JCloss Posted February 3, 2021 Share Posted February 3, 2021 I hope it's ok to create another one of these types of posts. I'd like to share things I have made and continue to make, but don't want to make a new forum thread every time I have a success or failure to share. I'll start with something recent - this is what is probably the nicest plain hook I've ever made. It started out as just something to do from the scrap bucket but the spade turned out so nicely I decided to try something new and punch holes in it. It seems weird that I've been blacksmithing for 4 years or so and this is the first time I've ever hot-punched holes. I'm quite proud of how it turned out - I feel like it shows my development because there's no way I could have done something like this when I started. The following is in my introduction post as well, but it might relate here so I'm re-typing it. About 4-5 years ago I got quite into watching different blacksmiths on youtube. Eventually I figured I could do this too so I took my propane swirl construction heater, a ball-pein hammer and a chunk of mild steel and tried to make my first taper. It was a resounding failure. My enthusiasm soon turned my friends onto the idea and as one friend had a mostly unused shop and an oxy-acetylene rig we decided to try things. We found a scrap of steel to use as an anvil, a couple of firebricks and made a corner to shoot the flame from the torch into. We were able to make some janky looking leaves and from there we expanded our new hobby. One of those three friends, Ken, passed away last year. The smithy we have built in his shop continues to be an ever expanding thing. We just finished a basic renovation and cleaning and are working on plans for our third forge iteration. (not counting the heater or the oxy torch rig). His daughter has been spending a bit of time in the shop recently learning some basic things to make some projects for school. My oldest daughter as well has experimented with forging school projects and thinks it's pretty cool. Originally I just wanted to make knives (I was hand filing knives then), but since dipping my toes into blacksmithing I've kind of wandered away from the idea of bladesmithing, but I hope to get back to that one day. I like doing cool mild steel projects like the quilt ladder I posted here earlier today in it's own thread. On the go right now are a 2x72 grinder build, a post-vise I inherited from my step-father that I need to go collect and re-habilitate and a lot of tool making as we revisit the basics and attempt to actually get better. Right now I'm too green to even be called an amateur, but I'm doing my best to get all the knowledge and practice I can to improve. I really enjoy teaching people things, so one day I'd like to be good enough to teach classes or do live demos. My first horse-head. My friend has made a few of these that he's not happy with over the last two years. I decided to follow his hand-drawn instructions and see if I could make it work. When I showed my wife the pictures she asked what it was supposed to be. I think I understand the concepts though, and I feel like I could improve the techniques with practice, so this is going to probably be an ongoing exploration of mine. I enjoy horses in RL, in fact I used to work at a guest ranch and help with trail rides and whatnot. (I even dressed like a cowboy, but when I got tired of it (I was only 18) I shaved my hair into a mohawk and dyed it green right before I quit in the late 90s.) The other end was supposed to be a bottle opener, but it's pretty rough forging - this whole thing is a scrap practice piece. I think I'll cut this head off and do another with the material that remains. First tongs About 3 years ago we started on a pair of tongs from flat bar following John's tutorial from Black Bear Forge. Before that we were holding everything with vice-grips. I picked up some tongs from a closed school metal shop and so since we now had some, we stopped working on the ones we started. After cleaning the shop over the last few months we found that abandoned project and decided to finish it. We ended up fairly close to even being that one of us worked on each boss and bit. These will hopefully get finished at tonight's session if I clean them up on the grinder at home before I head to the shop. They're light, they're rough (especially the drawn out reins) but I have a feeling we can make them work with a bit of filing and grinding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JCloss Posted February 4, 2021 Author Share Posted February 4, 2021 A new horse-head. Last night I tried a new "2-heat" horse head. I can see doing it in two heats if you have enough practice and the right tooling, for me it took closer to 6. I need to make a better cutting chisel, the one we have now doesn't seem to work very well, probably because it's meant to be a cold chisel, and it's very cheap. The first one I made turned out pretty ok, the next two hit the scrap pile. I managed to improve certain aspects, but ruin others. Usually related to how messy my chisel cuts were. I was using a piece of plate on top of the anvil to cut on, as our anvil doesn't have a cutting shelf. Let me know what you think of this method, I found it as a set of written instructions with diagrams on iforge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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