Brian Dougherty

Yup, what they said I like what you did with the sheath.

That is a lot of surfaces to all get to line up perfectly at the same time

Ahh, I understand. I do the final shaping of the handle after assembly which removes the visible etching. I've toyed with going back and re-etching after shaping and polishing the handle, but the result haven't been worth doing it. There have been some examples posted recently of assembling everything before etching, taking the handle apart to etch the blade, and the reassembling as a way to keep the pattern on the visible parts of the handle. However, I can't get the parts to fit precisely enough to eliminate ridges/transitions between the parts. Being able to just barely catch a fingernail on the transition from the tang to the handle just pisses me off, so that method isn't for me.

I've made somethings out of belly leather. I wouldn't say it is not worth making your sheath out of as long as it is the right weight. (Thickness) Give it a try and see how it goes

Yeah, that is a bad idea. Cast iron is not steel. It simply doesn't respond to quenching the same way.

Well, now that is something I hadn't considered!

Hi Joshua, I'm not following the question. I'm not sure what you mean by pattern on the handle profile. Then again, it is Monday morning...

The accordion cut thing is something I'd like to try soon. I'm eager to see what the pattern looks like...

You could weld on an extension, and then forge it back into shape. The weld would essentially disappear after forging.

Thanks everybody. I'm ahead of you on the wedges. A few years ago I split up some old piss-elm, and it was not uncommon that I would have 3 wedges buried in the wood hoping that the 4th one would free them. God awful stuff to split. Gary & Alan, I've heard the freezing thing before, but never tried it. Does the wood need to be frozen while you are splitting it, or just have to have been frozen at one point? Nobody has talked about specific mauls yet. With the number of "Axe heads" that hang out on this forum, I'm going to take that as a sign that comparing my $20 hardware store maul to a $200 Gransfors Bruk is not quite like comparing a VW Beetle to a Ferrari.

Somebody like Jerrod could explain this better, but the forces that can be caused by temperature differentials in a piece of steel are quite large. Just a few degrees can generate enough force to bend hot steel. Even a properly normalized blade is going to see forces that may warp it during the final quench sequence. There is simply no way for something the general shape of a blade to be heated evenly to a point where the entire blade is at the exact same temperature, and then quenched so that every atom is then cooled at the same rate. There is always going to be internal stress. The longer, or thinner, or more asymmetrically ground it is, the more warping is going to occur. I think a lot of the quirkier practices to prevent warps have evolved as a way to explain the mysticism of the warping god. There are so many variables at play that people are not aware of. Once they find a method that works for them they are prone to attributing the success to controlling the wrong thing.

I'm glad you got it home Warner, that is going to be a great work table for many years. C Craft & Jim, I actually knew the weight of the press, and it was 50 lbs below the load limits of the two ladders combined. However, I had no way of knowing how well distributed the weight was, or even if these old ladders were still good for it. I survived, but will not do that again. That "Beam" was made of 3 2x6s screwed together. It deflected an awful lot under the weight. So much so that we had to let air out of the tires of the truck to drive it out from under the rig.

This is how I lifted my press out of a truck, and put it on a cart to move to the shed. I'm horrified when I look at this picture. Some day I am going to make the local headlines in a most spectacular fashion.

"No honestly honey, I can't get to clearing the 22,000lbs of wood out of the yard until I forge myself a maul!" Hmm, after 20 years of marriage (to me no less) she'd never buy it...

Thanks Geoff, If I just wanted to get it done, renting a splitter would be the right move. However, I do enjoy splitting by hand for some reason. I'm looking at this as my winter exercise program I'm not familiar with a dogging axe, and it turns out that isn't the best term to search for at work. (You people in the UK are shocking ) However, it sounds a lot like a light maul or a heavy splitting axe. There is a Fiskars maul out there that seems to be on every top 5 list I find. It is an ugly soul-less fiberglass handled thing, but at only $50 it is pretty cheap thing to try.