Just a few pictures to back up my last

post on bending.

 

Bending

Did alot of bending recently in the forge so i thought i would sort of detail

my process so i can remeber it later.

Memory isnt too good.

This process can be used over any shape of metal really, personally ive done it with round, square bar

box section and alot more.

1. You need to get an even across the area your going to be bending, its easy if you make sure its just the bending area that is hot. A tip if the area is too small is to clench it both sides down to the size you need.
2. Once its hot enough bring it out of the fire and give it a good brushing with a wire bursh to make sure its clean.
3. Place into a vice and make sure its extra tight, if it moves a little the bend will be off and not look right.
4. Take your bending tool and place it on the top of the bar, i personally use a large pair of adjustable pliers for my bending tool
5. Bend from here round in which way you want, it is quite a physically demanding task so be ready to pull hard.
6. Wire brush after because you will lose alot of metal or scale while bending.

I thought i would leave it with a couple of pictures of items i have bended with this exact method.

Part two of the Shoe Horn Guide

The first thing that you want to do is too make your point end into a leaf

a guide is coming very soon to show how to make leaves

that will detail how to do it.

After getting your leaf point on one side this walkthrough will show how to get it into

a more of a horseshoe shape.

 

1. Heat up the fishtail end first, get a good even heat acroos all of this end. You are going to be adding texture with a cross pein hammer across the flat of the anvil, this is commonly known as Cross Peining.
2. Striking at 90% using heavy blows texture the fish tail, using the cross pein will seperate the metal to each side, your looking to double this end. Make sure you have got this constant texture across this one side.
3. Using very light blows, tap the sides to keep it in line and straight.
4. Get a good heat across all this end again and place it in the step down on the end of the anvil ear the bick, using the cross pein again hammer it into the gap making a U shape with the metal. Make sure to have the untextured side upwards and the textured side into the gap.
5. Now you want to bring across a wooden block, find a U shape in the wood, heat up the metal and now using a ball pein hammer strike the untextured side into the U shape giving the same shape across your metal. You should end up with a really good curve in the metal.

 This is what yours should be looking like.

1. Now onto the leaf side, you want to clench the curve side as your done with that side and it will make for easier handling. Heat up the section below the round neck of the leaf, you want to hammer this down into a octagon.
2. Strike it on the corners, striking in blows of three along the corner then changing to the next corner. Try and keep your blows to a similar strength so it looks similar all the way round.
3. At this point it should run square up to your octagon section then into a section of round for the neck.
4. About 100mm down from the leaf you want to mark off, heat up that section then strike it over the end of the anvil giving a relative 90 degree bend in the metal. It is essentail you make this first bend because later on it will be incredibley difficult to make this bend.
5. Now heat the entire bent section and place voer the end of the bick, using glancing blows acroos the metal start to tap it into a curve, letting the bick do the work.
6. At this point it should be starting to resemble a circle, keep glancing it across the bick till it makes a full circle, straighten it out and make sure your happy with the circle.
7. Now you want to do the tricky bit of this piece, your going to tap the leaf very gentley round so it is pointing down towards the curved end. Make sure your blows are gnetle so you dont end up putting a new bend in it.
8. If you have followed these steps your should have got yourself a Shoehorn, they make great gifts for your nan im told.

 The top picture is how yours should be looking about now.

The second was my first attempt at it, as you can see i made a few mistakes, the

biggest being i ran to help another blacksmith and left my leaf in the fire

and it burned off.

This morning during session we had a small warm up

exercise to make a woodcutting tool to put in a vice, Im going to do a 

five step quick guide to making it.

1. First off you need a piece of 16 mm bar about 150 mm long, it can be either square or round but it is much easier with square. 
2. Using the Hardy hole as a guide mark off along the bottom of the anvil, draw down the bar at this point, keep checking the sides to keep it square more for style than anything else
3. Once you have done this clench then heat the other end of the bar, over the edge of the anvil hammer it down on both sides, spreading the bar into a sort of fish tail shape.
4. Keep drawing down this end till it is quite thin on the end, at this point you want to get a heat across the fish tail side of bar, bring out of the fire and straight into the bosh and clench it to stregthen it.
5. To finish file the top of the fish tail into a shape point to make it eaiser to splitting the metal.

What it should look like when its finished.

Shoe Horn

We were given the task today of making a shoe horn

out of a peice of 300mm of 25 by 6 bar.

I will be doing this guide in two parts.

Part 1

1. Heat up the bar and offset it at 45 degrees to a long point, the materail thickeness will constantly change so constantly take it back in with work on the sides. Use the edge of the flat of the anvil so not to hammer the corner of the hammer into the anvil.
2. Clench the point so you dont burn it off during the next stage, using the end of the bick knock the neck of the point down.
3. Using the large end of the bick draw down the neck more constantly hitting the bar on the top on three sides to create a section of round, this may cause bends so keep placing on the flat of the anvil and knocking straight.
4. Below the round section place on the large peices of the bick and start hammering down to draw out the bar. Make sure to keep the bar square at this point.
5. Hammer it down evenly not to create a ditch in the bar making it alot weaker.
6. The easiest way to draw down a bar is to heat sections and draw it down section by section instead of one long piece, a long heat is very difficult to keep and even more difficult to keep even.
7. After hammering it down around half way begin to work on the semi circle on the opposite side, first start with a half hexagonal shape on the end by hitting the hammer at a 45% degree angle at the end of the flat pieces.
8. While hammering it down it will keep fattening up the metal so be sure to keep putting it on the flat of the anvil and flattening it back up.
9. Hammer the sides on the very end to start building a more cicrle shape.
10. Now begin to taper up the rest of the bar to curve, dont reduce the bar work up to the curve. 

At this point you want to be working at about 25mm.By this point it should be coming together, this is when you should start working on the end of the point to make it up into a leaf (Check following guides for good leaf techinques) 

 The first picture is the piece that it should look like,

the following three are how mine progressed on.

Part 2 coming soon.

Building a fire

Well this is the first post, im hoping to start putting alot more pictures into this and

maybe some videos of the lectures explaining processes.

Building a fire

Building a fire as its commonly known or starting a forge is the more classic way to get a 

forge going, this is abit of a new custom to me so i thought i would put this together

to remind myself the steps and tips ive been told from people.

1. The first step to lighting a fire is to check that the forge is ready, checking that the back bosh is full of water is a must have.
2. Second is to clean the fire out, using the poker shove it down and look for the klinker. The klinker is a large peice of materail made up of crap that has come off metal before, having one of these at the bottom of your forge really slows down the flow of air and can lead to alot of matenice cost. Once you have the poker underneath the klinker push upwards and put it in a bin away from the forge.
3. The third step is so push your coke (Coke is cooked coal) out of the way of the tue iron, you want to get push all the coke out to make a dome infront of the tue iron about the size of half a football.
4. Next you need to get the materals together for lighting, you need wood, paper and a lighter. Break the wood into large pieces and tiny thin peices.
5. Roll the paper up into a mushroom shape leaving a piece hanging out to light
6. Light the paper and shove it down next to the tue iron, put the thin peices of wood around it first then follow up with the thick pieces
7. As the big pieces catch light push the coke in around the fire, making sure not to smother it to soon
8. A tip i was told is as soon after moving it in to pick up handfuls of coke and put it on top of the fire to make it catch it easy
9. As soon as you can see a few of these peices of coke beginning to heat up bring in more coke to build a mount ontop
10. Stand back now as the remaining coke heats up and your ready to go.

Quick Tips

• Turn the pump on lightly around stage nine put only a little to help the coke get really hot quick
• On stage 3 a quick and easy way to clean out quick is to turn on the air but not for too long because it blows coke and dust everywhere
• The main idea is to let the fire build gradually, try not to throw everything on too soon

 If you listen to all of these steps and tips then you should have a pretty good

fire ready for forging.

A picture from a book i have explaining most points of the forge.