24 minutes ago, Frosty said:

I wasn't taking issue Tristan, I just tossed that into the conversation.

yep, all good here.  

2 hours ago, DennisCA said:

Started restoration of my hewing axe

It looks good and sharp. I love restoring old tools.

Frosty, likable, eh?

Depends on the day *grin*

6 hours ago, Chimaera said:

What wood are you using?

Plum, apple, pear. I regularly prune trees in the garden, keep beautiful cuts for myself.

"Formal Education" ?   I did wear my set of tails with my silver satin running shorts to class a couple of times...once I walked into a geology lab through the open ground level window and the TA described me as a "vagrant benthonic".

My dad was a philosophy professor, but not a vagrant Benthamite. 

Oh; he had Tenure?  Did he not buy the Utilities when playing Monopoly?

That brought him the greatest happiness. 

As for striking hardened steel tools, nothing beats a soft hammer. Mine is a three-pounder that I annealed and re-handled. 

Drove in for measurements, at the same time photographed the work three years ago.

Alexandr The Great Smith. Beautiful railings. Always stunned with our work, thanks for sharing. 

1 hour ago, Frazer said:

Frosty, likable, eh?

Depends on the day *grin*

Yup. Beautiful as always Alexandr. Sometimes I want to wait for a few more pages of posts to come so I don’t have to put my pictures up right after his haha. 
Anyway I made this large A for my aunt - guess what letter her name starts with. Once again it looks nothing like I had envisioned but it was my first time combining two separate pieces of material - can’t forge weld yet so I just wrapped the middle piece around the sides but I’m pretty happy with it.

 

 

3 hours ago, Pat Masterson said:

Anyway I made this large A for my aunt - guess what letter her name starts with.

Q? Is it Quetzalcoatl????

B? Aunt Beegfoot? 

Frosty The Lucky.

“A” for “Aunt”?

8 hours ago, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said:

It looks good and sharp. I love restoring old tools.

Thanks, one negative thing is that it has suffered some impact damge from the back. Originally these axes have a straight and long taper. Unlike an american (or any other place I know of) axe they don't allow for a wedge on top. It's like a morse taper, held in by friction and large surface area. But it also means you can knock the shaft out and swap it around, if you have a shaft that is bent outwards so it allows you to get into corners, but only from one side, so you'd need two axes, or an axe where the shaft can be flipped around.

But this axe won't allow that with this damage since the eye is no longer symmetrical. But I will just fit a straight shaft, don't have a need for that kind of finish work.

I rounded up a bunch of old lawn mower blades from a mower shop down the road and was testing pieces off each of them to try and see if a beginner like me could somewhat figure out what they were made of. After getting them all nice and clean, I chopped ~1 inch sections off each blade and heated them up to see if I could possibly harden them.

Out of I would say roughly 12 different pieces, only 3 showed any promise. I am still very much learning the heat treat process so I heated them until they became non-magnetic then I put them back in for ~30 seconds. 3 definitely became a great deal harder. All but one of the others showed no noticeable change (to my novice eyes) after quenching in air, canola oil, fresh motor oil and water. One reacted quite badly to being quenched in water. Thankfully I am "relatively" smart and wore a leather apron, hefty gloves and a face shield. Needless to say, that piece is now several smaller pieces in the bottom of my 6" water quench pipe .

Maybe I won't be messing with mower blades again 

On 7/1/2020 at 4:26 AM, jlpservicesinc said:

Do you find you use the screw press as much as you thought you would?

Jennifer, this late reply may seem odd, but it has been bugging me that I did not reply all this time.

I am no career professional smith, but press work and tool making will be my financial solvency path, going forward...  I have spent more useful time with my five ton fly press than any other pursuit, as I wrassle with my disabilities.  I have a backlog of progress I have made that I will be documenting in my thread:

https://www.iforgeiron.com/topic/57468-5-fly-press-via-camp-verde-arizona-usa/#elShareItem_362522756_menu

In summary, though, I use my press as a press, a punch, a shear, a rudimentary planer, a Height marking gauge, a Really Big Vise...

I have access to a large market in "classic car" undercarriage brackets, and want to generate interest in Fly Press Quick Change Tooling...

Robert Taylor

26 minutes ago, SinDoc said:

I rounded up a bunch of old lawn mower blades from a mower shop down the road

Sounds like you did exactly the right thing: testing the steel before using it in a critical application. Well done! Now use the others for something else. 

Not in the shop yesterday, but cleaning up some branches under our huge silver maple in the front yard.  Been lazy and it included some deadfall from last fall.  I found a relatively straight branch that felt pretty sturdy so I thought I'd make a walking cane with it.  I peeled back the bark and found some interesting patterns created by some wood munching critter.  Sanded it smooth then took a blowtorch kind of lighter to it to give a lightly scorched appearance to it.  I might use boiled linseed oil on it for a finish, or I may brush on some polyurethane.  Thinking a bear shaped cane top similar to a Zuni fetish bear.  Probably attempt to carve it our of wood.  I may try to forge something to go with it.

 

Edited April 30, 20215 yr by Paul TIKI
edited for clarity

Painted a bunch of hooks. 

SinDoc, a lot of mower blades are supplied by one manufacturer and that are of a high boron steel that takes a very specialized heat treating. You may want to reserve them for items like hinges, etc. that do not require hardening.

Is that type of steel much more difficult to forge than mild steel? I have quite a few of them but I've never tried forging them.

Depends on the steel used in the blade. Some are medium carbon with alloying metals to prevent embrittlement. Many of the newer blades are boron steel and require special heat treatment.

You'll need to do what Sidoc did, cut coupons and test them to see what works. Mower blades are junkyard rules steel.

Frosty The Lucky.

I really should continue working on my campfire cooking tripod or any of my other unfinished projects but I get bored and my attention wanders.

I began the afternoon on the tripod. Straighten the twist back out of one of the legs. Two more to go. Put that away and worked on a flatter a bit and then came in to play Red Dead Redemption on the PS4 for a while.  It had just got way too hot out.  I am starting to wish for some St. Petersburg weather.

I need to upset it still further and straighten up the lean a bit. Then it should be ready for me to punch and drift a hole for the handle. 

The business end had a piece of axle tubing around the carbon steel inner part. It seems to have welded Ok. The tubing sparks like mild steel and will not be harden-able. Time will tell if leaving it on was a mistake.