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I Forge Iron

What did you do in the shop today?


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15 hours ago, George N. M. said:

Is that a quarter of half dollar used as a spacer in the center of the knife handle? 

Thanks George, it is a quarter. I plan making more mokume out of quarters and nickels. I was having trouble the first few tries but I think I may have it closer to the right dial. 
 

 

13 hours ago, Frosty said:

You're coming along pretty darned well

Thank you very much Frosty. That is a very encouraging compliment. Some days when I’m at it, things just don’t move the way I’d like. Most of the frustration is wanting to do a thing but not knowing how or where to start. The help I get from the forum has kept me going and interested. I have found that my fascination with history has grown since being on the forum and reading all the great content and personal stories y’all share. 

3 minutes ago, Chris C said:

Finished up my Dog's Head hammer last night

Very cool! Did you punch and drift by yourself? If so how did you hold it?

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Vikings were quite far ranging---but teak for handles???

When I was a mud logger we had to do all our log lettering with a LeRoy set; thanks for bringing back the nightmares!  (Also used a rotolite to make copies with industrial ammonia to develop them, ugh.)

OTOH; something to be said for the old days where you received a demerit for NOT bringing a knife to school!

I was the guy hired to move our group at Bell Laps from using the drafting department with a 6 week turn around time for changes to Versacad with a 6 minute to 6 hour turn around time.  That was in the early 1990's.

Saturday I got up and went to the scrapyard early, just past opening at 9 and they told me they would be closing in 20 minutes.  So I did a bit of disassembly on an item I want but didn't have enough time to get it free.  Found a nice stick of 1" rod; but it was bent up enough I couldn't get it through the piles by myself.  So skunked.

Went home and worked on finishing my Father's day gift to my wife, a copper multi flowering poppy to go with the 2 steel/copper ones.  With the copper petals I filed the end of the copper stem square and down a bit and used a masonry nail to punch the mounting holes in the copper pieces and drove them onto the stem with a monkey tools and riveted the end of the stem down.  I used my slow speed bench mount wire brush to polish up the undersides and the lips of the insides  leaving the deeper sections dark. Worked really well. I will probably have to keep my eye open for more copper flashing now as the kids want one too. Luckinly I have a lot of heavy copper grounding wire---found 2.5 coils of it at the ReStore for US$5 a piece.  Didn't even quibble about paying the same for the 1/2 coil...

After lunch a friend came over he had brought a couple of commercial lawnmower wheels to replace the pneumatic ones on my 2 wheeler. (The old ones were nice but wouldn't hold air not even when lined with fire hose and tubed---everything has thorns out here!) These were solid rubber and hand built in bearings with zerks as lawn mowers see a LOT of abusive use.  We had to replace the axle due to length considerations so we rummaged through the scrap pile till we found a piece of rod we could cut to length with the hacksaw, twice as the end on it was rough and at an angle. 

Once cut and trial fitted we marked where the cotter pins---in this case spring clips would go and drilled the holes using a hand powered cole drill. My friend had never used one before. We mounted it into the large postvise and I hopped up onto a step I have just for these uses and I did the cranking while he did the holding and advance. Twice for each hole as we stepped it to get the final size.  Put it all together and my two wheeler is quite a bit heavier now but it rolls!

Sunday I went out early and fired up the gasser; did a bit more adjustment to it, and worked on my tong project.  I have decided I need to lengthen the reins a bit more and will do that on the horn of my largest anvil with a broad been straight peen.  I have the joints flattened and drilled and need to adjust the bits and reins and probably drill out the pivot a bit more as I located some large rivets that are about 1/16" larger than what the holes currently are.

With the cole drill set up I drilled a hanging hole for another small twisting wrench. and did the hanging set up for another wind bell.

It's getting hot out here so didn't get as much time at the forge as I would have liked.  I was also taking care of my wife who had had a bad night previously.

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On 6/20/2020 at 8:56 AM, pnut said:

I've recently stepped into the 19th century and gotten a mechanical pencil but I still do a lot of sketching with a nib and holder you have to dip in ink like a quill. 

I do most of my drawing (and writing) with a Rotring Fine nib Art Pen...lovely tool. Rotring made the Rapidograph fixed width technical drawing pens I used to use on Permatrace film and paper on the drawing board.

Coincidently, I have just this day taken delivery of a new Art Pen from Amazon. My old favourite has logged up over 30 odd years of daily use and is still going strong...I remember having it in 1988 when Buck Rogers set off...I remember that year because I called Snap! to David Petersen's identical Art Pen when he and I attended one of our preliminary meetings with the Welsh Arts Council preparing for the 1989 FIFI conference! Sadly it has developed a split in the cap which means it is not so safe to chuck into my carry bag any more...it is not a dipping system like yours but can use either cartridges, or as I do, a little plunger refillable reservoir. I thoroughly recommend them if you like drawing with ink.

Alan

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Dolly; I only wish my shop was large enough to need a bicycle in it!  (Of course I've worked in a number of factories where tricycles were used.)

The wheels were spares bought when the lawnmower was bought; then they decided they didn't like the mower and got rid of it leaving the spares in inventory.  After a while someone wised up and got rid of them as well.

Currently they are the most rugged and heavy duty part of my dolly.  I needed wide wheels since 1/2 the shop is arroyo sand/gravel floored.

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My two-wheeled dolly has pneumatic tires as well. Total pain. Every time I need to use it I have to air up the tires first. Years ago I had one with solid rubber wheels, but I loaned it out one too many times. I replaced it with one with pneumatic tires. It is sort of nice having the extra cushion when going over bumps, but that doesn’t negate the irritation I get when seeing one of the tires is flat. 
 

I have something else I’ve always called a moving dolly. It looks like a small pallet with 4 small wheels.  Anytime I ask my wife to “Go get the dolly,” she always asks me, “Which one?” even though >99% of the time it is not the moving dolly.  I think now I will start asking her to go get the “two-wheeler”. Might help. 

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6 hours ago, Chris C said:

Finished up my Dog's Head hammer last night.  Now to start looking for some Hickory for the handle.  Well, it's been an interesting journey.  but this is my first hammer head. 

Not real purdy, but kinda cute.  Here's my Dog's Head Hammer Head in all its shining glory. 3 1/4" long.  Butt end measures 1"x1 1/4", head upset to 1 3/4".  Weighs 1 1/2 pounds.

Nice Chris. I never used one of those Japanese hammers. How does it feel? I have the idea that it should be somewhat wobbly as you strike because of the offset handle. 

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6 hours ago, Chris C said:

Finished up my Dog's Head hammer last night. 

 

What steel did you use?  If you have any bois d’arc near your home, I like that better than hickory. It starts out bright yellow, but with use it darkens into a very nice, golden brown.  But, being a woodworker, I expect you already know that.  Of course, even if you do have them near you, you wouldn’t be able to use what you cut for a year or so.  They are best cut in Winter after the sap is gone.  I cut it, split it, and then put it away till at least the next Winter.  Wax on the ends keeps it from checking badly.  It is one of the wood types that some people are allergic to, but it doesn’t bother me much.

You can, assuming your wife is not watching, use a kitchen oven at a very, very low heat to speed up the drying.  It will crack badly, but you should be able to get a crack-free section large enough for a handle.

I have broken ash, oak, and hickory handles, but have yet to break any bois d’arc handles. 

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Perhaps it's an English or Spanish or American Dogs Head hammer rather than a Japanese one.  Design was used pretty much all over the world back when. (For example: One of Velázquez's paintings shows several Dogs Head Sledges: "Apollo at the Forge of Vulcan", 1630.)

When I was living in Fort Smith AR; a tree service cut down an osage orange tree near me and I was given several firewood lengths that I split and waxed.  Been 30 years and I still have a few left.  Nicely air dried---which works better for hammer handles than kiln dried as they are less brittle and if you do the BLO trick don't shift with humidity any worse than kiln dried.

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Marc, I have not idea.  It's not even handled yet.

Don, I used that axle you gave me.  Guess we don't really know what steel it is.

Thomas, I've a friend who is a professional tree cutter.  I'll have to ask him to save me some if he comes across any.

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Spent the past couple of hours just mucking about.  Finished up the leaf bottle opener, flattened out a bearing race for a future blade project, and started a punch from the "mystery metal" that I retrieved from the road, Mud flap still attached.    Fooled around, and let my fire get out of hand a time or two, but that's what happens when you build the fire taller than the fire pot, and don't keep the wet coal piled around it.   Anyway, I made good progress on the punch for a minute, then it sort of de-laminated. I thought that to be a strange thing.  I was drawing it down to about 5/16" round, the round part being mabe 1 1/2" long, and at the base of the square/octagon it developed a crack, I opened up to see what was going on. It acted kinda like a cold shut it a weld.  But this is a solid chunk of square stock of some sort of spring steel. Well, I went ahead and broke it off, took a couple pics, then set about the task of making a punch from the rest of the stock.  It went well. I have a punch of about 11/32" with no "cold shut".  (I dunno what the problem was at the start).  I'll grind it to 5/16" which is what I wanted to begin with.  

First pic is the end broken off, second is the parent stock.   What could this be?

IMG_20200622_173403786 (Copy).jpg

IMG_20200622_173519519 (Copy).jpg

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16 hours ago, tom_ET said:

The metal gets so quickly cold after taking it out.. But then it has been pretty thin material so far that i have been working on. 

Try moving your anvil as close to the fire as reasonably possible, this stock can cool very quickly, sometimes a whole step is too far. I've put the fire very close to the far side of the anvil so I could draw the piece straight under the hammer and maybe get 3 blows.

What Marc said, you're doing what real working blacksmiths do. Repairing broken things, making things from scraps modifying to suit a job or improve it. The solo blacksmith is often the only thing that made an area livable.  As your skills grow so will your importance to the folks who live near you. 

It's a good thing to be needed and you have smiths all around the world pulling for you.

Frosty The Lucky.

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Frosty: 3 blows, yes? ok.  what would you say should it take to heat it up again for the next 3 blows? ... would be a "back in" - turn up air - and maybe a minute or so, or should that go faster? 

 

related to bluerooster's post.

I was about to ask nearly the same question. 
Took a small piece of rebar and just for the fun of it wanted to draw & taper it down as much as possible. was wondering how thing the thing would get and how it would react.  (Then thought i would make a tiny sugar-spoon out of it. )

But it cracked open, bit difficult to see on the picture but seems to be the same like for bluerooster. Also did cut away the cracked part, to start again and the same thing happened again.

I guessed it is the "unforseeable mixture" of rebar that was so often discussed... or might it have been some wrong technique?
spoon-crack.jpg.590a2ac03ce91c3c299a5f29deb34874.jpg

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tom_ET,

It may be that the metal is/was too cold when you're hitting it.  That may have started a crack that propagated  along a weak plane in the material.  Or it's just junk bar.  Try cutting it off a lot further back and stop hitting when it gets red.  Your bar might have some unexpected alloying that makes the proper forging temperature hotter than low alloy steel.

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So, I've mentioned this on several threads about forge technique and hammering and how metals can be on a grain structure and figuring that out. 

Most people might experience this in their just getting started stages and the reason is Radial shear.. 

Simply this is the middle of the bar moving less then the surrounding material either from not enough heat soak,  bad forging technique or a combination of the 2.. 

With this mentioned "Wrought iron" because of it's loose grain structure is more prone to it..   So many who only forge steels will have this problem when they move into wrought iron because it needs proper forging techiques to keep the fiber compressed vs against themselves is a shearing blow. 

Now that this is said..   it might simply be the material and inclusions but even so just shoot it with welding temps and weld it back together directly against the shearing aspect.. 

With that.  if it is an inclusion in the steel it's often better to start over again.. I've used cheap materials from you no where as nearly all of it comes from there now that had an inclusion a full 20ft of the bar..  Useless materials but fun to work with as the inclusion was on a diagonal..   

A diagonal is a shear plain.. :)    So keep that in mind. 

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