Jeremy Blohm

This is going to touch on many points of safety. First is a short handled drift. The short handle causes your hand to be too close to the the impact point of the hammer. Second is not dressing the drift. This is an obvious one that is mentioned all the time. Third is if you are using a short handled drift like this one use tongs to hold it as you drive it through the workpiece. Fourth is if you are using a drift with a striker....use tongs!!! A combination of these things caused me a serious injury. this is today when I changed the dressing and let it air out for a few. The pruning of the hand makes it look even worse.

Good call... I will do that once im done with this axe.

I just changed the dressing and got a picture. Should I upload it?

Here is how it happened. and my excellent first aid work.

Making a cruiser double bit axe and I just mangled part of my hand between my thumb and pointer finger. I had the skin of my hand hanging over the top of the drift when my friend went to drive it home with a full blow from an 8 lb sledge!!!

Another one forged yesterday

I find the hardest part of making axes especially punched and drifted axes is getting the blade in line and straight with the handle.

And forged this one this morning!!!

I got the eye straightened out!!!

The camper is actually further away than the picture makes it look. This is today's work. The tank on my propane forge was running low and frosting up on me so I called it quits for the day. I have a plan for getting the eye straightened out.

Here is the wife throwing her axe.

The wifey's axe is handled. She stuck it in the target with the first throw!!! I still have some work to do to the handle but I had to get a handle on my axe I dont have any photos of my axe on my wife's phone (which I'm using now) I will get a picture of mine when we get back home late tonight. As of now we are on a sparatic road trip to the thumb of Michigan right now we have 101 miles to our destination and its ¼ to 8 pm

That wrought has some nice activity in the pattern. Should be really cool when it's done. I got my double bit axe forged today along with a single bit and an eye punched for another single bit. The weights are written down on the stickey note in order from to to bottom. The second axe from the top is my wifes axe I made yesterday and the third axe down is mine.

Is this the wrought iron I sent you Conner?

If you need to do any heavy drawing out or anything of the sort your more than welcome to come use Smurfette!!! I'm planning on starting mine soon also. I need to make a few tools to accomplish what I wanna do. I will start a WIP as soon as I start!!!

Looks like a seax to me Conner. Well done. I forged out another double bit axe drift this morning and now I'm punching an eye in a 1 inch by 2 ½ inch by 4 inch chunk of forklift fork for another double bit.

It definitely is annoying but I wont give up that easy. I might work on this some tomorrow but I have a friend coming over to forge so I will probably work on another axe while i have a striker.

Weve been really getting into axe throwing so I forged this 3 lb double bit axe for my wife. Im going to grind the top lug off and do a little more forging. This little hatchet was my second project for the day. I havent weighed it yet.

There is a few areas of concern but I'm going to keep at it and hope for the best.

I'm guilty of running my forge without a castable refractory over the wool. Ive found the forge gets quite a bit hotter without it. I have read that it will kill you in short order and I've also heard that it's nothing like asbestos and it's not as dangerous as it's made out to be. I'm not the safety nut some people are. I've lived my whole life on the edge. With that said castable refractory will save your kaowool from getting damaged and falling apart. I have to re-line my forge all the time but I have a lifetime's worth of blanket so it's not a big deal to me to forge weld in it and just reline it the next time I wanna use it which lately hasn't been much because I've been using the solid fuel forge.

Something similar to H13 would make an excellent touch mark

I've used black locust for knife handles. It is extremely dense but kinda plain in my opinion. It doesn't shrink at all and is very rot resistant. My buddy has a whole vineyard that he used un-treated black locust for his vine supports. I've been meaning to try it for hammer handles but havent gotten any more from my friend to try it. The lighter part of this handle is black locust

Its considered a coach makers anvil.