Has anyone tried making a drift pin out of stone?

[CrazyOatmeal]

I'm cash and steel poor, and I need a big fat drift for making axe eyes and the like. What I am rich in, however, is stone - so what if I just took a nice hard piece of stone, granite or something, and carved it into a nice smooth drift pin? Has anyone done this?

[anvil]

Nothing wrong with a good stone in it's proper place,,, whetstone, stone ground flower,,, etc, but at least wear good eye protection as stones tend to shatter when struck.

Just curious, can you afford a hammer? Coal? Charcoal? Propane? I suspect if you can afford them, much less whatever you are using to connect to the internet, you can afford a piece of steel.

[Frosty]

I've never heard of stone blacksmithing tools beyond anvil and hammer. The fact about stone that makes me believe your idea is a NO_GO! is how stone behaves when differentially heated. Being hard and brittle is strong heating one place of a stone causes it to expand there but not elsewhere. One part getting larger connected molecularly to a part that is NOT getting larger tends to cause it to break. 

I'm thinking if you made a bunch of drifts of gradually increasing sizes and shapes, used a heavy dead blow mallet to drive them and drove them through in a very short time it MIGHT be possible. I wouldn't put any money on it though.

I'm thinking you'd spend more shaping and polishing a stone drift than you would on the steel. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Daswulf]

You are only steel poor if you don't go out and seek it.

There there are cars, there are repair shops. Parts wear out and break and get replaced. There are many parts that could make a drift, like cv shafts, tortion bars, axle shafts and some others. 

Go to a mechanical shop or body shop and ask nicely for a peek at their scrap pile or for a part of what you need and explain what your intentions are. A box of doughnuts could get you more scrap than you'd need in a year or more. 

There are other places you could look for what you need as well that is just a Very common place that could net you what you need. 

[George N. M.]

The problem with stone is that it is brittle and does not resist impact stresses very well.  This is particularly true of granite which is composed of crystals of different minerals, each of which has slightly different characteristics.  Probably the most shatter resistant and tough rocks are members of the amphibolite group (including jade) which are metamorphic rocks with a fibrous crystal structure.  They are sometimes referred to as green stones.  When available, they were preferred by ancient peoples for impact tools such as hammers, axes, and choppers.

I agree with the others that a drift made out of stone would probably have a short life and not be worth the effort to make it.

As Daswulf says, go out and scrounge or buy scrap steel.  Even the worst steel would make a better tool than the best stone.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[CrazyOatmeal]

Notes taken. I'll probably try it anyway, but I know where I can find some nice big chunks of amphibolite rather than granite, so I'll give those a go. FYI, I've looked around for large drift pins, but I can only find pathetically small ones, and none of my local scrappies have any metal thick enough. There's also the issue of my forge not getting quite hot enough to work enormously thick pieces of metal, so I'm gonna give stone a go, with proper PPE obviously. Thank you all for your input.

[BIGGUNDOCTOR]

CO, as Das said, you have plenty of steel around to make a drift. You also have the parts to make a bigger JABOD, or even just a hole in the ground forge for bigger items.

Axles, sway bars, torsion bars, etc can be found at auto body , and repair shops.  If you have any tractor or heavy  equipment shops they will also have big pieces. Equipment rental yards have materials you can use. Garage and yard sales can provide pry bars, pick heads, and other tools.  The time you spend shaping some stone will be far more than sourcing a chunk of steel and making a drift.

[George N. M.]

Amphibolite is pretty tough to shape.  It is and was usually shaped by abrasion or some sort of grinding.  If you use any sort of power equipment do it wet.  Most stone dust is BAD for the lungs. 

I'm still kind of skeptical.  I think your time would be better spent taking the suggestions of others and scrounging and forging steel but it is your call and your time.  Even if it fails you will know something and have proved by experimentation that you don't know now. 

Let us know how it goes.  We love pictures.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Frosty]

Nobody suggested you'll FIND a drift or that you buy one. You FIND discarded steel and MAKE your drift from the scrap. You want to be a blacksmith don't you? Do some blacksmithing. 

If you actually try making a drift from an Amphibolite be aware, asbestos is in the same group along with jade, nephrite, talc, soapstone, etc. As George says do any cutting, grinding, polishing, etc. WET. Super fine dust will infiltrate your lungs far more deeply than asbestos fibers and do the same kind of damage. 

If they take a pretty polish I'd like to see pics.

Frosty The Lucky.

[anvil]

Not to dwell on how easy it is to get steel for free, nor that a drift is a truly basic forging and not that big  and not to mention there's more iron in an axe than in a simple drift, if your forge can't get hot enough to make a simple drift, , then how do you expect to forge or work an axe?

Now the deal is, instead of trying to convince us you can't afford steel,  why don't you just go ahead and make one out of stone and have fun. Let us know what happens, with pics or it's not real.

Lol, why in the world would you come to a blacksmithing forum and ask about stone tools? 

To remind you, we are blacksmiths. We use iron. We use iron to make tools, often to make tools for other crafts. We use these tools to do our own work which is usually out of iron. It puzzles me why you would come to a site like this and ask about making stone tools.

 

 

[Daswulf]

Lots of good points from Biggun, George, Frosty and anvil there. 

If you dont have enough heat to forge the drifts from axle or tortion bar or other, you dont have enough heat to forge an axe head either. 

As suggested, maybe make some stone tools to start, but a stone drift to shape the eye of a steel axe isn't the best idea. Steel is plentiful nowadays, so is information. On how to better your forge and how to about anything. You probably could, but why suffer through doing it? There are better proven methods. 

[CrazyOatmeal]

While I appreciate your efforts to help, you're all making a lot of incorrect assumptions and are rather missing the point. I'm not going to argue here so that's all I'll say. I might update this thread with my results when I make the attempt.

[JHCC]

As I understand your original post, you need a large drift to make an axe. Getting a piece of steel big enough to make a drift shouldn't be hard at all, especially if you can beg or buy an old axle from a mechanic or a scrapyard.

In this video, Torbjörn Åhman makes a drift from a piece of 35mm (~1-3/8") square bar, about the same as 40mm (~1-9/16") round. That should be pretty easy to source and make (even if you don't use H13 or have a power hammer).

 

What are these "incorrect assumptions" of which you speak?

[ThomasPowers]

I've been looking at some of the large tunneling machines being used in the UK and wondering where they scrap out their worn parts.  I was thinking more of anvils though.  Machinery used to build and repave roads will often have good sized wear parts of at least a medium carbon steel.  Train car axles are large too---may have to dig a pit forge to heat some of the larger pieces up.  If you are near a coast then boat building/repair places often have large pieces of scrap steel.

[anvil]

For what it's worth, especially considering our strengths here, I'd be glad to give you advice on how to make and heat treat stone making tools to make your job a bit easier 

[pnut]

It might be possible to use a pipe. I've not tried it so cant say for sure but I used a pipe as the mandrel for my first tomahawk I just forged the pipe so it was a little smaller at one end. 

Pnut

[Frosty]

Well guys, reading the OP's last post I'm ready to stop now. Seems we're all making false assumptions. Stone evidently DOES make good struck tools for forging iron / steel, the beginner says so.

Fine, I'm done here. I will be watching for pics though I just hope blood isn't involved.  

See ya.

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

I'll put in my last 2 pence:  Amphibolite is a very tough stone.  It is possible to seriously damage a rock hammer while trying to bust a piece off an outcrop or break up a large piece into smaller pieces.  I know, I've done it.  And, yes, it is possible to form tools from amphibolite/greenstone by abrading away everything that is not shaped to what you want.  Lithic societies did it for thousands of years.

However, grinding, even with power tools is a long and tedious job and requires dust suppression.

Also, there is the question of thermal shock.  The original poster may not have the experience of using a drift or mandrel in a large piece of forging temperature steel and seen the mandrel pick up the heat from the work piece and come out dull red.  Usually, you just quench it while the work piece is re heating.  I strongly suspect that rock, even a tough rock like amphibolite would not take that kind of treatment well and would shatter.  A standard way of mining before the invention of explosives was to build a fire against the rock face and then quench the hot rock which would shatter from the sudden cooling.  Even the thermal stress during use of the stone mandrel, when the part in contact with the work is heated and the part being struck is cooler may be enough to cause failure, particularly when combined with the impact of driving it into the piece.

Can it be done?  Probably.  Will it fail in use? Very possibly.  Would a steel tool be better? Definitely.  Is it worth the time and effort? In my opinion and experience, almost certainly not.

At the end of the day, it is Crazy Oatmeal's decision if he wants to spend his time and effort on this.  I'd like to see the results and how it functions in use.  I think there is about an 85% chance it will not work out well but it would be cool if I was wrong.  The general consensus here, and I agree, is that the time and effort put into making a stone mandrel would be better spent in acquiring and using material that has a better chance of success but, again, no one is required to heed or take our advice or benefit from our collective years of experience (probably hundreds, maybe thousands).  One is free to be like Thomas Edison and learn one more way of how not to do something.

There is a streak of contrariness in the English which may be behind CO's idea.  "For God made the English mad, the maddest of all mankind." -R. Kipling  There is an attraction of being able to do something which everyone else has said can't be done.  Frankly, those sorts of attempts usually end up proving that, yes, it can't be done but there is that very small chance of success which can call people of a certain mind set on.  There are more than a century's worth of aeronautical textbooks on how to build airplanes but there are still people down in the potting shed with glue and feathers.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[ThomasPowers]

I've cooked by heating rocks in a fire and dropping them into the cooking "pot".  With a Geology Degree I was given the task of selecting rocks to  use that had to NOT explode during heating and NOT shatter when dropped hot into water.  I found that the mafic/ultramafics found in the glacial till were the ones most likely to survive the test and then go on to be used.  (We cooked a 15 pound roast that way in a hole chopped in a large maple log at an Irish Living History group (time of Brian Boru) event in Dublin, (unfortunately Dublin Ohio.)

My testing did not include impact or impact when hot.  Some stones did degrade with repeated hot/cold cycles.  I would love to find out how a good jade worked as a drift as I have read that jade boulders were used as anvils.  I suspect this would be "Bragging Rights" over "utility"; But since I've been part of a smelting crew before I understand how that can "work".

[Frosty]

Jades have a very fibrous crystal structure just like asbestos only REALLY hard. Molecular water being the difference. Dad was a master at polishing jades and used to complain about how many steps it took and the time involved. 

The only time I've tempered stone was an attempt to make obsidian and later a local jasper better knapping stone. I even went so far as to heat some to near red and apply drops of water to no effect. That method is IMNSHO, myth, probably to make the points being sold more "valuable." Marketers are the same everywhere. 

Other than warning someone off something dangerous, I don't have any say in what someone does in their shop. I'll even wish them luck. 

I know my last post was an angry write off but the remarks about us making lots of false assumptions and not wanting to argue with us, that's all he has to say, just pushed my curmudgeon button. Few things irritate me like someone asking a question and arguing with anything that doesn't agree with their preconceived notion. 

It's good for me, I'm not as tolerant as I was before the accident, I need the training. I am getting better this doesn't make me mad for days like it used to. 

Frosty The Lucky.