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I Forge Iron

It followed me home


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7 minutes ago, C-1ToolSteel said:

I love this forum! It makes me feel so at home to see people post pics of stuff like that. I would be interested in seeing how that cross cut saw shapes up after cleaning if it's worth it. Can you tell if that mattock head is hand forged? That sheath is really cool. Like the wrought iron. I even like the loopy thing. Even if it's a poor weld I just like to see old hand forged stuff. That muzzleloader thing is neat to. I think anything that's left handed is cool.;)

I have another smaller cross cut saw that I cleaned up and sharpened, this one I will clean up, and will need sharpening. It does have one missing tooth, but should work fine.

the Mattock head has stamped in it "U.S.E.D." if anyone knows what that means it would be interesting to find out. It almost looked like there was a forge weld from the eye to the blade, will have to clean it up to be for sure.

My dad has a sheath like the one I picked up. The one I have, and the  one he has was from his uncle who was a smoke jumper he said. Pretty cool to be using it now!

I also enjoy seeing old hand forged stuff. Gives me a good feeling for some reason. One of the main reasons I enjoy metal detecting, always finding old hand forged stuff! Just the thought that that was in someone's forge, and a person spent the time to put it together to get food on the table. Can even see some of the hammer marks.

Of course you like anything left handed! rightys at better. leftys are inferior.

I'm joking, though rightys are better.:D

                                                                                                                                         Littleblacksmith

 

 

 

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Nice sparks!  As for the quality of the welds *I* brought home a 1968 facsimile reprint of the 1897 Sears & Roebuck Catalog and on page 64 They had their "Every Farmer His Own Blacksmith" slogan  with their forges.  The next page has the anvils:  Vulcan with a price per anvil and Peter Wrights with the prices listed as per pound in various weight ranges (85# to 500# 10.5 cents per pound!)  They also list postvises but do not list sizes, only weights, (a 75# postvise cost $6.40; 35# $4 and say they can supply up to a 200# vise ask about pricing...)

I bet a lot of those farmers were not that great of smiths.

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3 hours ago, JHCC said:

I have an old Alaskan "tavasr" (fish knife) that was in my grandfather's effect. I suspect it is one of the ones my great-grandfather describes in his memoirs being made from a broken crosscut saw blade repurposed by the villagers in Anvik.  I still use it occasionally. 

I've never heard of a Tavasr and it brings up some really strange hits as a search term.

Do you mean one of these? The Ulu is the do everything knife of the Arctic folk like you'll meet in Anvik. Nice folk in Anvik.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ulu&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4nfbJ78rQAhUB7GMKHfwSDXoQsAQIQw&biw=1093&bih=496

Frosty The Lucky.

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Yes, that's it. "Tavasr" (pronounced "TAH-vahsh") is the word in the Deg Xinag dialect of Northern Athabaskan as spoken by the Deg Hit'an people of Anvik, Holy Cross, and Shageluk. "Ulu" is the Inuit word for the same knife. 

When my mother was a little girl in Anvik, they didn't use the "Indian" words for anything; this was just called a "fish knife". 

image.jpg

(This came to me unhandled; I added the cork.)

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Inferior?

Sinister turn this thread has taken. 

You have to be doubly dexterous to survive as a left hander in this right handed world.

Interesting that left handed fighter pilots on both sides of the second world war had a higher percentage survival rate than the right handed majority. The left handed  / spatial relationship link gave them an intuitive advantage in a dog fight. The down side was that the also often associated dyslexia probably prevented some of the hopefuls from qualifying as pilots...

Alan 

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1 minute ago, Tubalcain2 said:

Okay, I meant that in a teasing way... considering both my sister and best friend are left handed... no offence, please. :unsure:

:) certainly no offence taken!  I meant it all in a clever clogs way...sinister and dexter being latin right and left...trying to get it in as many times as possible!

I am left handed and left eyed but I hammer right handed, fairly ambidexterous and have a word fascination but not dyslexia. A crazy mixed up kid me... :)

Alan

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4 hours ago, Alan Evans said:

 

Interesting that left handed fighter pilots on both sides of the second world war had a higher percentage survival rate than the right handed majority. The left handed  / spatial relationship link gave them an intuitive advantage in a dog fight.

 

Hey I could throw out a couple bible verses that suggest left handed superiority.

...but I better not lest it turn into a "religious discusion".

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17 hours ago, littleblacksmith said:

Also found a lock plate to a black powder muzzle loader, but what I found to be interesting though was that it is for a lefty.

If you clean it up I'd love to see some more pictures from various angles. I've been looking for a hands on example but so far I'm having to resort to pictures I find online. 

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1 hour ago, C-1ToolSteel said:

Hey I could throw out a couple bible verses that suggest left handed superiority.

...but I better not lest it turn into a "religious discusion".

I was talking about a dog-fight not dogma...or would that be gauche of me to state?

Alan

1 hour ago, JHCC said:

Not to mention homodextrous, heterodextrous, pandextrous, and omnidextrous.

Or even forgetting Hickory Dickory doxterous...

Probably better to forget it on second thoughts.

Alan

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20 hours ago, JHCC said:

I have an old Alaskan "tavasr" (fish knife)

That's kinda neat! do you think it had a handle originally? I would think so.

I took some more pictures of the Mattock head, and where I think there might be a forge weld between the eye and the blade. You can see I small step on the underside of the blade that almost looks like the end of a scarf, and then the transition between the eye and blade are kind of a bit rough, at least doesn't look like it wasn't hand forged. Also took a picture of the stamp that's on it.

I included a picture of my first double bit axe sheath that I made about a year ago out of a piece of stainless sheet metal that came from my neighbors trash, a wooden dowel, and an old leather belt that also came from my neighbor's trash!

So for the lock plate would you recommend  for me to electrolysis it?

The piece of high carbon steel I found, I cut of a small piece of it, forged it, and heated it up to non magnetic and quenched in oil. It hardened up nicely and I put it in the vice and snapped it, and thought the grain looked pretty good. The thing that I don't understand is that when I heated it up and then wire brushed the scale and rust (but aren't they the same thing?) and there was a grain pattern similar to the type wrought iron has. It forged like high carbon steel though. Got any ideas? tried taking some pictures of it, but it isn't the easiest to see. If yo can't see it, than just imagine looking at a piece of wrought iron that has been rusted and you can see the grain.

here they are!-

                                                                                                                          Littleblacksmith

 

 

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You are unaware of the high carbon wrought irons?  What do you think knives and swords were made from before the 1700's and Huntsman's crucible steel process?  Blister and shear steel were both made using wrought iron as the base material. It was of course less common than low carbon wrought iron so you have a special piece indeed!

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22 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

You are unaware of the high carbon wrought irons?  What do you think knives and swords were made from before the 1700's and Huntsman's crucible steel process?  Blister and shear steel were both made using wrought iron as the base material. It was of course less common than low carbon wrought iron so you have a special piece indeed!

I had not heard about it much, had heard it mentioned before, but didn't really understand what they were talking about, and didn't realize there was such thing as high carbon WI, but did always wonder how edged objects were made way back then. Thank you! That Is very neat, and will now have to save it for something special!

                                                                                                                         Littleblacksmith

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45 minutes ago, littleblacksmith said:

That's kinda neat! do you think it had a handle originally? I would think so.                                                                                                                          

Oh, is it definitely had a handle. The back edge is sharpened to be jammed into a block of wood; there is no way that anyone would use it with a sharp spine!

interestingly, I had occasion many years ago to visit the ethnographic objects collection my great-grandfather donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. One of the pieces there was an even earlier knife blade of identical pattern, ground from a flat piece of slate.

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3 minutes ago, JHCC said:

One of the pieces there was an even earlier knife blade of identical pattern, ground from a flat piece of slate

Have any pictures? or was that back when dinosaurs roamed the earth?:P

                                                                                                                                     Littleblacksmith

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