What did you do in your shop today?

[Gary LT]

Alan, I think the hawk head is too well done that adding more could detract. The finish is really, really nice. The pewter as is….is bold and perfect. 
Thats my thoughts….

Gary LT

[Alan Longmire]

Okay, y'all talked me into it. . The wife says that saved our marriage, even!

 

It will get stained and violin-polished, though. 

 

And it could be yours for a dollar, if you come to the hammer-in this fall. 

[Alan Longmire]

Oh, and the wood won't char as long as you leave it thick.  This pewter (lead-free plumbing solder, 96%tin, 2% silver, 2% antimony) pours at around 450 F, not enough to burn wood.  Or cardboard, for that matter. 

[Gazz]

I would say to add the star inlay - it would certainly not detract from the overall look as there is already a number of inlays in both wood and metal and it would add some visual weight and continuity as your eye travels from the mouthpiece to head.   The two bands would frame the star and give them more purpose.   In this case I think the inlay embellishments are a focal point or theme and one more would only enforce that idea.  Just my opinion and if I was the prospective buyer of such a beautiful tomahawk I would want the star.  Many artists have the same "problem" in knowing when enough is enough or, when to stop. 

[Gary LT]

I got my reservation made weeks ago and I’ll have a dollar (or more) to bid!

I know you’ll post some finished picts!

Gary LT

[Alan Longmire]

1 hour ago, Gazz said:

The two bands would frame the star and give them more purpose.

 

That's my opinion as well, and that's generally how I do them, as many historic examples have the same framing.  This head is in the style of John Small, an Irish immigrant active from ca. 1775 - 1820 in Pittsburg, PA and later Vincennes, IN. He usually added some inlay work to the haft as well, especially after he moved to Indiana Territory where the Delaware/Lenape gave him the name "Big Knife,"  thus the knife inlay that was a sort of signature. 

 

He never used pewter, though.  Always coin silver.  We shall see what it ends up being, but I think I'll go with domestic tranquility over historical accuracy.   

[Joshua States]

On 7/4/2023 at 2:51 PM, Alan Longmire said:

This pewter (lead-free plumbing solder, 96%tin, 2% silver, 2% antimony)

OK that's one for my feeble memory.

How do you remove the sprues? Rough cut with a bandsaw or hacksaw and grind flush is my assumption.

[Alan Longmire]

Yep.  And since I leave the cardboard forms a little on the loose side, no extra vents or risers are needed. The bands each have one massive sprue, the mouthpiece is its own sprue.  Agitation is vital to fill all the little channels, though.  A riser off the lower band would be helpful there, but more involved than I care to get with cardboard and tape.  Any spots that don't fill get fixed with a 30-watt soldering iron and some extra solder.  Gotta be careful, though.  It's like TIG welding aluminum, one second it's not hot enough, the next it flows away.  So I leave the cardboard a little loose and get like a 1/32" skin of pewter over the whole thing. File or grind that off and it's usually perfect underneath.

 

The guys who taught me this used Babbitt metal, but specified not to use Nickelite brand unleaded Babbitt, as it shrinks a bit.  I used pure tin for a while, since nobody wants a leaded mouthpiece, but it doesn't flow nearly as well as leaded tin.  The 2% silver stuff works almost as well as leaded, and doesn't tarnish much at all.  

[Alan Longmire]

The hawk is done, except for finalizing the finish.  This is two coats of BLO, hand rubbed for half an hour each.  I'll add a coat once a week for the next month, then top it with car wax.  Gives a nice mellow medium-gloss shine. The aquafortis stain will darken a bit as well.  This one has some nice chatoyance that doesn't show up in still images. The cleanout plug is bone.

 

 

 

[Gazz]

Very nice, even without the star!

[Gary LT]

Yep I really like this hawk, I’ve made a mental note to try and use the coloring schema myself on some project in the future.
Alan, great job as always!

Thank you for posting too.

Gary LT

 

[Joshua States]

I haven't been in the shop for a month now and this weekend I took some time to work on getting this order for 6 PW baldes ready. They have been through HT and profiled for a while. Customer's specific shapes and sizes. 

 

 

I got 4 of them ready to etch.

 

 

 

[Joshua States]

Etched this morning before work.

 

 

 

[Eric Estlund]

New stand and a bit of a facelift for the ol' Vulcan.

 

 

[Aiden CC]

I made this blade a while ago based on a tracing of a medieval find from Germany, but I just have it a handle and a sheath. The blade is hearth steel and wrought iron. Also, I tried red dye for the sheath, and I was skeptical at first but it’s growing on me. 
 

[Dick Sexstone]

Alan that hawk came out NICE…. Thanks for the pewter insights…..what is BLO? 

And why do you need to do it for a half hour at a time? Sorry for the tardiness in my  question

[Alan Longmire]

41 minutes ago, Dick Sexstone said:

Alan that hawk came out NICE…. Thanks for the pewter insights…..what is BLO? 

And why do you need to do it for a half hour at a time? Sorry for the tardiness in my  question

Thanks!

BLO = Boiled Linseed Oil.  For a true hand-rubbed finish you need to literally rub it into the wood with a bare hand until it polymerizes.  You can feel it get hot during the process.  That's what gives it the gloss, it's not unlike doing a French Polish with shellac.  If you just rub it on and wipe off the excess it gives a matte finish.  The longer you rub it in, the glossier it gets.  That's why they invented varnish, the extra driers and resins make that dry glossy on its own.  

[Alan Longmire]

At a guild meeting a couple months ago one of our members handed me a narsty-end offcut of a cu-mai billet he'd made and asked if I thought I could get a small fixed blade knife out of it.  I said "Sure, I guess..." and he gave it to me.  It was a bit thick for the size of blade I thought I could get out of it.  It was about 2.5" x 3" with three good edges and the very end edge where the steels and copper all sort of tangled together, and about 3/16" thick.  80CrV2 core, copper, and the outer layers are 80CrV2/15n20 damascus in a raindrop pattern.

 

I cut it into two longways and forged it thinner, down to about 0.120", and profiled out a little push dagger and a little trailing point skinner.  The push dagger showed I didn't do good job when thinning it down, as the core got a bit off-center towards the point.  It's not heat treated yet, but I gave it a test etch to see what I had.  A little copper crosses the edge at the tip, but since it's not like anyone's gonna actually use it I think I'll finish it out one of these days.

 

The skinner is surface ground to try and get the core centered better.

 

 

 

 

Tiny, but cute.  We'll see during HT if forging it down after the copper was in place did anything nasty to the steel.  I did try to keep it around 1550 F or lower to reduce intergranular penetration, which is what copper does to steel at heat.  That translates to hot shortness and prone to cracks, at both macro and micro scales.  The test etch didn't show anything, but you can see a little weirdness on the skinner's tang, which was part of the gnarly end of the billet.  I think that'll be fine, though, given its location.

[Alan Longmire]

And the skinner, rough ground, pre-HT, test etch:

 

 

 

As you can see, that gnarly bit at the end of the tang was a weld flaw.  But again, due to location, no biggie.  

[AJ Chalifoux]

3 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

And the skinner, rough ground, pre-HT, test etch:

 

 

 

As you can see, that gnarly bit at the end of the tang was a weld flaw.  But again, due to location, no biggie.  

 

That skinner is absolutely adorable. I really like that.

[Ryan Hobbs]

I recently bought a welder. I've always wanted to learn, and hopefully it will be helpful around the shop. As much as I dislike the place, I ended up getting a "premium quality" welder from Harbour Freight. Finger cross that it doesn't explode or electrocute me, haha

 

Here was my first attempt at doing a spot weld on my first multi-bar knife, it's just mild steel and a small piece of 1075. It's ugly as snot but I DID stick two pieces of metal together, haha

[Joshua States]

It's been way too hot to forge anything or grind anything with a respirator on, and this weekend was no different.

This is inside the shop door in the shade.

 

 

So the only thing I could do was some filework on a split frame for a dagger build.

I turned half of the frame into rope pattern. Starting piece on left filework completed on right. Still needs sanding, polishing, and buffing.

 

 

 

[Gerhard Gerber]

Jinxed myself, lost a whole weekend to swine flu doing the rounds, managed some light duty the next weekend, and for various reasons about 3 hours in the shop this Saturday........zero chance my forge is done in July. 

 

Lots of cardboard and masking tape later I have the mold for the forge chamber, sill need to make the place keeper for the burner.

One end of the forge body is welded in place, need to figure out how to get the right shape & size holes in each end, then I can cast the refractory this coming weekend.

[Joshua States]

I needed a small hunk of patternweld for a pommel-nut and I didn't have anything that fit the bill. So I grabbed a piece of flattened twist and cut it into 5 pieces about an inch long. Each piece is about .15" thick.

 

 

Stacked them up for welding

 

 

And turned them into a hexagonal rod about 5/8"  by 2.5"

 

 

After a forging operation of about 20 minutes, I checked the shop thermometer.

 

 

I'm done for the day.

[Alan Longmire]

It's been around 95 F / 35 C with 80% humidity all week, but that's nothing like what you guys in the SW have been facing!  Of course, last night a cold front rolled through and we got a lot of lovely rain and temps have dropped into the low 80s...

 

For you metric types, that thermometer shows Joshua's shop hit right at 50 C... 

 

I made a sheath for that little skinner.  It's going in this year's KITH.