Brian Dougherty

Ha, I'm just getting to 20 years of bench dust. In my case it is under about 20 years of tool accumulations on the bench... I would have guessed the 20tpi was too fine, but I have the lines on sawmilled lumber in mind. That is probably much coarser than what you guys are trying to replicate

Way to chop up some gremlins Alan.

Alan, That might look a little closer if the surface was sanded to a relatively coarse grit with the scratch line running the length of the piece before you went at it with a the checkering file, then if you ran the file at a slight slant to mimic the forward feed through the bandsaw.

I think you are seeing the shadow of the blade.

You don't need 1% to make a good blade. In fact, anything over about 0.80 to 0.84% starts to get more difficult to heat treat. Opinions vary on the minimum amount of carbon, but a lot of people call 0.6% a good starting point. Again, I think your bolts are a fine way to get your feet wet. When you get tired of turning them into blades, you'll find they make dandy punches and hot chisels

Welcome to the madness I don't get using facebook groups for things like this. That just doesn't work as well as a forum format where material is searchable and indexable. I guess I'm getting too old, but IMNSHO, you are in the right place now. That looks like a good start to forging blades. There is no point to picking it apart as we all need to get our feet wet somewhere, and you probably know where at least 80% of the improvements need to be made. As you pointed out, you've already learned the cost of making hammer marks that are too deep I'm not su

I'd also vote for those being spots that didn't harden. When I switched to 1084 in my pattern weld mix from the 1095 I had been using, I had a couple stumbles where I didn't have the blade quite hot enough to get the hardness I was expecting. I ended up bumping my oven up 50 degrees F and my problems went away. I'm not very familiar with 80CrV2, but you may be in a similar edge case. WRT the crosses: You and I are in the same climate. I don't know if your shop is heated, but I've noticed that my etches take far longer when my shop gets cold. My 10 minutes cycles in the summer

I agree with what has been pointed out above. However, on a positive note I think there is a lot to like about it as well. The grind is very even and well executed even if it is a bit of a noob grind. Also, the fit and finish of the handle components looks pretty good from what I can see. It looks like you might have benefited from going a little higher in grits when polishing the handle materials, but I don't see any ugly gaps between the wood, spacer, and guard. The central pin look a bit large for my taste, but pretty well executed otherwise.

Your epoxy may be a bit too old. Additionally, not all epoxies are created equal. Some brands just don't work well. Other than that, copper to g10 should be pretty easy, and your prep sounds good to me.

That is a pretty cool repair, and makes the anvil pretty special. What is going on with the "Glob" in the hollow under the foot? Is that part of the repair process? It looks like someone put a pin the top half, and peened it over under the bottom half.

Nice Bill, I like how the patterns worked out on those.

Good luck on getting it. That big cavity on the bottom probably makes it an anvil shooters dream, so I hope you get it instead Shea butter and vinegar? What's that guy into?

Cool! I would probably have to do the same as Don

Well, I sort of meant both. Iron filings are cheap, and finer so I thought they would be easier to use in flux than drill swarf. However, I also assumed iron filings were not really pure iron, and were either cast iron or steel. I may be wrong about the last part.

Curious why cast iron swarf rather than iron filings? Good on you for sharpening your twist drills by hand. I'm not very good at doing that, and have to resort to a drill doctor.