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.