Blacksmithing: Knife on page 4!! (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 5/20/2010 9:17:44 PM EDT
[Last Edit: Berzerker77][Edited]
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Hello fellow self reliant people! I don't come to this forum often but I know how you love knowledge and I may have some to impart. Lets get it on.
Blacksmithing in its simplest terms is using force against hot metal to change it into your desired shape. Seems simplistic at first glance but in reality it is much more complex. There is both a science and an art to moving metal and I have seen very smart people get frustrated at it and quit. I have also seen slow people flourish doing it because it IS so simple once you know how metal moves. There are many many books on blacksmithing out there that contain a lot of knowledge that assumes you have the needed tools to begin with. As this is not the case and as I love to scrounge I am going to bring you some ideas for improvisation for tools and the basic mechanics of the work. Please note that I am NOT a professional blacksmith and have only just really started getting back into it myself but I might know something you don't. If you are a smith and see something wrong with what I am writing then please feel free to correct me. ***SAFETY*** We are on a firearm board and everyone should by now be on board with being safe but I am going to treat everyone like idiots here for a second just for shits and grins. Eye protection. Wear it, don't be stupid, we are working with metal in excess of 1400 degrees at times and little pieces of it can come flying off when hit with a hammer. That hits your eye and its lights out for real. Hand protection. It takes less than 1 second to create a full thickness burn with glowing metal. Wear gloves. Body protection. Burning slag will penetrate the light cloth weave on most tennis shoes in an instant and render the top of your foot a smoking mess. Wear leather boots and a leather apron if you can find it. Hot metal does not have to be glowing to f up your day. If you are unsure of a metal piece temp then pick it up with tongs. I do it with just about everything to make sure I don't mess this one up. NEVER EVER EVER try to put galvanized metal in a fire. If you do you are an absolute idiot and will die within a week in absolute agony! Seriously folks, this shit will mess you up faster than you can blink. Heavy metal poisoning does not leave the body, it accumulates until you die. Just don't do it. #1 Tools: To begin working hot metal you will need a few things. Something to get the metal hot, something to strike the metal with and something to strike it against. Hammers: Can range from a 3 lb cross pien to a 24 oz ball pien for our normal purposes. 12 lb sledge if you are doing something really big but for an average you will need a 2 lb cross pien with about a 12 inch handle to work most items. Hammer face shapes and such are unimportant at this stage. We are learning how to move metal. Tongs: One of your first projects to make. These will allow you to hold hot metal in various shapes and thicknesses. For now a medium size set of channel locks will do the trick. Anvil: Something with a flat and non pitted surface. Railroad track works, kinda like a Raven .25 works..... Will do the job but it is gonna be sloppy and take a while. If you are going to do more than once in a blue moon stuff you will want a real anvil. No less than about 75 lbs. I will go into this more in a little bit. Forge: There are as many forge designs as there are firearm designs. all of them work, some better than others. Most people will suggest a brake drum forge. I started with one myself and we will get into how to do that in a minute. Vise: A blacksmiths post vise is absolutely invaluable doing this work. Modern vises do not take the beating as well as one made in the 1850s and set to transmit force into the ground. Look it up online to see if you can find one. If not a heavy duty vise will work for a while. Once you have these items in place you can start burning up your first pieces of metal! #2 Material: We are lucky to have access to vast amounts of metal lying all over this country. Scrap yards, recycling centers, your back yard etc etc. The problem is finding what kind of steel it s that you have and whether or not it is good to put in your forge. Easiest way to do this is with what we call the spark test. Got a grinder? Good(If not go get one) There are many many types of metal in the world and these are some of the most common. This will give you a general idea of what you are working with. Take your test piece and place it onto the grinder, pressing firmly. Wrought Iron: Long yellow streaks broadening to a leaf some distance from the grinding wheel Mild steel: The leaf is smaller and gives rise to a number of sparks some streaks are shorter Medium carbon steel: Very small leaf, lots of sparks nearer the grinding wheel High carbon steel: Streaks less bright, profusion of sparks near the wheel, complete absence of leaf. Manganese steel: Streaks split before forming sparks High speed steel: Faint red streaks terminating in a spark Stainless steel: Bright yellow streaks terminating in pointed ends. Cast Iron: Faint red streaks terminating in bushy yellow complex sparks. These are just a few of the metals out there but finding the other, more expensive metals in a scrap yard is a little tougher to do. Stick with Mild steel for now. #3 Scroungin and Tradin! My favorite part! You would not believe what people throw away, don't know how to use, or just have lying in their garage that grandpa left em. Maybe someone got into it, didn't like it and got back out and just has what you need collecting dust. Craigslist is phenomenal for finding this stuff. These are a few pics of some stuff I have traded for recently. 
Be patient and you will find the right stuff for you. Check prices, ask questions, join ABANA and talk to local smiths that can teach you/may have starter gear for you to work with. This is the brake drum forge I started with. I built the drop tube out of scrap 2x2 square tubing, fabricated the drop gate and picked up the blower on sale from Grainger for like 18 bucks. 
More to follow, Dinner time. |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Part 2: Making your forge.
Ok, you are going to want to be able to get metal hot. For this you are gonna need some airflow to your fuel. Easiest way to do this is with pipe nipples that you can get from Lowes or Home depot. You want a minimum of 1.5-2 inch material for this for air flow. USE BLACK PIPE ONLY! NO GALVANIZED! Parts list looks like this 1 flange 2 6 inch pipe nipples 1 T junction 1 2 inch pipe nipple 1 screw on pipe cap 1 brake drum(try for a wide shallow one, light truck or something) 1 blower. Hand crank is the best but the squirrel cage version works....ish It will look something like this but with a shorter piece between the T and the drum. That is too much room and is not needed. 
The rest of the table pictured is going to be useful IF you are using charcoal from wood. If you are using bituminous coal(I reccommend this) you can leave it out. Ok, you have the basic idea but now you are gonna need a plate to put in the bottom, over the air hole, this is called a Tuyere. Use as thick a piece of steel you cand find. 1/2 inch is good. Drill 3/8ths inch holesinto the plate in a circular pattern, keep some meat between em so it won't burn out too fast but keep enough for good air flow(this can be altered later if you want). Now you don't want to have to burn your coal straight on the steel. Next get some firebrick and line the bottom of the the drum with it. Cover this with some Sairset(tm) and let it cure for a few days. You should be left with a flat surface with about a 2 inch hole at the base, coning out to about 4 inches at the top tey to keep it less than 4 inches deep so you can have the hottest part of your fire just on top of the level of the surface. Now that you have your forge ready, you have to decide what you are going to burn in it. I use bituminous coal. It costs me .12 a pound and is just about perfect for smithing. I don't like propane because if I need it in a pinch I cant substitute anything for it. If you can't find coal, you can use charcoal made from trees(search for wood gasification) It has the same BTU per pound but the charcoal has a LOT more volume per pound. Setting the fire: Take a wad of cloth with some used motor oil on it and light it. Stick this on your tuyere and start placing your coal on top of it. Start cranking some air into it until your coal ignites and then fill your cone with coal, keeping up a light blow the entire time and try not to breathe the fumes, sulphur will be burning off of the coal and creating coke. Coke is pure carbon and it makes some intense heat. Tending the fire: I put a ring of coal around the outside of the cone so that the localized heat will begin coking it up to scoop into the fire when it burns down. Keep adding to this, coal is cheap. Blacksmiths bane: Clinker! I can't say enough bad things about clinker. It is the residual waste and impurities burned off of coal while it is turning into coke. In its liquid form it will drip to the bottom of your fire and clog up your tuyere, you will have to scoop the burning coke out, pick out the molten glass looking stuff and push the coal back in about once every 15 minutes. Clinker can mess up your welds and impedes airflow so you will have to keep up on it. You will want to keep your work even across the surface of your forge so you can move it horizontally along the length of the work piece and still have the needed part in the heart of the fire. Tilting it into the fire is a bad idea as the metal will heat unevenly and therefore work unevenly. Almost ready to start working metal! More to follow. |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Originally Posted By TornMonkey:
Do you make your own charcoal to use for smithing? I use bituminous coal. Mined stuff. I CAN use charcoal but it is a lot of work to make when I get real coal for 12 cents a pound |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Work area setup:
A lot of people have a tendency to place their forge as the central piece in a workspace. This places the anvil off to one side and makes it harder to access quickly or to use all sides of the anvil if needed. Here is an MS Paint of how my workspace will be setup when I finish it. You want quick access to your stationary items from the fire, the quicker you can get the metal there, the longer you have to work it before you have to put it back in. 
Off in that blank space I will have a bench with my various punches, drill press, files, grinder, belt sander and bandsaw. On that note, moving metal is all well and good but you will need other tools to make finished product if you are making knives and decorative items. Go to an antique store/flea market and start rummaging for good AMERICAN made files, rasps, ball peen heads and punches. You will be using lots of these. Also get to Harbor freight and get steel and brass wire brushes to get off forging scale and apply finishes. Your anvil should be put on a stump or other HEAVY item that brings the face of the anvil even with the knuckles of your hand if you stand next to it with your arm fully extended downward with your hand in a fist. Likewise your vise should be mounted so the work surface is no more than belly button high. This allows you to bang on shit without having to lift your arms too high. Decreases strain and increases productivity. Choosing an Anvil: This really is the most important piece of gear if you want to make nice stuff with the least amount of work. The best anvils are solid cast steel anvils with a hardened face. The list of the anvil quality from best to worst goes like this #1 Cast steel #2 Wrought Iron with a hardened steel face #3 Cast Iron with a steel face #4 Solid wrought Iron #5 Solid cast Iron #6 Anvil shaped objects from Harbor freight. A good anvil will have a ring to it when placed on a hard surface and hit with a hammer. This ring will sound almost the same all over the anvil. If it changes dramatically on the face there are internal fractures that will rob you of energy. A cast steel anvil will rebound almost 85% of your work back up allowing you to conserve energy. A cast iron anvil will make a dull thud and rebound maybe 20%. It will also break down quickly and leave your work looking like shit. Some people like to charge for anvils by the pound. Up to 3 bucks for a used one. When they try that I ask em to cut me off 20 pounds worth and they look at me funny. Anvils are worth what you are willing to pay. I paid $100 for a 128 pound anvil that was in great shape. Several other people tried to charge me up to 200 bucks for a beat to death cast iron POS that their grandpappy pounded metal on. Its an antique you know! SHOP AROUND! Farm Auctions, flea markets, antique stores all have these somewhere. More to follow |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Originally Posted By Zedhead:
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I admire your skills. Pssht, You have not seen my skills yet! So far this is just me tossing some stuff I have in my brain out. Wait till I start the pictorals for making stuff! You probably wont be so impressed then! 
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Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Originally Posted By Berzerker77:
Originally Posted By TornMonkey:
Do you make your own charcoal to use for smithing? I use bituminous coal. Mined stuff. I CAN use charcoal but it is a lot of work to make when I get real coal for 12 cents a pound additionally, coal burns hotter... K. |
My GF broke the " C " button on our laptop and now it doesn't work half the time...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
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My first forge was 15" steel tire rim, lined with refractory cement.
The air inlet was underneath through the hub hole. The cement cracks eventually, so this is more of a shade tree forge, but they do work. My current set-up is a 30 lb. propane tank, lined with refractory material, and is propane fired. Not too useful if Propane becomes scarce, but, neither are forced air units unless you can power them with batteries, solar, etc. Anyone considering a forge for SHTF metal working (Like SF'ers) might want to look into 12v squirrel cage fans, easily adapted to solar and/or battery power, or go with an old school bellows 
I don't really do much actual blacksmithing, mine is mostly for knife making, so 90% of my use is heat treating and tempering. If anyone wants to dabble with small pieces before going full-bore as a blacksmith, you can make a small forge using a MAPP gas torch. Small forge with MAPP gas burner On the cheap, you can go to a scrap yard and find a 1 or 2 foot section of railroad track, mount it to a stout log, and it's a rudimentary anvil. I use a short section of 12x12 I-beam for flattening, and a piece of RR track for bending. disclaimer: I work with smaller thin pieces of metal. YMMV |
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Originally Posted By Kar15:
Originally Posted By Berzerker77:
Originally Posted By TornMonkey:
Do you make your own charcoal to use for smithing? I use bituminous coal. Mined stuff. I CAN use charcoal but it is a lot of work to make when I get real coal for 12 cents a pound additionally, coal burns hotter... K. Softwood charcoal has the same BTU per pound as bituminous coal or close enough that the layman would not notice. The problem is that a pound of coal and a pound of charcoal are very different in volume so you need much more mass in charcoal to get the same heat. It is a small distinction but it needs to be made. Anyone considering a forge for SHTF metal working (Like SF'ers) might want to look into 12v squirrel cage fans,
easily adapted to solar and/or battery power, or go with an old school bellows Hand cranked blowers are readily available and the long blades push much more air than a squirrel cage. I would urge anyone who can find a hand cranked blower to grab it because that is the absolutely most KISS type out there. Relying on battery power/solar chargers is not my idea of fun. |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Making tools:
As you go along you will fing that bending and squishing metal is all well and good but you will need to make tools for forming it into the shapes you desire. Sometimes you need to cut something off or punch a hole . This is where will go over a few basic tools for that job. #1 Hot cut: A hot cut is nothing more than a thick piece of mild steel shaped like a knife blade. You put hot metal on top of it and hit it with a hammer until the piece is ready to shear. I suggest using a good thick piece of 3x3 angle iron with a thick wall. All you have to do it grind a blade into the top of the piece and make/weld a piece of square stock to fit your hardy hole(The square on on the back of your anvil). I use a good long taper for this as it can be resharpened easily if struck with cold metal. NEVER use it to try to cut cold metal. You will just blunt your hot cut. MS Paint! 
Next up is a bending fork. You make it with 2 pieces of 1/2 in round mild bar, some square bar and something to fit your hardy hole. This one is self explanatory 
And finally you have fullers. You should have at least 2 of them. 3/8 and 1/2 inch. These will make indentations in your metal for bending a radius, making tongs, all sorts of stuff. Make a bottom and a spring fuller of each. The spring fuller is just a big mild steel hair pin that you place your work piece in and whack the shit out of the top bar while rotating your work. This will allow you to reduce pipes, form hammer heads, make stretching metal easier in general. I will show it in use later. 
More to follow! BOW BEFORE MY ELITE MS PAINT SKILLS! |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
machinist and highly agitated observer
Joined:
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Posts:
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EE: 100% (9)
TX, USA
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Originally Posted By Berzerker77:
Originally Posted By machinisttx:
I'm wondering if my grandfather's forge is still useable. Needs a lot of TLC and cleanup. Post up some pics! I should be able to tell you what you have and how to get it going. yep, if there is anything at all left of it it is salvageable... i bought my first forge, which was a real beat up and eaten up rust bucket, of a squirrel cage handcrank style number, at an auction for $60. the whole thing was cast iron and it obviously and definatelly had a lot of age on it. i was enrolled in a metal shop class at the local votech center. mostly welding(stick, mig, tig, o/a, etc.etc.) with a little of a lot of other stuff thrown in including blacksmithing(teacher was a new order menonite...
my dad was hauling my forge to the school on the back of his truck so i could do a little work on it including fitting a new belt to the blower, replacing part of the housing on the swuirel age which has completely rusted away, fixing up a new grate for the fire box/pan, and reconditioning the whole thing. some oblivious ass-clown pulls out in front of my pops and runs him off the road. my dad was ok and he didn't wreck his truck luckily but the forge bounced of the bed of the truck and well it was cast iron... the fire pot was in 3 large pieces, the main cog wheel 6-7, the squirrel cage broke loose and at least one of the legs was bent. the thing wasn't in great shape to start with but after that the whole thing resembeld a big rusty shattered mirrior... dad did manage to find all the pieces though and it turns out my teacher was a genius when it came to iron work... alot of information passed on as well as a lot of grinding, fiting, pinning, clamping, cleaning, and finally some very creative and careful welding with nickle rod. followed then later ofcourse with plenty more grinding, finishing, and painting, as well as the fabrication of a few missing and design and manufacturing of a few new parts, the forge was better than new... hats off to dad for finding everything, and to my teacher mr. martin for helping me put it all back together, that man taught me a lot... not mine, but if they aren't almost exact twins i'll eat a clinker... 
i own 2 forges, a nice little mouse hole anvil, and a fair amont of other necesities, but i haven't seen any of it in a number of years. all of my blacksmithing stuff is packed away in my fathers shop until i can get out of this apt. and the GF and i can get ourselves a nice little place out in the county somewhere where i can set up some nice raised bed gardens, raise a few chickens and some other small live stock, dig a nice little fish pond, plant some fruit trees and bushes, and set up a metal working & smithy shed... K. |
My GF broke the " C " button on our laptop and now it doesn't work half the time...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
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That is an awesome forge you have man.
The main problem with these old forges is pan burnout. Yes cast iron does not oxidize as bad as steel but it still does degrade in an oxygen rich fire. This is why most people today are lining the forges with firebrick/refractory. Hell my forge says "Clay before using" on it but nobody bothered to do it so it was repaired with 2 3/8 inch plates. With the refractory in place the steel is not even touched by the fire and barely by the heat. Modern refractory allows us to use a lot of different materials for a forge besides cast iron. You can make one out of an old plow disk if you want. Don't lock yourself into NEEDING a ready made forge. |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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forge aside, the GF and i currently live in a decent sized apt. complex. while i like the smell and sounds associted with a smithy, i doubt the majority of the neighbors would agree. so it's all a no go for me for a while yet...
the first forge i ever used was simply a piece of channel beam laid out flat with an electric fan blower set in the channel and charcoal piled up in front of it, and a small piece of abandoned rail road track as an anivl very crude and barelly sufficient for a lot of work(not sure i ould use a set up like this for forge welding(which i suck at anyway), but for a lot of stuff would have worked in a pinch. iirc a former friend and i actully used that setup in some demonstration we did for some weblos merrit badge...
as to the subjet of burning out the pan, i can line the pan itself with no issues, and i replaced the grate with a piece of cold rolled steel plate with a whole buttload of whole drilled into place. the grate was then just tac welded into place so that i could easily cut the tac welds and replace the grate as needed. however, that said making a grate out of an old piece of tile or thin fire brick would have probably been a better idea had it occured to me at the time... great tutorial, keep it coming!.. K. |
My GF broke the " C " button on our laptop and now it doesn't work half the time...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
|
More tools!
Ok, we went over some basic smithing tools that are pretty much a necessity, well guess what.....there are more. The first tools we saw are what I call mass tools. They are for moving larger pieces of metal and precise work needs smaller tools that you can move by hand. Punches: You are going to want to be able to put holes in metal, either for making pivot points on tongs or for drifting holes out on hammer/axe heads, making holes for rivets, setting rivets etc. The first such will be a hot cut chisel. You can use any type of metal for this as it is going to be in hot work and will lose its temper when used anyway. I like to use a 1/2 round piece of sucker rod to make this one. Make it about 10/12 inches in length so you can keep your hand away from the hot steel. It can be cooled between drifts in your quench tank to keep its shape because it will distort if you let it heat up too much. The second will be a cold chisel, this needs to be made of high carbon steel and left with a pretty hard temper, you can use store bought cold chisels for this, get a few different sizes. Third will be a hole punch. Medium carbon steel can be used and it should be rehardened when you are done using it. Keep the leading edge squared off so it cuts well. Make one in 3/8 and on up to about 3/4 for various types of holes. Next will be a handle drift. This one can be pre bought or made depending on usage. If you are making tomahawks, they require a special drift to use common tomahawk handles. Drifts are blunt nosed and only used to move an existing hole that you have made with a hot chisel out to a desired shape. A lot of times it is easier to just buy a pre made ductile cast iron drift since it will move inside the metal easier and stick less. 
Notice how most of these are pretty basic shapes? They can and should be made by you in your forge. A belt sander is pretty great in getting these to shape. Buy one off of craigslist for 20 bucks and get to workin! |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Making stuff! Using my incredible MSPaint skill I have created a small tutorial on how
to custom make your own hot metal holding apparatus....apparatusses....apparati. Yeah we will go with apparati.Now mind you the short end of these can be made longer and shaped to accomodate almost any shape. You will be making a lot of these when you start getting more advanced. First I am going to show you the difference between bending metal and smashing metal with these wonderful portraits. BEND 
SMASH 
Next we will start with your first basic set of tongs. Use 3/8X3/4 bar stock. 12 inches long 
To make the round handles you will first need to square them up. Keeping them square and moving to the back of the piece while hammering will stretch the metal out several inches. 
Next we will hammer the square into an octagon by rotating while we hammer. 
Then we rotate quickly and use fast light strokes to round up the octagon. 
Then we heat and punch or cold drill a 3/8 inch hole in the center of the fullered area on both pieces 
Now we heat the first fullered indention to a bright red heat, clamp it in a vise quickly and using a crescent wrench pre sized to the right size, rotate the end tab 90 degrees making sure the bend is in the center of the fullered indention. Make sure to turn one to the right and one to the left. Then we make a rivet from 3/8 inch bar stock and set it using the following photo to make the heads. Make sure you open and close it frequently to keep it from siezing up. 
You can then heat and tweak until it holds a variety of stock and you have the general idea. You also now have a basic idea of how to stretch metal. More to come! |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Berzerker, i would imagine this being the SF and with the guys and gals here being the type to garner all the knowledge they can, i know they would enjoy most anything you made...
inparticular i bet most would be very interested in knives from files and leaf spirings and probably 'hawk heads upset and drawn from railroad spikes... but for something that might be a bit easier for someone just wanting to check out a tutorial and then try thier own hand at, why not a striker for a flint and steel set?.. iirc, in the short time that i volunteered at the lenhok'sin "high adventure" boyscout camp this was one of the projects we would teach and help the kids with when the visited the "foxfire" poutpost. i only volunteered for a couple of weeks during one summers session but that sure was a lot of fun... K. |
My GF broke the " C " button on our laptop and now it doesn't work half the time...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
Ok, got into the forge today on my day off. Lets see what we can bang out eh? Well I went by the flea market and looked around the old tools till I found this!. Looks like a 22 oz Ball pien hammer that has a damaged face. After some haggling in my broken spanish I walked away with it for fifty cents. I think I got ripped off but whatever. Only money right?
Yeah, I take shortcuts. This thing is already drifted for a handle and is made of some good old american high carbon steel. Note to you, try not to work high carbon steel over a bright red or you will burn it up. So lets fire up the forge shall we? Oil soaked rag, lit and placed over the blower. 
Put some coal over it and give it a light blow. 
See it catching on fire? Hell yes, we got some burning going on! 
Lets put this hammer in and see what happens? 
Looks like we have some heat in there eh? Lets square this part out and draw it out. 
Time for another heat. 
More squaring and drawing, I wont bore you. Lets get it wickeder shall we? 
Son of a bitch, it is having a hard time blowing air so that means we have some clinker built up. Lets clean it out. I hate clinker and here is my middle finger showing it what I think of it. 
Now we are gonna take a slow heat since we have a lot of mass here in the hammer head. Don't want the outside glowing and the inside cold so let it cook a bit with a low blow. 
Square it up, and draw it out a bit. Then we are gonna start hammering it down into a triangle shape, drawing as we go. 
Some more drawing and hammering.....Good lord my arm is tired. Lets give the tail a little downward curve and true up the front 
I forgot to put a top down pic on this so you can see the profile of the blade so here it is. 
Now all that is left is the sanding and filing work. It would work fine with a filed in bevel and a whetstone but I am gonna go more in depth later. Hope you enjoyed it. ETA Yeah I am not too happy with the final shape, it is a bit lopsided so it is going back in the fire for some more shaping later. Right now I am drinking some Hefeweizen and I don't want to fire it back up just yet. |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Holy hell, I have a new respect for those that made their own tools back in the day. Not sure what to think about the wackos doing it now.
Seriously, that is an amazing amount of work just to reshape a preexisting tool. I can't even imagine pulling off a sword from a hunk of metal, or anything like that. |
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Originally Posted By ophelan:
Holy hell, I have a new respect for those that made their own tools back in the day. Not sure what to think about the wackos doing it now.
Seriously, that is an amazing amount of work just to reshape a preexisting tool. I can't even imagine pulling off a sword from a hunk of metal, or anything like that. Hey, this tomahawk will cost me about 4 bucks by the time I am done with it so who is the whacko?! HUH? HUH?
Seriously though this is my first tomahawk attempt and there are some things I will definitely do differently next time. I will start by welding about a 16 inch piece of 3/8 square onto the rear pien. Trying to manipulate that thing with a set of tongs in the handle hole is seriously awkward and I am sure the next one will look better because of me being able to manipulate it properly. When I am done forging out the blade I will taper and shape the rear like I did on this one. That blade should be about an inch longer in my opinion. Perfectionism and novice blacksmithing don't go well together! Next up, Tomahawk out of a high carbon railroad spike! Options are spike rear or hammerhead rear with normal blade. You vote, I make. |
Life is a one shot deal, don't live with regret.
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Lots more arfcom blacksmithing discussion HERE, it's arhived so members only...
darn, i was out at my parents house earlier tonight, i should have grabbed some pics of some of the things i've hammered out... berzerker, i did a spike end on my first railroad spike 'hawk head, in retrospect i think i'd have been happier with the more utiliatarian hammer head, so there's my vote. i liked your shortut with not having to drift out the eye for the head, imho that is by far the hardest part. bending and forgewelding the eye seems quicker and makes it much nicer imho as you can use a larger and sturdier handle, unfortunatelly i never was very good at forge welding. great work sir, keep it up!.. K. |
My GF broke the " C " button on our laptop and now it doesn't work half the time...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
My conservative commonwealth's 230ish year old state seal is a direct COC violation. Our founding fathers approved of images of bared breasts...
"Our Lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor...
Joined:
Dec 2005
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ID, USA
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Originally Posted By 4schitzangiggles:
sweetness! How well do 1in thick x 3in wide x 4 ft long truck springs work for making into stuff? That depends, do you look like Arnold Schwartzenegger? Most large items like that will take a LOT of hammering to turn into something useful. If you have a power hammer then it makes it easier. You can also cook it in a wood fire for a while to anneal it and cut it down into smaller pieces to work. Metal is metal but moving it takes muscle or machines. A tomahawk wore my arm the hell out and it was not that thick. Start small and learn technique before trying to move big steel IMHO. |
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