Blacksmithing

I was reading quite alot from my favorite website and one of the fella's started talking about making tin tavenpipes from sheet metal using no heat. Simply start hammering. Using this guys description, I started making the pipes. They are actually quite easy to make. I had all the supplies laying on my bench so I started hammering away. The stem is formed by placing the metal on a piece of hardwood with a notch cut in it. I used a ball peen and followed a straight line down the shaft of the pipe. Once the material started to roll, I insterted a piece of steel rod I use to attach knife handles. I formed the steel around the piece of rod and it quite nicely formed the stem. When I reached the bowl of the pipe I grabbed a quite blunt center punch and started hammering the metal around it. Using a small silversmiths anvil I finished the job. The trick, I soon found out was forcing the bowl bach twords the stem or mouth piece. To accomplish this one has to pinch the bowl inside of a vice using a center punch to keep the bowl from colapsing. Once the bowl is clamped, one simply grabs the stem and bends it twords the bowl. A few taps here and there and the project is done. I finish up with a go at the belt sander and I'm done. They smoke quite nice. I picked some knick knick (indian tobacco) while camping and it smokes up quite nicely.

On Sunday the 20th I set out to make my third tomahawk. The day was over 100 degrees by the time I started forging. With that much heat combined with the heat with the forge I was having difficulty keeping cool. I used my brimless forging cap to help out a little bit. I soaked it in water and placed it on my head. I’ll have to remember that for future events. I attempted several other forging projects pryor to the start of the tomahawk and that was a mistake. I made the parts to a gun stand and forged grape leaves on the ends of both of the stantions. I noticed that because of the heat I was really shaking. I kept drinking water but the shakes kept on. By the time I got to the hawk, I had been out in the heat for several hours. I started by hot cutting the handle end off of a large machinists file. I then folded the file in half and forge welded a small piece of steel into what would become a hammer head on the opposite side of the blade. I continued around to the blade by forming the handle hole on my drift inserted into the hardy hole on the anvil. I finished off by preshaping the blade, applying flux and welding the head together. The technique is sound and I have a full grasp of the steps. My next project will be a damascus style knife. I have a lawn mower blade ready to go. I’ll use a piece of strapping material for the lamination.

I’ve been working on this one off an on for several months now. (pictured in day one) It’s still a bit rough but it’s getting very close. It has about 5 coats of finish, it’s time to remove most of that with sanding and start layering on smoother coats. I also need to re-polish the blade. This guy has a hammon. It’s a traditional Japanese technique for softening the back of a blade making it some what flexable and impervious to breakage. In america we call this a differential quench. The steel at the blade edge is very hard. The steel on the back of the blade is very soft.

My next session will be to forge another tomahawk and Sunday I’m teaching a class to a local fella. I met him at a hammer in. He had every thingamajiggy known to man but needed some skills. I’m planing on starting him off on a small knife or straight razor. Those things are a B!tch to make but a good place to start. I think I’ll start off like before, it seemed to work well.
Types of steel
Spark testing for carbon content.
Starting the fire.
Basic safety around the forge
Hammer control
Hot cutting
Drifting
Normalizing
Aneeling
grinding
Hardening
Tempering
Finishing

Up until this point, making a tomahawk head has been a mystery. For almost a year I’ve attempted to fashion a hawk head that always ended in failure. One such attempt used an old ball peen hammer that I fashioned into an ax. Hammer material does not have enough carbon to harden. I also tried several attempts using mild steel. One used mild steel and a high carbon steel insert. all of these failed miserably by either overheating the material or burning up the carbon. I also used heavier leaf spring stock but I couldn’t get it hot enough to weld. My first real breakthrough came with the use of a Nicholson file I folded over and welded up. It eventually failed and I had to ask a friend to wire weld it closed. I had originally wanted to make a Ft Miggs but I neglected to weld the hammer side of the axe and it broke apart during the final grind and clean up. Anyway I talked via internet E-mail with a fellow who made some suggestions. I used this formula of sorts, in the following test......
I ended work early on Thursday the 3 of July and came home to an empty house, the wife and kids were out shopping. I immediately took to the shop and started cutting a piece of steel suitable enough for a tomahawk head. The material was from a lawn mower blade, about 3/16” thick, 18” long, and 2” wide. I ripped the steel using a 4” angle grinder. Once I had the metal cut out I headed to the forge. I started by folding the material in half and I shaped the eye of the hawk head. I used a home made mandrel that was fitted into the hardy hole of the anvil, it’s the approx shape and size of a normal axe handle. Once I had the hole shaped I started working the blade. A friend suggested I use the cross peen section of a blacksmiths hammer to draw out and shape the blade. The drawing out forced the blade edge to be quite thin. The blade tapered quite quickly into the original thickness of the doubled over blade. I then started stoking the wood fire up to forging temperature. I donned my welding goggles and prepared to weld. I was going to use a smaller 1 pound hammer but it didn’t feel right so I fell back on my normal 3 pound forging hammer. Once the color of the material reached yellow, I drizzled welding powder down and into the groove on both sides of the blade. I used my pointed end of my flux spoon to test the surface of the material when I thought I was close to welding temperature. The surface of the material was like touching hot toffee. The point of the spoon appeared to move the surface of the welding area. I quickly pulled the blade from the fire and hit it moderately 3 times on each side. I quickly threw it back in and repeated this process one more time. I finished the job by shaping the head, normalizing 3 times and quenching in oil. I quenched the head by placing the first 2 inches into the oil and I waited until the head sticking out of the oil turned black. I then plunged the entire head into the oil to cool. I then cleaned it in sand to remove the oil and placed it in the tempering oven “toaster oven” for one hour at 450 degrees. If I used the fire to temper, I would have heated to non magnetic state, pulled and hot rasped. I then would have dunked in oil about 2” deep. Once the head quits boiling, I would have pulled and watched the colors from the hot portion of the blade draw the temper down to the right hardness. I’ve done this several times to hawks and it works quite well. When it was done, I fashioned a handle from maple using my table saw and a wood rasp. I cleaned the whole thing up with a sanding disk on my 4” surface grinder. I tested it using a piece of wood from a pallet for chopping. I then threw the hawk and tested it for balance. The lightness of the handle seemed to balance out the size of the hawk head. My friend Horse made me a leather sheath for my Puuluku knife, this hawk was the trade stock for that deal.

I also finished the small straight razor blade. It needed a second heat treating apparently the first treatment didn’t allow the metal to harden up. I fashioned a wooden handle for it out of oak and went into the house and shaved with it. I have to say, the smaller knives seem to fit my hands better and make for a nicer shave. I’ve made about 5 - 6 of these straight razors so far and they work quite nicely. After the initial sharpening, they each stay sharp long enough for about 10 shaves a piece. With the price of razor blades, it’s very comforting to use my own steel every morning. This smaller knife will find it’s place in my trekking bag for trekking voyages in the future.

I had 2 medium sized utility knives laying around so I fashioned a handle for one of them out of maple, set the pins and glued it together. I plan to finish it today along with the razor strop I’ve been meaning to make for quite some time now.

I still have the opposite side of the lawn mower blade left. What to do with a large section of steel? Another hawk head or a large sword sized fighting knife. This 5160 seems to be pretty good steel.

The knife I’m currently working on is made from a chunk of W1 steel. It was 5/8” round stock and I hammered it into shape using charcoal as a heat source. I did the normalization and finished it off in the vermiculite to soften it. The hardening was accomplished in veggie oil and I used stove pipe cement for making the hammon. This morning I was working on the handle. I only get a few min. here and there to do the work. I spent some time last night rough finishing. The handle is made from back walnut. I fired up my belt sander and the dust within a few min filled my shop. Eventually it got into my eyes and I had to stop and do a quick rinse. Both were quite blood shot and not liking the wood. I guess tonight when I start again I’ll use a floor fan and keep the garage door open.

I’m also working on a straight razor. I forged it earlier out of O1 steel. It was laying on my bench for a few weeks and I discovered it yesterday when I was working on the knife. This razor is quite short and when it’s finished I hope to use in in my bag for trekking. It was originally quite long but I shortend the length and re-drilled the pivot hole. The drill bit I had is giving me troubles and I needed to re-sharpen the stupid thing twice to get all the way through the stock.

I taught a class last Sunday to a fellow who lives here in Loveland, he works on a dude ranch as a wrangler. I suspect he’s just a guy who’s out to make a few bucks blacksmithing on the side. Real nice fella but he needs lots of work on hitting. I didn’t thing we were ever going to get done with the projects we were working on. When it was all over with we had completed a fire spoon and forge welded a striker. We had to try several times to weld his striker. In my example I was able to get it to weld on the first heat. We later used the strikers to make fire with flint and steel.