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I'm gonna do some forging in fire.


Rattlecan

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  • 1 month later...

The three on the left after heat treating and some finish work. My winter project will be to complete the finish work and fit handles.

The one on the right is a mild steel practice piece they had us do to get a couple of basics down. 

I might shine it up too just for fun, or maybe I'll leave it rough. Not sure about that yet.

Anyway, the whole thing was an awesome experience and a great time with my son.

He has ambitions of pursuing knife making as a hobby and perhaps even a vocation.

Knives finished.jpeg

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  • 3 months later...

Nice work and a great experience for your 67F0D7E1-E05C-45DD-82CC-E473AF570972.thumb.jpeg.0248d856d207f5fc89fe500e5893e2da.jpegson. I hope he remembers this 20 years or more from now. I was at Arlington National Cemetery several years ago and this marker caught my attention. Nothing says “badass” like Medal of Honor, Blacksmith, and Spanish-American War all in a row. 

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13 minutes ago, Rattlecan said:

Calling this one done. Handle epoxied on, finish sanded, and oiled. The oil really brings out the flame pattern.

I have some cherry and walnut scales, so the next one will probably be cherry.

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Do you have any idea how many hours are involved in this labor of love?

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All the hand forged stuff I made was function over form. I didn’t waste time on pretty, time was money. We had guys that would spend hours grinding and polishing their tongs. Most of them looked pretty but poor design and didn’t work very well.  What you made is entirely different. Once you have it done and looking pretty you probably won’t actually use it very much. If the steel is hard enough it should work quite well.

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Just now, Longjohn said:

All the hand forged stuff I made was function over form. I didn’t waste time on pretty, time was money. We had guys that would spend hours grinding and polishing their tongs. Most of them looked pretty but poor design and didn’t work very well.  What you made is entirely different. Once you have it done and looking pretty you probably won’t actually use it very much. If the steel is hard enough it should work quite well.

Yeah, it's hard alright. Sanding the little imperfections out of the steel was a real chore. 

It will cut, and shave.

 

DSCF2623.JPG

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  • 4 weeks later...

There are amateur telescope makers that make homemade aluminum parts for their inventive telescope mounts. making molds and using cut-up aluminum beverage cans for the raw material and employing a clever "furnace" made of steel cans!

They use two 5 gallon steel cans as their furnace. They take one can and cut a large V-shaped opening along about 1/4 of the top rim and drill lots of 1/2" holes across the bottom. They stand it upside down on the ground. The drill holes the same way in the bottom of the 2nd can and then stand it on top of the first can.

They fill the top can with charcoal and sit a steel "boat" in it, surrounded along the sides and bottom by charcoal, to hold the cut-up aluminum can chips - for which they've calculated how much weight of aluminum they need.

They light the charcoal and aim a small house fan at the V in the bottom can to pump air through the bottom can, up into the top can, and into the charcoal to heat it to higher than normal temperatures.

This all suffices to easily melt the aluminum.  The "slag" or whatever you call the stuff floating on top, if any (the beverage can label, etc. burns off), is skimmed off the top of the aluminum with virtually anything including cardboard.  The aluminum is then ready to be poured into a mold.

The mold is made in the traditional way with green sand or your choice or molding sand and molding box.  A mockup, usually wooden, mockup of the piece to be made in aluminum is used to shape the inside of the mold.

The liquid aluminum is very carefully poured into the mold and, after it cools, it is hacksawed or filed or run through a lathe to correct any errors in the mold into process.

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Before I realized the possibility of working my way through college, I planned to be a Draftsman and took two years of mechanical drawing in high school The teacher, Mr. Myers, realized that most of us in the class were academic types and had never had a shop class.  He wanted us to understand what our blueprints would be directing blue-collar workers to do.

So, each year we did at least once week of foundry work including liquid metal and molds and hammering copper, brass and steel, one week or more of electric arc welding, and at least one week of metal and wood lathe work.

It's amazed me that I've had to use each of those skills during my life - and I had the chance to tell and thank my teacher years later!

When I was about 50, we began keeping our 21' pleasure boat in a boatel next to an old house on the Chesapeake whose long yard had several boats up on blocks. "Who lives there?" I asked, "A Mr. Myers," was the reply.  I remembered my old mechanical drawing teacher had a house on the Chesapeake where he rented do-it-yourself boat storage.

I knocked on the door, he answered and recognized me immediately. He was in his mid-80's and we talked for a while over a couple beers. I mentioned his shop class lessons, how I had used them, and thanked him for it.  I felt great to see the old man's grin when I did that.  I'd stop in just to say hi every so often while we were using that boatel. He passed away a few years later.

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37 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

Before I realized the possibility of working my way through college, I planned to be a Draftsman and took two years of mechanical drawing in high school The teacher, Mr. Myers, realized that most of us in the class were academic types and had never had a shop class.  He wanted us to understand what our blueprints would be directing blue-collar workers to do.

So, each year we did at least once week of foundry work including liquid metal and molds and hammering copper, brass and steel, one week or more of electric arc welding, and at least one week of metal and wood lathe work.

It's amazed me that I've had to use each of those skills during my life - and I had the chance to tell and thank my teacher years later!

When I was about 50, we began keeping our 21' pleasure boat in a boatel next to an old house on the Chesapeake whose long yard had several boats up on blocks. "Who lives there?" I asked, "A Mr. Myers," was the reply.  I remembered my old mechanical drawing teacher had a house on the Chesapeake where he rented do-it-yourself boat storage.

I knocked on the door, he answered and recognized me immediately. He was in his mid-80's and we talked for a while over a couple beers. I mentioned his shop class lessons, how I had used them, and thanked him for it.  I felt great to see the old man's grin when I did that.  I'd stop in just to say hi every so often while we were using that boatel. He passed away a few years later.

I had the great fortune to attend a high school with a fantastic shop program. We had two fully equipped shops each for auto, electrical, drafting and machine shop. I chose machine shop as my major which automatically meant drafting as a minor. 

 The major was not chosen until the third year, so in years one and two, you got all four shops, two in each semester.

About twenty years after high school, I was at a small airport about three hours away with a cousin who was a flier. We were chatting up a couple of other fliers there, and I happened to mention where I was from. One guy said, hey, I used to teach at the high school there. I asked his name, as I didn't recognize him with the straw hat, sunglasses, and the extra twenty years.

 When he told me his name, the years dropped away, and I recognized him.

 I said, "hey, you were my grade nine electric shop teacher."

I doubt if he's still around, as another thirty years have passed since.

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