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Ambrose Burnside posted:*crashes into thread like blacksmithing Kramer* I have just tried out there mig/wire feed welder and I must say I was pleasantly surprised by its lack of suckage. Even on pure wire feed mode it makes welds at a quality level where my own lack of skill is what's holding me back rather then the machine misbehaving, which is not saying much because my wire feed skill =~0, but my familiarity with stick welding at least lets me identify that the gun does in fact create a consistent and non-sputtering arc after a bit of play with heat and feed rate and it is often on sale for $100ish, if your going to get into welding on the cheap you may want to get one of those too.
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Mar 23, 2012 06:53
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thecobra posted:We generally hate ESAB as a rule Kemppi is the brand at least here in Norway. Incredibly compact and durable machines with fantastic output. My dad has a small inverter that blows a much larger ESAB out of the water. It's far more expensive as well so you don't see them everywhere. ESAB and Lincoln are regarded as second best (or somewhere behind brands like Kemppi). Much larger range from hobby to industry so the brand is a bit watered down. Just saying ESAB or Lincoln will not mean you have a high quality machine on your hands. It can be just OK. Second hand information, as I said. I won't claim anything personally. I have welded with a few ESABs and have a small Lincoln MIG. They all worked well, but I could probably get by with a hobby machine like Telwin and not notice a major difference.
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Mar 23, 2012 13:17
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but that doesn't mean they aren't a leader, ranked with Lincoln, Miller, and Fronius. The hardships we usually experience are often related how damned rear end backwards everything seems to be with their controllers and physical equipment. That is something we have to look past though, because the machines usually perform well and are capable of doing bang-up work if you take the time to get familiar with them, and I'm sure that in the european market much of it makes sense.
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Well I took some welder porn shots when I was in the lab on Friday. Just to show a little of what I get to play with. Wasn't really doing anything interesting enough to take pictures of, though. I took a whole bunch, so look here. http://imgur.com/a/bNd2r Here are a few:  ESAB Column-Boom Subarc machine, which is a huge upgrade from the old Lincoln setup we had used before.  Fronius machines, which are frustrating to use. Fronius is supposed to be great but I haven't had the patience to sit down with one of these for very long.  This thing..... is very very nice. Love it. Album has more + high res pictures. This is just a bit of the equipment we used for advanced labs. There are TONS of other large Miller and Lincoln big floor standers that I didn't snap any pictures of, just get used for the welder/fitters. The size of the GTAW machines just makes me wanna pick em up and put em in a gym bag. Some even come with shoulder straps!
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Mar 27, 2012 16:27
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My son is about to hit 17 and has wanted to be a smith for his entire grown up life - we are fortunate in a way as we live near Shotley Bridge which is a place in the UK that has a lot of history with iron and metal working and also was the birthplace of the Wilkinson Sword company after German immigrants moved here in the 1700s and took the secret of sword making with them, however there hasn't been a smith working (apart from farriers) for well over 50 years in the area. As he is autistic and prefers to work alone I really want him to get into smithing, however I am hitting so many walls finding somewhere or someone that can train him in his initial skills - once he has the basics then I can purchase him the equipment and space he needs and just set him going - I suspect that he will only surface for air to sleep / watch porn / drink huge amounts of cola. Anyway the question I put to my fellowgoons is, where should I go to find him a place to learn the basics? We live near Beamish, however their smith is locked in an insurance nightmare for teaching young people with disabilities and cant take him on with them. Like I say, once he understands the basics I think he should be good to start the process of rinse / repeat / learn.
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Mar 28, 2012 15:39
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I learned most of what I needed to get started from watching youtube videos, specifically this guy's http://www.youtube.com/user/purgatoryironworks/videos Some of his videos are kinda random, but the basic instructional videos aren't too bad, at least you get a concept of what's going on. Sorry I'm not much help with a physical tutor though.
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Mar 29, 2012 02:39
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olblue posted:Anyway the question I put to my fellowgoons is, where should I go to find him a place to learn the basics? We live near Beamish, however their smith is locked in an insurance nightmare for teaching young people with disabilities and cant take him on with them. Like I say, once he understands the basics I think he should be good to start the process of rinse / repeat / learn. Someone to ask might be Robin Wood, he's a woodturner who I follow and is chair on the Heritage Crafts Association. He can't help employ/train your son but would know where to turn you. He does however operator a small forge to make his own tools for woodworking! He's in Edale I think https://www.robin-wood.co.uk
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Mar 29, 2012 05:17
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You could try asking around the living history/ reenactment community. There are a couple of sites that keep up lists of groups for you to find a local one.
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Mar 29, 2012 10:16
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Hullo metalgoons, For some time I've been making these:  It's a special tool for shore-gathering, developed from a local design that is possibly hundreds of years old. I usually make them in a very ghetto fashion, using a propane torch and the 'anvil' on the back of my massive old vice. It takes a long time to make each one and now I'm sorting out a proper workshop I'd like to upgrade my 'smithing facilities. I'm after an anvil, but I'm not sure what size or shape would suit this kind of work. What type and weight of anvil should I be looking at for this kind of work? Additionally, I usually make these out of old scrap steel, but I recently came into some suitable marine stainless rods, which would work brilliantly. Is it safe to forge stainless in this manner, what with Hexavalent chrome and what not? ReelBigLizard fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Mar 29, 2012 |
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Mar 29, 2012 12:19
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thanks Gentlegoons of metal - Im looking into it now  I will let you know once we start getting somewhere.
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Mar 29, 2012 18:21
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ReelBigLizard posted:forging stainless questions Stainless is perfectly safe to forge, unfortunately it is a complete bitch, and usually loses its "stainlessness" in the forging process. I think I wrote out something similar to this in this thread last year, will try to find it... edit: ok, found a couple posts I made about it, really not a lot of info, but here they are (quoting, as I can't figure out how to link to a post): artificialj posted:Just wanted to chime in and say that (of course, depending on what type) forging stainless is a loving bitch compared to (non stainless) steel. Elbow and shoulder replacement bad. Google around for something like " stainless red hardness." artificialj posted:Yeah, as stainless gets too hot you have rapid carbide growth. Really it's pretty unavoidable when forging, as carbon breaks free of the steel matrix around 1335F (Ac1 temp) and then bonds with the Cr to form Cr3C2. The C can then only be broken out of those carbides by sort of specific thermal cycling procedures. artificialj fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Mar 29, 2012 |
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Mar 29, 2012 21:01
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Chrome 6, or hexavalent chromium, is a type of chromium that is present in stainless steel. While it is bad for your health, you will not expose yourself to it by using it for abalone. AFAIK, your exposure to it is pretty limited while working with stainless steel. No need to worry about it. I've done a ton of stainless steel welding in my life. Companies where I have inspectors come in, and one of the things they test for is Cr-6 levels. The doctor has always given me a clean bill of health and I continue to work with stainless steel.
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Mar 29, 2012 21:41
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Ventilation, as always, is key. Do it outside in a light breeze or something. This is a good idea regardless of what you're forging.
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Mar 29, 2012 22:04
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If you're going to be forging stainless use L-series stainless (eg: 314L, 316L). It's more expensive but the carbon content is tightly controlled, so it won't form the chrome-carbides that make regular stainless lose it's stainless properties when heated. It was developed because *welding* stainless heats it up high enough to destroy the stainless properties if carbon is present. Also, heating L-series it in a charcoal forge is a no-go. ductonius fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 01:56
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How can I buy small quantities of tinplate? Alternately, how difficult would it be to plate my own steel sheet/plate with tin? None of the big online metal suppliers stock it (that I've seen), and it seems basically impossible to buy in sub-1 ton volumes. The only other source I know of is tin cans, but stripping/flattening them would probably cause all kinds of damage and ugliness to the tin coating, and would only yield lil small pieces to boot. It seems like really neat stuff for food-safe/corrosion-resistant coldworking, and is supposed to solder together ridiculously incredibly easily, so I'd like to fart around with some (actually I want to make a Custom Flask with elaborate chased designs in the side-panels but lets pretend I have a better use for it). The alternative- stainless steel- is. Hrrm. I really don't want to think about trying to cold-work stainless steel sheet SO I WON'T
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Mar 30, 2012 19:30
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Found some tinplating stuff. These guys are local and have a couple different tinning options: http://www.caswellcanada.ca/shop/tin-plating/ The $40 Plug-N-Plate thing seems ideal for my purposes, because I don't intend to do a lot of tinning, I just want to experiment with it so I can try making food-safe things.
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Mar 30, 2012 23:28
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Found some tinplating stuff. These guys are local and have a couple different tinning options: http://www.caswellcanada.ca/shop/tin-plating/ To tinplate (without costing $40): Materials: 9V battery Some wire Something with tin on it, cleaned of lacquer and degreased. your piece of metal, cleaned of corrosion and degreased. a plastic or glass bowl some salt some water Procedure: put enough water in the bowl to well-cover your piece of metal. Add some salt. You just need a high conductivity, not a brine. Attach the - of the 9V to your metal with the wire. Attach the + of the 9V to your tin with your wire. Submerge your metal. Dip the tin thing in the water, but don't get your wire in there. If your wire is copper you'll be bronze-plating your metal. Note, tin will plate the wire that connects your metal piece, that's cool. Wait a bit. Pull everything out of the water and wash it well. Heat the piece to just above the melting point of tin for a nice shiny surface. If you want, you can do this with pennies as your metal and have bronze-plated pennies which are awesome and gold-looking. It's fun. Note: most "food safe" tin cans are tin-plated, then chromium-plated, then lacquer-coated. It's the lacquer that's foodsafe. The other stuff just keeps the steel from rusting if the can gets dented. babyeatingpsychopath fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 23:57
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Ambrose if you want to look into food safe you should probably look more into anodized toppings, they are generally quite inert and considered food safe; or RTV silicone dips (also considered food save, when fully reacted).
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Mar 31, 2012 01:09
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:To tinplate (without costing $40): Awesome, I know how electroplating works but for whatever reason I didn't think you'd be able to just use a tin anode and get results. I figured you'd need exotic tin salts and strange mordants and not just a big ol hunk of tin on a wire. I'll give it a shot with a loop of 97/3 tin/copper solder.
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Mar 31, 2012 01:43
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Awesome, I know how electroplating works but for whatever reason I didn't think you'd be able to just use a tin anode and get results. I figured you'd need exotic tin salts and strange mordants and not just a big ol hunk of tin on a wire. I'll give it a shot with a loop of 97/3 tin/copper solder. Use something better than a 9v. Like 4 AA cells. 9v have near as makes no difference no current capacity... Unless its one of those $12 lithium ones which are worth every penny in some applications!
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Mar 31, 2012 10:51
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An electronics wall adapter will do fine, right, if maybe plating a little slower depending on the voltage/amperage? I've got a couple of those I've already cannibalized from when I was farting around with oxyhydrogen generators and those won't cost People Money like batteries will. E: I don't know how you'd figure out which wire's positive or negative, though. Maybe just hook everything up with, say, a penny and some tin, and see what plates what and label the wires accordingly? Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Mar 31, 2012 |
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Mar 31, 2012 18:22
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Ambrose Burnside posted:An electronics wall adapter will do fine, right, if maybe plating a little slower depending on the voltage/amperage? I've got a couple of those I've already cannibalized from when I was farting around with oxyhydrogen generators and those won't cost People Money like batteries will. Voltmeter...
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Mar 31, 2012 22:12
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Well, yeah, that'd made sense.  Not that I have one, mind. I've been doing more nosing around and everything I've seen says there's two types of tin electroplating- alkaline, with sodium stannate, and acid, with tin sulphate. I'm not sure how 'a pinch of salt' fits in there. Will the tin react in some funky way with the sodium chloride and somehow get the chlorine out of there without releasing it into the air and by extension my lungs? oh god how did this get here i am not good with chemical
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Mar 31, 2012 23:10
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Well, yeah, that'd made sense. Oh dear! No that's not it at all. The salt is to increase the conductivity of the water, so that your wonderful electricity can flow through it (Pure distilled water is in fact non-conductive). Salt water is slightly basic with a PH of 7.5-8.4; but that's not actually what your going for here. When you charge water you split the H2O molecule into H2, and O. The freed single oxygen atom tends to bond to nearby metals, oxidizing them, at the other end the electric current encourages the oxygen to become free again leaving a metal that wants to share electrons (so it bonds to the other metal). So what happens is that the electric current dissolves one metal into an oxide of itself, saturating the water with the oxide; the other end then starts desaturating the water and allowing the metal to deoxidize upon it, coating itself in the process (this is why when you do copper plating the water turns green, and when you do iron plating it turns brown; it is full of dissolved oxides). (You also generate hydrogen and oxygen by splitting the H2O molecule- with high voltage/current or in a tightly enclosed space this can be an explosive hazard) Also: You have both Canadian tire, and Princess Auto at your disposal- get yourself a $5 multimeter.
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Mar 31, 2012 23:52
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This is exactly correct. If you want to encourage the tin dissolving, you could use a weak acid (vinegar, lemon juice, slightly more dilute muriatic) instead of salt. You only need about 1.25V in a well-ionized solution to dissociate water and get all the quality plating action. More voltage really just gets you more hydrogen/oxygen generation, and more current gets the plating done faster. That's why I recommended a 9V battery and not a car battery. The low current of the 9V means everything moves slowly enough that you don't have to worry about hydrogen explosions or anything. You can technically do this with a single alkaline AA cell, but it'd take forever to get anything useful done; roughly an hour to plate a penny with a noticeable layer of tin. But yah, absolutely get a $5 meter before you start electroplating.
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Apr 1, 2012 04:18
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Sponge! posted:It never is a big deal up to the point you have to explain to customs why you're bringing an anvil back, and then they have to go have a meeting in the hut to figure out what the import duty on an anvil is...) 2.9%  edit: If importing into the US from the vast majority of countries. Backno fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Apr 3, 2012 |
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Apr 3, 2012 05:24
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I've had a hair up my rear end to get a bowie knife for a very long time. To that end, I've just ordered a couple of D2 steel knife blanks. I chose D2 because I've carried a Benchmade 556 in D2 for about 5 years and it has been incredible throughout the whole time I've carried it. I've never made a knife before. Have I made a terrible mistake? My plan was to cut it out with a jigsaw and sharpen it, then temper it. I have several means of home tempering at my disposal, including a toaster oven, a small charcoal grill and a blowtorch that screws onto an ordinary propane bottle. I was hoping to get these knives to around 60-62 RC hardness. What is the easiest way to make this happen? I've got a couple books about knifemaking but they're far away from me at the moment and would like to make this happen as soon as I can. Give it to me straight, have I messed up completely with D2 instead of like 1095 or can a man with determination make this happen? All I want is an unreasonably large bowie knife.
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Apr 3, 2012 08:07
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Stalizard posted:I've had a hair up my rear end to get a bowie knife for a very long time. To that end, I've just ordered a couple of D2 steel knife blanks. I chose D2 because I've carried a Benchmade 556 in D2 for about 5 years and it has been incredible throughout the whole time I've carried it. I don't know about smithing D2, but as far as cutting it goes, that poo poo would bend at the slightest amount of heat, ate grinder wheels, and was generally brittle. Be careful with it. After hardening they will end up around 60-62 RC, that's just from their composition, but also will be brittle as glass. I no poo poo dropped a mold cavity of hardened D2 and it broke in half. E: oh my god i just saw the part about a jigsaw blade. I was changing cutter teeth on a 6 tooth face mill after like 0.15" of removal. poo poo will ruin anything that isn't carbide. Samuel L. Hacksaw fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Apr 3, 2012 |
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Apr 3, 2012 12:39
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I don`t see why you wouldn't ~be able~ to make a big-rear end knife out of a fancy alloy like D2, it's just really not ideal, especially if you're feeling the process out for the first time. Why the fixation of at least 60 RC? e: I've never worked with D2, but if it's as brittle as has been suggested then it's probably not ideal for a -long- knife, because the longer the blade is the springier it has to be to survive flexing and bending through normal use. The remedy to this, in a perfect world with a well-stocked workshop, would be welding the very hard alloy to form the blade edge to a softer, more durable back, but you're just doing stock-removal, not fairly advanced blacksmithing, soooooooo. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Apr 3, 2012 |
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Apr 3, 2012 18:20
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In The Complete Bladesmith, on page 24, Hrisoulas says of D-2:quote:D-2 steel is an air-hardening steel and hence may present a problem. On the other hand, it does not warp when quenched. It is very wear-resistant and somewhat red-hard and difficult to forge. I do not recommend it for the beginner, but try it if you wish. Since you are not intending to smith it at all, the forging difficulty might not be an issue, but the air-hardening may be when you attempt to give it a temper. Hardening requires 1800 to 2000 F and then you do not quench it but rather let it cool in air. You will not get this temperature over the whole knife unless you can rig some forced induction for your charcoal grill (this may or may not ruin your grill) or if your torch is a lot bigger than what I'm picturing (in theory propane can achieve a max temp of over 3600 F, but that is with massive airflow. In practice the flame from a typical household torch is far cooler, and it's also spot-heat that will be hard to spread evenly and control to get the entire thing up to an even orange glow). Use a magnet and when the entire thing is non-magnetic you'll know you've hit your mark. Tempering is 400 to 1000 F, meaning after hardening, you need to re-heat to at least 400 but no more than 1000 degrees to achieve various ratios of hardness to toughness. Personally I would start with an oven temper at maybe 500 degrees for the entire knife (to get it lower than glass-hard), and then use a hot torch to heat the spine and handle to between 700 and maybe 900 degrees. Do that heat quickly and do not allow the temper colors to spread into the blade too much. Your propane torch may or may not be up to the task: my concern is that by heating too slowly, you'll wind up tempering the entire blade including the edge instead of being able to soften just the spine with a rapid/heat and quench. My issue there for the last torch-temper would be cooling: ordinarily I'd quench as soon as the spine/blade colors were where I wanted them, but this is air-cooled steel so I'm not sure if oil quenching is OK. Probably it'd be fine. The key is that you don't want it to re-harden as it cools. I've no experience with the behavior of air-hardening steels when quenched after a temper, though, so maybe try to find a resource that discusses it. Also I expect this to ruin your jigsaw blade. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Apr 3, 2012 |
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Apr 3, 2012 19:41
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Leperflesh posted:Also I expect this to ruin your jigsaw blade.
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Apr 3, 2012 20:03
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Thanks for all the input. This is all part of my research, which I plan to do a lot more of before getting underway. I don't expect this to be an easy or fast process, and I want to take my time and wind up with at least a somewhat respectable end result. It's probably a bit too ambitious, given that I've never really worked with metal or ever made a knife, but that's never stopped me in the past. I'll be sure to keep you updated so everyone can laugh at my horrible failures!
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Apr 4, 2012 00:07
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I don't mean to be rude, but it kind of sounds like you're trying to cook a souffle when you've never so much as fried an egg before. Consider starting with a piece of mild steel barstock. Do some cutting and grinding and filing and get a feel for how your work turns into something vaguely knife-shaped. Yes, it'll be un-hardenable and you'll end up with basically a letter-opener... but if you look back in the thread, you'll see someone with pretty reasonable blacksmithing experience doing exactly that (with railroad spikes and rebar and other scrap like that) and his results are decent but not exactly mindblowing. (This is Slung Blade, starting around September '08 with his first railroad spike knife... around page 2 of the results of this link. Then check out some more in october 2010, around page 10.) Once you have mastered basic shaping, get yourself some scrap spring steel (I recommend buying a truck leaf spring from a scrap yard) and work with that. Annealed it'll be about as soft as mild steel, but once you have a blade you can then try some basic hardening and tempering methods. Again you'll probably not have perfect results but you'll be working with less expensive, more forgiving material. Finally you can try exotic air-hardening stuff and make the bowie knife you're dreaming of. Going straight for the really difficult project is a recipe for frustration and eventually abandonment of the project. Few people stick to a craft if their first efforts are frustrating expensive failures. It may be that you're an exception - in which case, I bid you good luck and we'll be here to answer your questions and stuff as you go along. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 00:14
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Yeah, I made a good 3-4 mild steel knives to varying stages of completion before taking a crack at a 4140 blade, and even -then- I ended up kind of giving up on it because Jesus God is anything with molybdenum frustrating to forge hot, and I bit off too much by trying to make a fuckoff-huge cleaver instead of a nice cooperative little pocketknife or something. You're not hot-forging anything, but a lot of it still applies. The first knife you make is gonna be ugly as sin, probably pretty rough and unfinished, and (if you tempered it) is probably gonna be either way too soft or it'll just snap the first time you experimentally bend it. First five are probably gonna be that way, in fact. Starting off with your dream project is always a terrible idea because you'll completely fail to do it justice in every way that matters.
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Apr 4, 2012 00:42
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This is all extremely logical, well though out, sound advice and I thank you for it. You are all extremely right, I have little to no idea what I'm doing and will probably mess it up. But hey, I have the bug and I'm looking forward to learning. I have not invested a great deal in the bar of steel and if I just make a mess of it all I can forget it ever happened. All I know is I'm doing a whole heap of research before I even touch the steel. It seems at this point that my best option for heat treating will be a bean can forge, I don't think it will be too cost prohibitive to put something together and at least see if it will come up to sufficient temperature with my propane torch. If it doesn't, I've found a couple of PDFs that I'm sure you guys have seen about how to build your own heat treating oven out of firebrick and ebay'd heating elements. The problem with which I am struggling now is profiling the blade. Not necessarily cutting out the pattern (I have abandoned the thought of a jigsaw) but just making it thinner at the bottom than it is at the top. My just-above-layman's knowledge suggests that I come up with some kind of jig to hold the blade in place relative to my bench grinder, while I go at it slowly, surely and crudely, stopping frequently to dunk the blade in water when it gets too hot to hold. I see people doing it freehand on belt grinders, but I don't trust myself that much. Am I entirely off base? Should I abandon the whole project until I can afford the hundreds of dollars it takes to buy a bench grinder? Or just talk to a knife maker on the internet and buy one? We report, you decide (even though I probably won't listen too hard)! Stalizard fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 06:06
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Stalizard posted:This is all extremely logical, well though out, sound advice and I thank you for it. You are all extremely right, I have little to no idea what I'm doing and will probably mess it up. But hey, I have the bug and I'm looking forward to learning. I have not invested a great deal in the bar of steel and if I just make a mess of it all I can forget it ever happened. All I know is I'm doing a whole heap of research before I even touch the steel. You can use sand paper if you want to do some polishing by hand, but you won't get far before the D2 eats it. E: In case you can't tell D2 is not really meant for hand working, it's hard as gently caress machining steel. Even when we had the right tools seeing D2 on the jobs list made the whole shop groan. Samuel L. Hacksaw fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 13:28
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You are going to want files. Files are super-hard, glass-hard, hard as gently caress steel (which means you have to be careful not to bang them against metal because they will chip and shatter readily). You will need to figure out your bulk stock removal first of course, but once you're done with that and you're trying to do smaller stock removal, your best bet at getting the shape you want (but at a huge cost in manual labor) is to clamp the blade to a block of wood right at the edge of the wood, and then work it with a good big straight-cut flat file. When filing, always push, never pull. This is why file handles are just jammed on to the point of the file: there's no need to fasten it better than that since you're only ever pushing. I have done quite a lot of filing on a couple of my blades, including some finer shaping work done after hardening. It is slow going but gives you by far the best control of the shape. The worst thing when making a blade is accidentally removing too much material - you cannot put it back so you are then forced to re-shape the entire blade to match the new deep cut. The best way to avoid accidentally removing too much material is to go slow and work by hand. I still think the air-hardening nature of D-2 is going to completely gently caress you over, though. It will be very difficult for you to anneal the metal to keep it from being as hard or harder than the tools you are trying to work it with. With normal tool steel you can anneal to get it soft by bringing it up to bright heat and then sticking it in a box of vermiculite (or whatever) so that it cools very slowly (like, for half an hour or more). However with this air-hardening stuff I am not sure that will work. I realize you've accepted our advice with good cheer which is great, but really your choice of stock metal is a huge obstacle. If it wasn't that expensive, then you really really should get a piece of stock that is easier to work with than D-2. Consider the sunk cost to be the price of ignorance. You can make an excellent bowie out of spring steel. Think about it this way: Bowie himself never laid hands on D-2 steel. If it was good enough for him, isn't it good enough for you? You'll save yourself a world of grief and raise the odds of producing a blade you like on your first effort from approximately 0% to perhaps 10%... while reducing the required effort by at least half, with the added advantage of not ruining your tools in the process.
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Apr 4, 2012 19:23
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Backno posted:2.9% How about if it was a gift? Do they weigh it and go by scrap value? 
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Apr 4, 2012 21:00
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olblue posted:My son is about to hit 17 and has wanted to be a smith for his entire grown up life - we are fortunate in a way as we live near Shotley Bridge which is a place in the UK that has a lot of history with iron and metal working and also was the birthplace of the Wilkinson Sword company after German immigrants moved here in the 1700s and took the secret of sword making with them, however there hasn't been a smith working (apart from farriers) for well over 50 years in the area. Spooky I live just around the corner from you. I can't really help much with your problem though. The closest to blacksmithing i've seen is up Tanfield railway but they kinda only do it as occasional demonstrations or when absolutely necessary. This may be helpful. http://www.nect.org.uk/heritage-skills-initiative There were a couple fellas at tanfield who were on this course. I'm not sure if they're still running it as they seemed a bit unsure if they'd continue it in the future. It's a thing i'd have been very interested in if i'd seen it before I decided on going to university.
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Apr 4, 2012 21:58
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I have just completed the forging/grinding of my first knife! I started with this:  And am currently at this:   I still need to build a hilt for it, but the blade is sharp enough to cut hairs off my face with, but not quite sharp enough to shave with, so I think I have it pretty sharp. Due to it's small size I hardened it using only a 'heat blade to red hot, quench, head blade to red hot, quench'. I've also oiled it for fear of it rusting. I suppose I could also soak it in vinegar to more evenly colour it, or go at the black spots with a dremel or wire brush... Any suggestions for further heat treatments? And what can I attempt to do better next time (well outside of pure develop your skills things like 'use less, more powerful, more precise hammer blows')? Linux Assassin fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Apr 5, 2012 |
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Apr 5, 2012 01:49
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Sponge! posted:How about if it was a gift? Do they weigh it and go by scrap value? You can slide in smaller quantities of stuff under a value that I forgot without paying customs. I got my welder from China that way. Over that amount you need a broker. I wanna say it was like $1500 or anything for resale.
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Apr 5, 2012 04:01
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