What did you do in the shop today?

[Dax Hewitt]

Wow Billy, that's a beast. 

[BillyBones]

Thanks y'all. 

Thomas, i understand it supposed to be blade heavy but right now it feels like a 10# weight hanging on the end of a 4' stick. It is too blade heavy right now. Before i add anything i will do all my grinding and see what it feels like. 

I do have to ask where is the balance point supposed to be? For instance on the few knives i have made i like them to balance 1/2" - 1" or so from the handle. I know it is also more of a how it feels personally but i was thinking about halfway from the handle to the belly on this one. Oh, belly is the correct term for the wide part right? If i make an mistakes in terminology please correct me. 

 

[JHCC]

A productive evening. Remade my scroll form (to match the improved spiral described elsewhere) and make some test scrolls to try out a few different arrangements in a commission I’m working on:

Also added a rim to one of my bowl forms:

And cleaned up the dishing hollows on my swage block:

(Side note: the swage block stand I made a couple of weeks ago worked really well as an ad hoc welding table. Also, the Kevlar gloves I picked up recently were great at the forge.)

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Nice scroll work JHCC, those rails kinda look like what you see on the front porch’s of old houses 

[Donal Harris]

At the SCABA conference in Sulphur, Oklahoma today. First guy was Palmer Robbins. His demo was making a leaf. 

Demo now is Brent Bailey making a hammer. Cool guy and he really does use just crushed coal as a punch lube as he says in his videos. 

[USANewbie]

I  built a cart for my oxy propane torch.

[BillyBones]

Made a ladle and a flux spoon. 

[JHCC]

Trying out the new swage block, eh?

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Very nice BillyBones! 

[blacksmith-450]

For the Veterans Day

 

[George N. M.]

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row"

GNM

[JHCC]

Nothing in the shop as such, but I did make up a few circle templates that should come in handy:

(Two layers of corrugated cardboard glued together with the corrugations at right angles and with the edges bound with painter’s tape.)

[USANewbie]

Here is my torch cart i built from a metal gate that followed me home. Its nothing fancy but it is strong and functional, and im proud of it, so happy i posted it in another thread too.. I though about doing some miter joints on the front support bar but i didn't have enough material. That gate was just enough to do what i did. The wheels came off of a lawn mower, they have bearings inside. I need to do a little grinding and painting still. Its a small cart but i use small oxy bottles. Im too old to be moving around a big tank.

[M.J.Lampert]

18 hours ago, blacksmith-450 said:

For the Veterans Day

looks nice were they precut and textured while hot or was that all forged? 

 

added to my forge stand now can block of both ends and hang "all" my 5  hammers right there(only 4 in pic as 1 is getting a new handle 

 

got my forge running again is it normal for a frosty t to eject the at an angle? i don't remember it doing this before could it be due to refractory getting in the nozzle

  

also its only heating to a bright orange to increase the temperature i need to add oxygen (pull the mig tip back from mix tube)

M.J.Lampert

[Gandalfgreen]

nothing done but getting supplies to properly do kastolite this Thursday should arrive tomorrow I believe. hopefully this time next week I am hammering my first piece of steel at home. 

 

 

[Frosty]

Looks like you bumped the fitting holding the mig tip. Try judging which way it's tilted by comparing the angle of the flame and how the mig tip appears through BOTH air intake ports. Then carefully try bending it with a small lever, I use a  small bladed screw driver. Tweak it a LITTLE and check the flame.

You don't want to PRY, I twist the screwdriver to EASE the mig tip a little bit and check. 

I forget, how much gas supply stuff do you have hanging on the burners?

Oh, and the jet being out of alignment will make it run colder than it should so solving that might solve the heat issue.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Chad J.]

Made my first split cross out of a rail spike today, it was much easier than I expected but I need to tweak the stand I made.  Knocked out a new knife, normalized it 3 times and gave it a nice quench.   I have a piece of antler that I think will fit this nicely.  Made a couple  Butchers and took some 1 1/8 inch round stock and made 2 and 2.5 inch medallion pommels to go with the guards for the dagger and Arming sword.  Oh and a punch to stimulate a hidden tang.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

I really like the pommel! 

[blacksmith-450]

M.J.Lampert

I cut circles with a hole saw, after, punch and hammer....

 

[Purple Bullet]

Chad C - I tend to make blades like that. I like them especially for peeling oranges. I can usually get the peel off in one strip. The knife is one I made a couple of years ago for a guy that works at a local arena and horse boarding establishment. The loop in the end is for clearing hooves. 

The satsumas down here are just starting to ripen, but I don't see any navels this year. Maybe Hurricane Ida blew them off.

[USANewbie]

I like my torch cart so well i think I'll make another one like it for my welder. The big wheels make moving it real easy.

[ThomasPowers]

TW, that type of wrought iron porch supports are what they replaced the original wooden columns on our house in Columbus Ohio and I put the original style columns back while I owned it!  100+ year old brick house just south of "German Village".

So I guess they meet the "old house used them" criteria...

[JHCC]

18 hours ago, USANewbie said:

Here is my torch cart

Very nice. I've got a lot of my own gear on casters, which makes for a lot of flexibility in the workspace.

[Jobtiel1]

After buying a welder I figured I needed a chipping hammer. A few hours in the shop later, and I only need a handle for it now.

4140, hardened and tempered to straw yellow.

Next time in the shop I'm going to weld up a guillotine tool and some dies from leaf spring.

~Jobtiel

[Pat Masterson]

Nice scrolls JHCC and that chipping hammer looks great too Jobtiel. 
After finally doing some forge welds last week I decided I would make a bunch of these small basket twists for Christmas gifts and one larger one I’m going to attempt to weld as a handle to a fire poker. But my mothers birthday is next week so I wanted to make one that was a little more special. Tried doing one with 2 square bars and 2 round bar opposing each other and twisting the square bars before putting them into the basket twist. Went great until the untwisting and I just couldnt get it to look right. Finally had to toss it after like 4 hours so I got next to nothing done when I had planned to have half of my Christmas gifts done. I didn’t have 3/16 square so I took so 1/4” square and took it down to 3/16 with an angle and belt grinder. In the middle of getting the next set ready to try again I realized this is probably why I had so much trouble untwisting bc I obviously didn’t get the square bars EXACTLY the same size as the 3/16 so even with even heat they’ll untwist differently. I already have them tack welded so I’m going to trying again but I have a feeling the same thing will happen. Also had an issue with the ends not forge welding completely like the first ones I did. The first ones I put tacks on the actual end of the bars so this didn’t happen. I’d like to eventually be able to do this without tack welding at all. Am I just not spending enough time getting the ends welded or is getting this fish lip type thing just what happens regardless? It wasn’t a big deal to just grind that part off but didn’t know if it’s something I’m doing wrong.