Alan Longmire

It will turn the antler orange, so yes, mask it well!

Sorry to tell you, but they do not sell wrought iron, the material. They sell "wrought" iron as in shaped mild steel railing components. Globe Elevator used to sell high-phosphorus wrought, but they seem to be either out or have abandoned their website, http://ww1.oldglobeironworks.com/ . Out in Central MO where you are, haunt the antique stores and junk dealers. Many old wagon tires are wrought, as are the hub bands and some other iron parts of horse drawn wagons. Other farm equipment, not so much. Eight of my wagon tires I found just laying out in the woods where a wagon rot

Thanks so much for taking the time to make these videos.

Good work.

I agree on the slant, but in the end 20lpi isn't fine enough. The old sawcut scales are like 35-40 lpi. After I took that shot I added an upcut at 20 degrees to make a nice diamond checker, then rubbed some black bench dust into it to make it pop. And it looked checkered, who'd have thought! The black dust is 20-year-old macassar ebony sawdust mixed with 20 years of benchtop crud. And it came right off, oddly enough... I'm obviously cleaning too much.

Forged this last weekend to see if the shop gremlins were still active. Cleaned it up yesterday. Did the HT this morning, and since I unexpectedly had the rest of the day free, went ahead and hafted it. Needs some work on the bevel to blend everything. Mild steel body, file edge with teeth (they'll show up as it ages), curly ash handle. Wood finished natural with boiled linseed oil to bring up the stripes. This is some nice ash, I'll be sad when it's all gone.

I like the look of that, but the lines need to be a little deeper to look "right," for want of a better word. I tried out my 20LPI checkering file this afternoon to see how that worked, and the answer is no.

I was hoping someone with more experience would chime in, but in general you want it fairly fine. It will be thicker after twisting. Jim Hrisoulas talks about it in The Master Bladesmith, a book well worth having.

Sounds like multiple variables at play here. Like Billy said, welding heat as little as you can. At 1.2% C that steel is going to weld on the lower end of the temperature range. After welding, forge around 1900 F, never lower than 1800 F. Normalize three times watching for decalescence over the whole blade. This will keep the grain size consistent throughout the blade. Finally, what temperature is your steel during ura-dashi? That's one of the more punishing things you can do to high carbon steel, and it has to be done with the steel around 300-350 degrees F or it will break every

That's close to a Hudson Bay pattern. If it had pointed ears on the lower side of the eye, and a straight line on the underside, it would be one. Looks good!

Yes indeed! I like the tools idea too. I also haven't made a seax in a few years, so there's that. Bring on the ideas, y'all!

That was worth waiting for.

On most steels you can forge, three normalizing cycles are enough, and more doesn't help. 52100 is a special case. The only steel I water quench is low-Mn 1075 when trying for hamon. And I lose around 20% of those to cracking.

1" of wool is fine. You don't want these to be too efficient!

Welcome back, and wow, you've been busy! Excellent job on the gate, you should be proud. Heck, excellent work on it all! Be proud!