What did you do in your shop today?

[Jeremy Blohm]

Cut up and split some Ash for axe and hammer handles.

[Mike Powell]

Met up with Alex again.  Filing is not really a grab and go sort of thing is it!  I'm more of a template guy.  Slow and steady...

Alex - 4 " disc sander.

[Alex Middleton]

4" should do the trick to straighten your bevels out.  Just take it slow and you'll be fine.

[jake pogrebinsky]

11 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

I ground a little too much off the wrong side of a folder backspring, then discovered I'm now out of 3/32" 01 to replace it with...    

 

Sorry,man...These kinds of things are a nuisance:(

 

Say,when you use O1,do you actually go the whole enchilada,as in holding it at heat for 30 min. or whatever,or substitute some nifty backyard method (especially for maybe not totally critical applications)?

[Gerhard Gerber]

Had a forging session with my neighbour around the corner in his newly re-arranged shop, tried for a mildsteel/51200 sanmai......and failed.

 

Did enough sanding on 2 blades to remember why I hate it so much 

[Troels Saabye]

Started the spring cleaning, all the gunk and old garbage from the shop is gone ^^ and I might have worked my back a bit too hard performing some much needed tree surgery in our garden. And bought a surplus NBC suit , not purely Corona-buy - I needed something for working around 55 gallon drums of mixed acids (4-5 55 gallon drums) to be honest I don't like working with dairy farming amounts of acid/bases they are a nasty bunch.

[Alan Longmire]

7 hours ago, jake pogrebinsky said:

 

Say,when you use O1,do you actually go the whole enchilada,as in holding it at heat for 30 min. or whatever,or substitute some nifty backyard method (especially for maybe not totally critical applications)?

 

On the folders since they are stock removal only and start from speroidized annealed, I normalize twice, then I set the little two-brick gasser at 1550 F and soak for ten minutes. On forged O1 I just soak for a minute or two at decalescence, assuming that forging has done a lot of the carbide-spreading work already.

[t cudworth]

Started this big rasp knife, not an order, just an in between fun project. Will probly get black walnut scales. Finally finishing up this spear I started moons ago. Have some straightening yet, and heat treat,  but a fun project.

Tom

[Mike Ward]

Since I’ve done a whole lot of practice lately with kitchen style knives, I thought I would throw myself a curveball with a couple of Bowie-ish blades. Warmed up with a 5.5” petty knife, made an attempt at the 9.75” big boy and finished the day with the 6” fighter/Bowie/clip point (idk what proper classification it is). 

Just wanted show how I’ve been striving to get a very close forged finish with minimal grinding needed.

 

I have a question on hammering in plunge lines: how in the bloody heck do y’all get them nice and clean off the anvil?

[Alan Longmire]

9 hours ago, Mike Ward said:

 

I have a question on hammering in plunge lines: how in the bloody heck do y’all get them nice and clean off the anvil?

 

Practice.    And a properly dressed hammer face.  It's tricky, but once you have the hammer control to make the edge of the anvil and the edge of the hammer face line up for every blow, you can do a good forged plunge.  Of course, once you've started hammering a single misalignment will ruin it...

[Bruno]

39 minutes ago, Alan Longmire said:

you can do a good forged plunge

 

know of any good demonstration vids of that?

 

 

 

Also, here is my latest... 300+ layer, 1084/15n20/52100,   twisted raindrop from a piece left over.

 

gotta work on a sheath now...

 

 

Edited March 25, 2020 by Bruno

[Mike Ward]

2 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

Practice

How did I know you’re gonna say that? To the forge!

 

Do you angle the hammer both down the bevel face and tilt it the back of the hammer toward you to pinch the plunge line? Or just angle the hammer face down the bevel?

[JeffM]

With all the pandemic stuff floating around I decided to go back to old school knife making and after forging out a blank from 5160 I pulled out my long un-used file jig.

Not really sure I like the butt end of the handle but I have plenty of time to revise and refine....I do like the way the false edge and blade profile are turning out.

 

What changes and modifications would you guys make???

[Alan Longmire]

1 hour ago, Mike Ward said:

Do you angle the hammer both down the bevel face and tilt it the back of the hammer toward you to pinch the plunge line?

 

I usually do it with the edge facing away from me, but pretty much.  If I want a dropped edge I'll use the peen to pull it down, then clean up the plunge with the face.  I tilt the blade and the hammer to make it pinch both sides at once, and since I don't do ricassos often I'm way out of practice...

 

3 hours ago, Bruno said:

know of any good demonstration vids of that?

 

Not off the top of my head, but I bet there is one.  Nice kiridashi!

[Brian Dougherty]

I turned the corner of it into my temporary home office.  All the other spots were taken by my wife and daughters who are all working form home now.

[Jeremy Blohm]

Drilled and tapped a hole in my top die to be able to bolt on tooling. I will use a saddle system for the bottom. In debating if I wanna drill and tap another one. Anyang hammers have 2 through holes in there dies for this reason. 

 

I got the idea from this video.

 

 

 

[Randy Griffin]

I decided to make some charcoal since I'm on vacation this week. Close to a half a barrel on the first burning. This one will be ready tomorrow morning.

 

 

[Jeremy Blohm]

14 minutes ago, Randy Griffin said:

I decided to make some charcoal

Looks like some good stuff!!! Being a collier is fun isnt it. There is something relaxing and rewarding about it!!!

I made a batch of ash charcoal this morning.

[Randy Griffin]

10 minutes ago, Jeremy Blohm said:

There is something relaxing and rewarding about it!!!

Yeah, the price.  

This is pine. How's the ash in the forge. I have some red oak ready to burn but it's for cooking.

[Jeremy Blohm]

Ironically it leaves a lot of ash  but it is somewhere between oak and pine as far as forging. I really like pine when I want to weld and oak and ash for normal forging. I can weld with any charcoal I just prefer pine for it.

[Alex Middleton]

I spent the day trying to work from home.  The kids have already exhausted our high speed internet package for the month, so we've been throttled back.  0.1Mbps download speed on my Hughes net satellite internet is a freaking joke .  I ended up taking a vacation day as I got almost nothing done.  We're supposed to be working from home every other day for the next three weeks.  It's going to be interesting to say the least.

[Randy Griffin]

I fired up the forge with some of the homemade pine charcoal. I really like this stuff.

I been wanting to play with some of the 10" bandsaw blade I found so cut a small piece, normalized x 3 and quenched. It was fairly hard as was but skated a file perfectly after quench. Hard to tell from the pic but the grain is almost nonexistent. It's only .080" thick but I'm going to try and make my slicer/kitchen knife from it.

 

[John N]

This is the punching rig I came up with for the 25t press. Seems to work pretty good so far. The stripper pivots out of the way, to give line of sight, and give access for punch cooling.

 

The starting billets for these hammer blanks were 80mm dia x 28 mm thick (slice off a bar) - it took 3 heats to get them to the stage in the photo, mostly because im still finding my confidence in my power hammer, and partly as i've done something bad to a tendon in my wrist! I don't think it will take much practice to get to this stage in 1 heat, as the Massey warms the billet at you forge it!

 

I have spent a bit of today making tooling to use under the Massey to progress the blanks from this stage into hammers, just need to make some drifts, and I can have a proper play at hammer making.

 

My goal for this exercise / learning curve, is to be able to cleanly, and quickly forge small hatchets, possibly 1.5 lb head weight. I will call them 'kindling' hatchets, and sell them to the affluent masses who have wood burning stoves, and need an excuse to buy an axe  

 

I do want to make nice hammers as well as axes, but i'm starting with hammers as the eye profile seems more forgiving to my cack handed forging!

 

 

 

[John N]

This is some of the tooling I made yesterday to assist with forging hammers, spring fullers for necking down, and cheek spreading, and a couple of supports for when the drift is being driven in, or out. 

 

Gave it a quick test run this afternoon with mixed results. I used some meaty flat bar as the 'hairpins' with the thought it would keep the rounds aligned better. Its a bit to strong though, and makes putting the hammer head in the gap a faff. I will chop them, and weld in a 'U' of thinner stock so they are more forgiving.

 

I also had a good dose of reality that making hammers is not quite going to be the doddle I initially thought, I make a h13 drift, but its a bit big for the 1kg hammers shown punched above, and realised my starting block size is wrong, and realised that a lot more of the hammer shape should be forged before punch and drift is done, or you spend many heats chasing the shape of the eye, that gets mullered everytime you hit the workpiece!

 

Need a few days ironing out the process for sure. I remember this stage of learning from when I started forging knives. Frustrating, but fun!

 

 

 

 

 

[SteveShimanek]

Not bladesmith related, but I have been teaching myself to TIG weld aluminum, as i repair numerous corrosion holes in a diesel fuel tank from my 40 year old sailboat. Aluminum is a very different animal than steel, but I am making progress. Boat work has taken precedence over shop work lately, but i have some sword polishing backlogged that i will be back to soon.