New hawk, sort of a half WIP, picture heavy

[Alan Longmire]

Half, because I keep forgetting to take pics of the important parts. Sigh...

 

Anyway, the basics are covered in these threads:

 

 

 

[Alan Longmire]

So: Forged on April 16:

 

Materials are wrought iron and 1075.  

 

Ground, drawfiled to 6" mill smooth, and heat treated on April 23:

 

 

Filework laid out on the eye, cuts started and finished, all with files, April 24:

 

 

 

[Alan Longmire]

The next weekend, April 30/May 1, I turned the bowl from the same wrought as the hawk body.  Somehow I don't have pics of that process, but I do have how I chose to mount this one.  You may have noticed in the filework layout the little centerpunch mark where the hole is to go atop the eye.  I drilled a 1/4" hole, then used a 1/2" aircraft counterbore with a 1/4" pilot to counterbore for the bowl to be inset.  I usually do that for hammer poll hawks.  

 

 

[Alan Longmire]

Forgot to mention, the machine in use here is a 1941 Atlas/Craftsman 12-48 lathe with a milling attachment.  Darned handy, but way too long and underpowered.  6" swing over the ways, 48" bed, unless I have the back gears engaged it'll take a max cut of .020 in steel.  But it's what I have.

 

Anyway, I then drill and tap 3/8-24 NF, still in the lathe for precise alignment, but hand turn tapping only.

 

 

Then I roughed the bowl from the wrought. 2" long, 0.8" diameter.  First I turn one end down to 1/2" to fit the counterbore, then I cut a fat 1/4" of that down to 3/8", or a hair finer, in this case 0.370", and thread it with a die held in the tailstock, again turning the chuck by hand.  The chattery line you can see on the rough bowl is to mark where the bottom of the big bore is so I don't cut into it when I do the final turning.  It's 13/16" diameter, done with Silver and Deming bits prior to necking down the small end.  Then there's a 5/32" hole the rest of the way through.  

 

 

Then on May 1 I went back out and finished it.  Mostly with bits (doing compound curve profiles via the handwheels with a 60-degree single point cutter is like playing with an etch-a-sketch, but if you screw up you can't shake it to fix it...) and finished with files on the lathe.  Filing a piece on the lathe is dangerous, but really handy.  And of course I have no pics, because I totally forgot to take any.   That's annoying, because since one end is threaded it can't be fixed in the lathe jaws.  Except I made a little tool for that.  Took some 1/2" round, and drilled and tapped it 3/8-24, and turned the very end down to a taper.  Screw the rough bowl into the adaptor, good to go!  Live center in the tailstock to support the bowl as well.

Edited May 7, 2022 by Alan Longmire
Forgot to add a lot of information...

[Alan Longmire]

After I finished the bowl, I brazed it to the head with Harris Safety-Silv 56.  And forgot to take pics again.  I could have sworn I had some looking into the eye, but oh, well.  I used ATP-641 antiscale to protect the eye and as a resist for the braze, because it's a pain to file that off of wrought.

 

Here's the bowl as of a few minutes ago:

[Alan Longmire]

Today, I inlaid a sterling silver plate into the spine for my signature later down the line.  

 

 

 

That's a die-sinker's chisel, flat ended, made from O-1.  Much more aggressive than my little 1095 and M42 gravers I used in this thread:

 

Same idea, though, and I still use the gravers to clean up and undercut.

 

[Alan Longmire]

Once it's all down to depth, undercut and internal barbs raised, it looks like this:

 

 

I talked about that in the "Why I'm always recommending files" thread too.

 

Final check to see that the silver plate is a snap fit into the inlet:

 

 

Looks good!  Now for the nerve-jangling part.  Take it over to the anvil, pad the horn with a bit of leather, and hammer the silver into the inlet.  Hard.  If you screw up, you have to start over.  I usually use one of the larger forging hammers for this to get maximum coverage of the silver for a one-shot squish, but this one needed to expand a bit more longways due to operator error during the undercutting step, so I used a domed-face 16-ounce crosspeen.

 

 

 

Ooh, I forgot to remove the layout dye before setting the inlay.  Will it show after I file it flush?

 

 

[Alan Longmire]

First I went back to the vise, removed the dye with acetone, and went over the whole inlay with a smooth chasing chisel to drive the silver into all the undercuts and barbs, followed by the ball end of my chasing hammer to really make sure. Incidentally, this also work-hardens the silver so it's less likely to peel out of the inlet while filing it flush.

 

 

Drawfiled flush:

 

 

Tomorrow's guild meeting day, so that's it until next weekend.  I had time to do a few more inlays (this one took 1.5 hours start to finish, including cutting the silver), but I haven't decided on what to put on the blade.  Hopefully I'll figure that out during the next week or so.  And I need to order more silver for the handle inlays.  Ooh! How about a crescent moon on one side?  I did one a long time ago with a moon on one side and a sun on the other, with the sun inlaid in brass, gold being out of my price range...  Or not, the pointy ends of the crescent are not fun to inlet.  We shall see.

[Joshua States]

You are rockin" man!

[Gerhard Gerber]

Masterful!.......I'm hoping there's on of these in my future 

[Aaron Gouge]

Hey Alan,

    This one seems to have a larger cutting edge than some of the other ones in your WIP. Did you used more hard steel in the bit? Or start with thicker wrought? Or both? 
     Forging one of these for my brother-in-law in Argentina is on my to do list. 
     Will be following this his thread. 
Aaron 

[Alan Longmire]

Thicker steel on the bit, plus an effort to get it wider.  Lots of crosspeen work.  

[Brian Dougherty]

Your pics in the "What did you do today" thread have had me curious for a couple of weeks.  Looking good

 

[jake pogrebinsky]

Alan,your work has that really special affinity with the look/feel of the historic examples of older work.

Sweet,and Very classy,as usual!

 

Reading carefully through all the process i think of you doing all that filing on WI. 

Of course WI does not equal WI,but often when so engaged the softness of the material makes filing a bit tricky.

Do you soapstone your files,and/or keep the file card Really close at hand,or any other special tips and tricks when filing extensively on wrought?

[Alan Longmire]

Thanks, Jake!

 

I do many things to keep the pins from happening. I gave up on soapstone, too messy and too slippery except for fine work on nonferrous. These days it's three strokes, bang the tip on the vise, a quick sweep of the card (actually one of those toothbrush-sized wire brushes), check for pins, dislodge with Exacto blade.  Of course, if a big pin happens I feel it instantly, and remove it at once.  

 

This particular wrought seems well-behaved. It's a 1.25" tie rod from a large building in Maine, as I understand, and is quite clean.  A test etch didn't look nearly as cool as I want it to, but it was just a quick dip.  

[Aaron Gouge]

23 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

Thicker steel on the bit, plus an effort to get it wider.  Lots of crosspeen work.  

Thanks! To help as I think through,  plan and design. What is the length of the bit from the eye? Also what’s the width of the cutting edge? 

[Alan Longmire]

I started by forging the 1.25" round bar into a .25 x 1.25" flat bar slightly more than .25" thick. The bar used for the head was 14" long.  

The finished head, minus bowl, measures 7.125" long. With the bowl, 9.5".  It's 5.25" from the front of the eye to the edge, and the eye is 1.75 x 1.25" internal measure on top. 

The edge steel was 1 x .25" flat, forged to a wedge cross section. The outer 3/8" was left full thickness prior to welding. 

Finished edge length is 3.25". 

That's about half an inch wider than I usually make them, and a full inch wider than was common prior to around 1840.  You do see wide ones on occasion, especially on the plains, but in the eastern woodlands it's unusual to see one more than 2.5" wide at the edge prior to 1820, after which time you don't see them east of the Mississippi much at all.

[Aaron Gouge]

4 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

I started by forging the 1.25" round bar into a .25 x 1.25" flat bar slightly more than .25" thick. The bar used for the head was 14" long.  

The finished head, minus bowl, measures 7.125" long. With the bowl, 9.5".  It's 5.25" from the front of the eye to the edge, and the eye is 1.75 x 1.25" internal measure on top. 

The edge steel was 1 x .25" flat, forged to a wedge cross section. The outer 3/8" was left full thickness prior to welding. 

Finished edge length is 3.25". 

That's about half an inch wider than I usually make them, and a full inch wider than was common prior to around 1840.  You do see wide ones on occasion, especially on the plains, but in the eastern woodlands it's unusual to see one more than 2.5" wide at the edge prior to 1820, after which time you don't see them east of the Mississippi much at all.

  Thanks Allan!! That is super helpful!! I ran into Simeon England at a muzzleloader event a few months back. We talked quite a while about early American hawks. I surprised me how small the cutting edge was on most early hawks. 

[Alan Longmire]

Family stuff yesterday, literally.  Went to the Ridgewood BBQ and was too stuffed to do a darned thing for the rest of the day. I did think about the further inlays, and decided to do a mishmash of styles by the maker John Small, ca. 1809.  Had a couple of hours this afternoon, and so I added his knife on the left side. This is gonna look a lot like the last update.

 

First, cut the knife from scrap sterling sheet and anneal it.

 

 

Add layout blue, make sure the inlay is where it needs to be, and scribe the outline.  The blue tape not only complements the layout dye, it prevents bloodstains if I forget the edge is pretty sharp already...

 

 

Proceed to remove the iron to the proper depth and width, try for fit:

 

 

Undercut the edges and add burrs to the floor.

 

 

Remember to remove layout dye this time.  Cross fingers and toes, try to hold tongue just right, and hammer it in, followed by the chasing punch, etc.

 

 

Drawfile until level and errant hammer marks are gone.

 

 

That's the third one of these knife inlays I've done.  Pain in the rear, I need to make another chisel specifically for the point.  I think the other side will be a simple diamond plate for the new owner's initials, with some engraving around it to make it stand out.  There will be engraving on the knife side too, of course.  That's it for this weekend.  

 

[Joshua States]

Very nice work Alan. Always a pleasure to watch this happen.

 

[Gerhard Gerber]

Total impulse buy on Saturday, one of those electric engravers you use to mark your tools.

I know its not the same thing at all, but just messing around with the thing gave me new respect for real engraving.

Thanks Alan, enjoying watching this come to life.

[Alan Longmire]

Didn't get much done last weekend, but today ends with this:

 

 

Took three attempts to set the inlay.  The chisel is what I made to fix the problem of getting into the sharp points and undercutting sufficiently.  Now I get to sand it to 400 grit (this is a drawfiled to 6" mill smooth finish) and decide on the engraving and any further filework.

 

I did find the handle last weekend, which had me worried for a minute.  I dug into my pile of hawk handles and couldn't find any that were already drilled.  I was on the verge of trying to drill one when I looked one more place, and found a presentation-grade curly maple one already drilled.    What they call matchstick curl.  Very tight and even.

[Gazz]

Excellent stuff!

[Alan Longmire]

Matchstick curl, defined on figured maple:

 

[Alan Longmire]

After the stress of yesterday's near-fiasco with the silver diamond inlay, I decided my shoulders and neck hadn't had enough punishment and figured I might as well start engraving.  Since I work in the style of late 18th century American gunsmiths, that means hammer and chisel and not a lot of magnification.

 

First I put a skim coat of white watercolor on the blade so I can draw the design with a pencil.  I use Windsor and Newton dry cake Chinese white.  Lick your finger, wipe it on the blade, lick it again, wipe it across the dry paint, wipe that on blade, wait ten seconds, done.  Draw your design.

 

 

Using a 1" chasing hammer and a 1/8" square graver, cut the outlines.

 

 

Add the accent lines that you can with the hammered graver.

 

 

Add the grace notes and shading with a push graver.  Don't stab your off thumb.

 

 

Clean it back with 400 grit paper, and this side's done.  Ordinarily I'd have blued the engraving so it would stand out better, but this is going to be etched to show the wrought.