Blacksmithing Metalworking General

>>1032629
If you want free metal you need to ask some local fabricators if they have any cut stock lying around or cut rebar. Sometimes they'll let you have it. For practice go get a block of sculpey and roll into round or whatever you want to practice on then put it in the freezer over night. "frozen" sculpey behaves the same way as hot steel. You can work on your strikes and see how things will turn out before wasting any metal.

>>1032629
>free steel.
Steal parts off your neighbors' cars.

I'm lucky that I work at a fab shop and my boss lets us have whatever we want out of the drop pile.

I haven't started working any metal yet but my stepdad has an 80lb anvil and I'm saving up to build/buy a forge when I move into my own place again.

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>>1032629
I made this knife.
First project with metal i ever did

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>>1033156

with all those stress cracks, id be scared to hit anything with that.

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>>1033289
I think what you are seeing is the selfmade rust not bonding right

I used hydrogen peroxide to make it look rusted.

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>>1032629

My old boss had a forge that sat in a basement that was flooded for god knows how long. He gave it to me and I resurfaced it and replaced some parts. I am currently replacing the blower fan with an old vacuum motor but as a temporary measure I used an old shop vac to act as a blower fan. this project is pretty fun but my ultimate goal will be to see if I can get it up to snuff by spending as little money as possible. With that goal in mind it has taken me a long time to scrounge up usable parts and scrap to practice with.

A good place to get free scrap is construction sites that are in the Demolition phase (residences and small businesses, not big projects) because if you offer to haul their garbage away you can usually keep all the steel and iron to practice with. Also scrap tools if you are lucky, I have a small box full of broken wrenches that I will re purpose into knives when this project gets running full bore

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>>1033408

These are a pair of blacksmith tongs I made out of scrap rebar, the metal was garbage and I stressed it too much so they later failed, I also was lazy and used a bolt to secure them rather than a rivet. the point of making these was mostly to see if I could get my wood fire hot enough in my forge. I had some charcoal that I had made a long time ago but it burned so fast that I had to switch to wood, which took longer to heat the rebar up to working temperatures.

It has been way too hot this summer for me to be motivated to work on it so hopefully as fall hits and I finish the blower fan I will get back to it.

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>>1033409

Using small bolts to secure a tong is less useful than horseshit.
Just make a piece of steel small enough to fit in the hole and rivet it. That makes your tongs WAY more durable.
Got a new hammer from a blacksmiths meet up near my town today. Pic related. Can't try till monday because of noise regulations, but oh well. Really want to try it, first time I got myself a rounded one. Also its a forged one, all the ones I had till now were cast (but did work for what I did).


Also thinking of finally extending my barrel forge with a chimney of sorts. Think I'll get a used fume extractor hood, as used in kitchens.

My current railroad track anvil is in pretty bad shape though. I think I'll get a piece of harder steel and weld it onto the railroad track. Anybody think that might work?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Forging-a-Viking-Axe/ anyone ever tried this?

Hey guys,

Got a quick question for you. Not really completely metal working related but ... what got you into forging/metalworking?
Personally I got asked exactly that today, and I honestly can't remember. Though the fires ... fascinating.
Any cool stories to share?

i found link releated its a /K/ website with plans for weapons and other SHTF stuf

but this pdf is a very interesting book on how to start blacksmithing

it shows the basic tools you need and how you make them yourself

https://murdercube.com/files/Knifemaking/Basic%20Blacksmithing%20-%20Local%20materials.pdf

>>1034156
Yeah, its a massive amount of work, an easier way is often to cut down a timber axe into a bearded shape and lose a lot of weight out of the head. Then grind down the sides for a thinner profile.
I'm sure a more competent smith could do it faster than me though, I sank a ridiculous amount of time into my 3/4 size dane axe

>>1034298
Rural kid, had a fairly extensive set of mechanics tools borrowed from my father and sometimes fabrication was the only way of getting something done when you wanted something. If I'm honest, I'm probably a better carpenter than metalworker, though I've not had any training in either, just stuff my father and grandfather taught me.

>>1034298
8 years old was doing something with my friend "we need helmets!' I think we were being soldiers. We had this sheet tin and this big ass i beam in the yard. I took a hammer and made what i thought were the coolest fucking helmets ever. Soon flatten pipe swords came next followed by thicker flat pipes. we then moved and dad found me a section of rail and i dug a trench forge. Now i have a wooden forge and a 150 Pound anvil.
TL;DR Hit metal when i was a kid addicted now.

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I've posted in the knifemaking thread too, but this one's a tad more active. Basically took a piece of steel (10"x35mmx6mm) and I'm making my first knife, nice hefty one too. So far I've done a bit of grinding and drilling, and LOADS of filing. Done the steel pretty much completely, just waiting on the contact cement to do its thing on the wood grip before I peen and file the ends of the pins. Then I've gotta shape, sand, stain and coat the grip in the morning. But I am wondering about a few things? Tempering colours, generally a no-go on knife blades, but does it matter if they're just beyond the blade? Should I make the grind a little more steep to get a finer edge or stick with the bloody cleaver I've got? Also, D'you like my grinding setup?

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>>1034832
I've cleaned up the edge on this piece since the picture, just a fine file, moved onto dry then wet emery paper.

I am a simple man who get's really confused with all this chemistry and physics stuff. Can someone give me a real simple 101 on normalizing?

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>>1032629
hid money in mattress and then my house burned down

>>1035299
what

any advice for a diy blower i got the rest of the forge cast and i want something that looks better than a hair dryer ducked taped to a lawn hose.

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Complete beginner here, i have no tools or experience. I want to make a log dog. (pic)

About 40cm long and the points are 10 cm long.

What is a good and cheap material for this?

i dont have any projects to photo atm. even tho you should ask yourself where is a local spot for metal use your surrounding area. i would focus on which way are you planning to heat up your metal. since your novice to smithing i would look just start looking around. ex im in a large city an most of the time i could find a extra material that is not need off a work site. steel will be your best bet. even try cold forging with copper and brass . making spoonsn forks is are great way of great use to the hammer control. get use to the weight of the hammer before you even heat the metal.

>>1034697
got any pics of your dane axe?

>>1032629
Working on a wood axe right now. I typically just find junk metal laying around and then cast them into ingots to work with. Any propane foundry should get hot enough to melt iron and steel.

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In the process of making a chair. Nearly done now, just need to replace all the bolts with rivets and then apply loads of Hammerite. Need to get a sheepskin for it as well.

And what kind of steel are you after? You can get Rebar for very little money, or for free if you ask nicely. Building sites that are laying their foundations usually have piles of the stuff you might be able to get your hands on.
If you want something high carbon to play with, a car breaking yard or a scrapheap will have springs for not too much money and second hand markets generally have some old tools you can use.

>>1036194
Squirrel cage fan.

>>1032629
I have a steel bike frame and the mount that the rear tire and deraileur sits in is severely bent. Would it be expensive to get it repaired? Where should I go?

>>1035154

Metal changes microscopic structure as it heats and cools, it's more or less crystalline. there are 3 basic heat treatments; annealing, normalizing and quenching. annealing is done in an oven and very slowly brings temps down which allows the structure to reorganize as i cools, produces softer, more pliable metal, resistant to outright cracking, but easier to deform. quenching is dropping your hot metal into a comparitively cold liquid, essentially freezing that crystalline structure into place, creates a harder, more brittle metal, harder to deform, easier to crack. normalizing is basically splitting the difference, where your forge is just turned off and the metal left in to cool, or even just left out in room temp to cool, the effect is somewhere in between annealing and quenching

>>1038206
PIcs would help. Most bicycle frames aren't worth paying to fix. Show us WHAT is bent. "Severely" has no meaning without context.

>>1032629
Cheap metal: railroad spikes. They arent too bad to work with and they make some decent knives if they are quenched properly.

I am currently practicing my forge welding skills by welding 4 railroad spikes into 1 ingot and making that ingot into an axe. So far have 2 together.

>>1034298
I played runescape when I was young and thought it was cool

>>1036447
Well. For my decorative work (aka I forgot mothers day so I had to bs something in an hour) I got to any hardware store and get weldable steel. It's defenitley not good for knife making but its easy to bend and can be worked with little effort. To make the thing in the pic, all you would need is a blow torch and a flat surface. Hell, you can even do what I used to do when I was younger and build a hot fire and heat it up that way.