first. Plan is to pineapple twist the body for scales, only realized after the fact I could punch the shoulder hole (legs are temp riveted on) after twisting. Notes to self for the next one.

halfdragon.JPG

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Had a vendor at the fleamarket telling me he would bring a 20# sledge Saturday if I was interested.  largest I've heard of using for a day long task was 32 pounds used to break rocks road building for the CCC.  8 pounds is about my limit one handed these days and for a relatively limited length of time.

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