Brian Dougherty

I'd stick with 10XX steels, but the real dictatting factor may be what you can get in round stock.

I have a forge similar in size. If I put cold metal in a cold forge and light it, it will take several minutes to come up to forging temp. The bigger the metal, the longer it will take. Once the forge is up to temp, I can put some cold 1/4"x1.5" stockin there and have it up to forging temp in just a few minutes. Probably less than 3 or 4, but I haven't timed it. If I am hammering on the metal, and put it into the hot forge as it cools down to "Red", it will be back up to yellow orange in less than a minute. (Probably closer to 30 seconds for something 1/4"x1.5") It probably take 10 to 15 minutes before my forge is fully up to temperature, but it starts putting out useful heat after just a few minutes. I'm guessing on these times, so take them with a grain of salt!

Oh wow, that one really speaks to me. Deceptively simple and elegant at the same time Very nice.

It might be possible, and it would be kind of fun to try. I agree with Joel (sorry I don't know how to get an umlaut) about welding up the ends to keep the air out. I've done some 304 and 316 welding to carbon steel. In my experience, you have to get pretty agressive about grinding the surface clean. I had one weld fail miserably because I just sand blasted the surface of the bar stock to get it clean. It looked clean, but left the mill scale behind, and nothing would stick. Ever since then I have used the belt grinder to make sure I got down to clean steel. I mention this because getting the inside of the tube clean might be difficult to do.

To be fair, the OP was asking about spoons, forks, and knives, i.e. flatware. I've eaten off of carbon steel flatware, and it does impose a bit of flavor to the food. I would probably be making flatware out of 304 or 316 myself.

I just got home a couple of hours ago, and have to say it was well worth the trip. Demos and presentations all day long

I usually just sand bloodwood up to 1000 grit or more, and leave it alone. It will take on a nice polish all by itself. If I were to put a finish on it, it would probably just be a few hand rubbed applications of boiled linseed oil.

Yup, that's the construction. If I'd stuck with the hollow grind plans, more of the cable would have shown.

Thats great! Remember to behave yourself for a while and follow directions.

My tube was kind of small. I think it was about 25mmx75mm That gave me a lot of air space for combustion over the tube, but didn't give me much room inside to manipulate the blade. Even with the tube, I found the blade didn't heat evenly, so I was always trying to move it around in that cramped space. In the end I just stopped using it

I used to do this to limit scale during heat treating, but found it wasn't much of an advantage in my particular forge. (With my particular setup it is just easier to use anti-scale compound) I never had any trouble getting the tube hot though. How much room do you have between the top of the tube and the roof of the forge? I had a lot of room over the tube for combustion.

I would call that one special! It's always a pleasure to see your work.

Yeah, that sounds like a great opportunity

5hp is probably more than most of us need, but it wouldn't be too much.

Actually, that Dos Gatos guy has some nice videos out there too