Moving up in the world

Was looking around the internet as i do

and i have only recently found that

i am a part of one of my lecturers

Kate Williams blog so i thought i would return the 

favour.

 

For anyone intrested in some really

cool bits of jewellary or the thoughts of a 

mad woman.

 

 http://kswjewellery.typepad.com/kswjewellery/

Easter Hoildays

As i said before its easter hoildays

as im posting this so three weeks off.

Went round the forge eariler to get some

tools and it was quite a sad affair with

no students in the forge.

Managed to find one student, Sian a 

second year BA was working for most of the day

all on her lonesome. Now thats some 

real dedication to the skills.

Heres that video of Will gas cutting

i mentioned.

Posts will few and far for the next

three weeks, i might put some in when i go

back to Ridgeway Forge never do know.

If not well come back in three weeks 

for the ramblings will continue.

 

Fabrication Friday

Today was our last day of Fabrication

workshop before the easter hoildays.

Found myself with the camera out again 

documenting people as they were up to 

little bits and bobs

James was as usual found in the grinding

bay, i do wonder whether he prefers

grinding to blacksmithing?

The Captain was as always hard at work

putting wheels on his tool box and gas welding up

his exhaust for his car.

Will get some nice pictures of the tool box when its done.

Hard at work on his anvil,

Will did some gas cutting which i managed to get

a short video of. Some poor cutting but

the torch had been put on its last 

legs.

And this is what i was upto all day, 

just doing a few nice spot welds and

polishing it up. My mum has been nagging me for

weeks to make her one so finally got round to 

making it.

POWER HAMMER TIME

As i showed you before we got on the 

Massey this week and it has been all out

on the power hammer.

Got a few videos of the team on the Massey

showing abit of nice skills then me and the

Captain using some tooling on it.

And the final video is me on the

Blacker thought id finally try it.

 

Induction into the Massey

Today we got inducted into the Massey 

power hammer, a beutifiul piece of kit.

Rare as it is i have a video of me on the power hammer

today

Bit poor video because of Joe inexperince

with my camera but a nice video all the same.

Yet more power hammers

After my first video on a crazy power

hammer, i keep getting new videos

every week of mad stuff on youtube.

Here are two of my faveriotes

I know its is techincally not a power

hammer its a dead drop hammer but no one can

denie that isnt awesome.

And the second this crazy big hammer,

i dont know what the guy is making but

rather him than me with his fingers that 

close to those jaws.

Captains new tool box

Fabrication was abit slow this week

so i inleasted my help to the captain

as he is makes himself a new tool box.

 It was mostly just wrapping sheet metal

around an existing frame Captain had found

but it is coming together quite nicely.

Finished pictures coming next friday.

Case Hardening

To go quite nicely with my scrolling plyer

guide i thought i would bang up a

demostration we got a while ago on

Case Hardening steel.

Mild steel has a carbon content of about 0.15 to

0.13 if you need to raise that on tools 

you can add a carbon rich powder like casenite

to the metal which can send the carbon

content up to 1.2 to 1.4

In the old days to apply a carbon skin to metal, bars were

packed into clay and stuffed with carbon rich powder,

usually made up of ground down bone and horse hooves.

They were baked for around a week to 

become really hard.

This process did leave large blisters on the surface

of the metal where the carbon powder was thicker,

this process lead to the carbon rich steel

being called Blister steel.

In this case we will just be applying to the

scrolling plyer nib ends.

1. heat the nib end of your scrolling plyers right up to an orange heat
2. apply the caseite evenly across all of the heated area
3. place back in the fire to melt over the surface
4. repeat two or three times to get a good surface over the tongs
5. Finally quench them off, there should be a great crack to show you have done it properly.

Do all this correct

and you should have steel tougher than

Adrian himself

Scrolling Plyers

This week we were tasked to make up a set

of scrolling plyers.

Here is a short guide to making them.

1. Start with two sections of 20 by 12 mm stock.
2. The first part is to a 30 mm set down on the edge of the anvil, hammer half on half off and set it down till it is a square section on the end
3. Set it down on a 45 degree angle much the same as any other tongs
4. Now take it down on this angle to about 9 or 8 mm materail thickness, its only very small.
5. For the hinge plate leave about 30mm of materail to make it up, we will be using the bick to to put a full radious into the back of the hinge plate. Hammer half on half off to get a good set down into the back of the hinge plate.
6. We will be using the power hammer to draw out the reins, im hoping to have a video on start up and good power hammer techinque by end of next week.
7. And finally for the hinge plate we will be drilling it so that no metal is lost through punching it.

After that simple rivet up and you have yourself a nice

pair of scrolling plyers.

 This was the pair i made before i had this demostration,

sort of made it up as i went, they work fine just look

fuck ugly.

Anvil Season

This week in the fabrication shop

people were given the chance to start cutting 

up rail way iron and start makign themselves some

little anvils for at home.

Ive got pictures of a few anvils to

show off.

 The first one we have is the Tong king himselves anvil,

he got great shape on the gas cutter and the bick is coming

together fine i think this one will turn out to be quite

good with alot more grinding and welding.

Next up is the Student of the Anvil, 

I got a few videos of him gas cutting to show the 

techinques of how to get it started.

Looking alright just a very

short bick on this one.

Last but no where near the least we have

Joe's anvil.

 The first to be finished out of the group,

true he had alot of the work done for him because

he took someones from last year they didnt

finish but still a mighty fine looking anvil.

I didn't do one myself as ive got a little

anvil at home i got from a school so would be

a waste of the steel to bang one up.

 Might do some gas cutting soon though,

 looked alot of fun

Will on the Linisher

A quick video of will on the linisher,

dont know if i spelt that right or not.

Been a little slack on here latley been doing 

some sketchbook work and not so much tech stuff.

But not to dispair there will be a few posts coming 

near the end of the week

More crazy power hammers

was looking around the web and 

i found a video of one of these tiny 25lb

power hammers.

As you can see from the video it might be 

small but it is no where near useless

Question Time

Another one here for the fans just

answering some questions.

Michealkeaton66 sent me a lovley email

asking to see Adrian so...

 This is Adrian Legge, the cheif of

our little blacksmithing tribe.

Another queston i kinda want to answer

because im a bit of a show off like that is

from BSforlife asking to see my hammers.

 This is my faveriote hammer that i always go to,

its a standard 2 pound ball pein hammer that i

got given by my dad as soon as i started smithing.

Love this hammer.

 This are my little hammers, wont lie they are the

least used of the bunch because there only

really there for when i need a smaller face.

The one up the center i often use for fire welding

because its so light you cant really squash the metal.

 This is Alison, my 4 pound club hammer.

I use this for driving punches and just

slapping bigger stock.

 This is my little rawhide mallet, Thor.

I bought this new when i first started smithing

and its took so some serious wear but still a 

real buety to use.

 These are a few of my other hammers, i have been

given these over my time as a smith sort of use them

every now and again for very obsecure tasks.

Got a fair few more than this at my house but

post would be far too long taking pictures of them.

So these are the ones in my tool box.

Thanks for the fan mail people,

if anyone else wants to send in any questions 

my email is Cakegod700@gmail.com.

Il try and answer my best.

Making a Round Punch

As a smithing striking exercise we

first made a round punch.

Its a very simple process you just need to 

get yourself a nice piece of tool steel something 

like EN9.

The trouble with using a tool steel with

a high carbon, is you cant get it above

a low yellow colour. 

1. The first point to do using the striker is to knock it down into a long square taper.
2. Using a flatter knock it down into a smooth taper, then changing to the striker again knock off the corers making it down into an octagon.
3. Using the hand hammer, knock the corners off again then again to make it down in a smooth surface all the way round.
4. Now work on the other end and bull nose it off to make it nice and smooth for punching.
5. Now your done with the punch, get it nice and hot then bring it out and have it a friend rotate it while bring the rasp up and down of it to give really smooth sides.