me and a freind are starting blacksmithing and the first thing

Don't start with a hammer. That's way above you since you are just starting out. Make some simpler stuff like wall hooks to practice your basic skill. After that the first tool you are going to want to try and make are a pair of tongs, with twist tongs being the easiest.

>>1153252
Tons of youtube vids i have seen and it seems you never have too many tongs

I'm not very skilled myself but I can still offer some knowledge. First, you should always start with a blueprint of the shape and dimensions, then make sure you have a good tool steel, I don't know if you would want to temper a hammer but if you do, keep it at a bright cherry red at least so the temper isn't too brittle but still allows it to hold up against a solid blow. Beginners may make the mistake of blowing too much air and making burning coals fly everywhere, so remember that a large volume of air moving at a slow speed trumps a little air blowing faster. Be sure that you are prepared to finish it at a steady and fast pace, if you heat steel to a high temperature and let it cool off too much then re-heat it again the metal will start to lose carbon after about seven or eight times. Try as best as you can to get both sides of the head flat and level so you don't get any uneven blows or hit metal off the anvil. I hope this helps, if you really want to get in to smithing I recommend a book by the name of "The Art of Blacksmithing" By Alex W. Bealer. It taught me a very large portion of what I know about welding and coal forging, as well as the history of blacksmithing.

>>1153450
Tl;dr Just keep the steel hot and workable while keeping your diagram in mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XO1rE7v44g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdEhjRpPSlY

>>1153450
> I don't know if you would want to temper a hammer but if you do
You want to temper a hammer because you first need to quench a hammer to get it hard, tempering the hammer just reduces the hardness so that it isn't likely to shatter.
>keep it at a bright cherry red at least so the temper isn't too brittle but still allows it to hold up against a solid blow.
Heating something up to cherry red would draw out all the temper and you're back to where you started.

>>1153739
Thanks for the info

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>>1153251
I went for a rail spike knife for my first blacksmithing attempt.
Work in progress

I've been thinking of building my forge using half a plastic drum as my general shape and out of river clay, so here's my question: Is any old clay suitable? What about Bentonite? I can get a lot of Bentonite but it looks really brittle and nasty.

Also what's your refractory material?

Also thinking of DIYing a railroad track anvil. How hard do these suckers need to be? Will case hardening do the trick for the application?

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>>1153958
Nice, these are my first RR spikes. I have made 4 other knives.

>>1154123
Needs annealing followed by carburization

heat up the metal to keep it workable
Hit it until you get the desired shape

>>1154123
Railroad track should be plenty hard already. Strap it to an old stump and go to poundtown on it.

>>1153284

You. Can. Never. Have. Enough. Tongs.

>>1154926

I tried to do something similar, but the metal started to shear out. Any idea why that could've happened? Can't post a picture right now because I'm a few thousand kilometers away, but it's basically looking like torn fabric.

>>1155328

>>1154123

Railroad rail makes a decent starting anvil, but as you progress in skill, if you keep at the hobby you'll likely want a proper anvil. Be wary of anvil shaped objects. Harbor Freight and similar companies sell things that look like anvils and may be advertised as anvils but they're not carbon steel, and are not hardened or tempered. Just run of the mill mild steel and will fare no better than the railroad rails previously mentioned. A decent anvil, used is typically going to run $3.50 - $5.00 a pound. They get pricey quick as they're getting rarer and rarer. Use the railroad rail for now. It'll hold up to what you'll be starting out with, and if you end up not sticking with the hobby, you'll be out less. I personally used a corner section of what looked to be an incinerator box or something. Very heavy, about 100lbs @ 1" thick plate steel. Mild not high carbon, and certainly not hardened so it did soak up alot of marks from the steel and hammer. Did well for the first year I had it though all things considered.

>>1155145
Why would you anneal the track? It's already going to be too soft for a proper anvil. I'm calling shinanagins.

What do you guys think of the Alec Steele anvils? They seem like a comparatively cheap option and he seems to know what he's doing.

>>1156152

I left my piece of track untreated, then we milled off the top to get it more or less straight.
Now it isn't straight anymore because of small little valleys in the steel.
Hardening might have helped. I'm actually considering to weld a harder steel place on top of it.

>>1157366
Those are mainly for striking with sledge's, which means they aren't really hardened. That way if you get a mis-hit they won't chip and send pieces of steel flying. You should g9 to your nearest scrap yard and try to find a large chunk of steel, or a length of rail road track.

>>1157372
Heat treating a rail like what you mentioned will only make it so much harder. However, welding a carbon steel plate to the top of it, and then doing a heat treat on it will work pretty much like a proper anvil. Heat treating that much surface evenly might be tricky, you'd need a pretty big forge, or forced air bonfire, and some kind of rig to pull it out of the fire, but... do able, and should yield a pretty nice small anvil.

>>1157825
What you're suggesting, are also not hardened options. The Steele blocks atleast have a hardie hole in them. And not a terrible price for what they are. Also might mention, around here scrap companies charge 25 cents a pound for steel. Likely to be similar elsewhere. So you're still talkin somewhere in the realm of 25 bucks for a soft anvil like object.

>>1157864
A beginner can do without a hardy hole. I know it is a bonus, but for £120 plus shipping ( really would climb the price if Anon is outside of the UK) their money could be better spent/saved. Assuming Anon is in the USA, it would cost him $207 with shipping. I think the best option for Anon is to use a quarter of that money at the scrapyard on an anvil-like object, and save the rest up to buy a real anvil.

>>1157901
Yeah, I'm going to agree with you.

>>1154119
Try making your own thread bud. sounds like an Interesting idea though

>>1153450
Pretty much nonsense except the book recommendation. (Which should be re-read)

>>1157861
Thats why you carburize it, get carbon in that steel, son

>>1153958
>>1154926
I see a lot of people starting out with rail road spike knives, is there a certain reason for it?

>>1156064
>but it's basically looking like torn fabric.

sounds like you have antique wrought, not steel.

shame. wrought is a far more valuable material, if you'd known and could save it till you had the skill for it.

As a general note, for everyone, Railroad spikes are useless for knives. even the "high carbon" type only have 0.3% carbon by law (defined by the safety body for railroads in the US) which is insufficient to harden.

if you're going to learn bladesmithing, dont dick about with mystery metal, adding uncertainty into your work by not knowing what alloy you have. in the US, go to the New Jersey Steel Baron, buy yourself fresh bar stock of 1084, so you know exactly what you're working with.

there are *so* many variables - heating, preheat, soak, eutectic phase shifts, quench, quench speed, temper duration, tempering heat, the last thing you want to do is even more variables by using a steel you dont know the composition of.

>>1160311
>I see a lot of people starting out with rail road spike knives, is there a certain reason for it?

fudd-lore.

people get told about RR spike knives, they make spike knives. more people get into it, they see the previous, and repeat.

rinse and repeat, again and again.

the reality, as I just said here >>1160346 is that RR spikes are nearly useless for knives. for hardening of steel to any decent degree, you need at least 0.4% carbon, and realistically, 0.5%. most good blades are made from 0.6% (ie, 5160 spec steel - very good for swords, kukuri, machetes, etc.), or higher contents - 0.7% steels like C70 and EN42 in europe, 0.84%, 1084 in the US (A brilliant steel for a beginner, as the heat-treat is simple), 0.9% or higher in tool steels like O1, D2, and 1090.

there's an awful habit of amateurs to bang blades out of scrap metal they salvaged from any old place, with no idea of what it is. its a really bad habit, and one that a lot of them never learn not to repeat.
scrap steels do have a place in crafting, but not for beginners.

>>1160311
Its good to learn on. They vary in purity so I wouldn't really rely on it to make anything worth selling, but fun to practice with. The best part is you can find them on the side of tracks. Be careful though, some railroads don't like you taking them since they scrap them, but if you see someone out working, just ask. Most of the time they don't mind you taking a couple.

Don't let me discourage you from trying, but imo heat-treating the railroad track will work better than welding a tool-steel plate to it.

From what I've read, all the old anvils with cast iron bodies and tool-steel face plate were made by heating tool steel to forge welding temperature in a mold then casting iron into it. Tool steels generally don't do well in fusion welding because of all the alloying additions. Even if if you weld it to the track, the HAZ of that much welding will be massive and probably soften the plate considerably.

Can't remember the book I read it in, but it suggested for rail-road track to heat it to bright red then dunk in large vat of water while moving it up in down to agitate. Then temper it by putting bottom part in bed of coals with some refractory covering the coals so you get an even straw-colored temper on the face (need to have sanded it first).

>>1161590
Yeah, I agree here. Welding a plate onto the track would be pretty iffy, and really you'd still not be as well off as a proper anvil. Just use the track as is, when it gets all dinged up, grind down the dings, or toss it in the scrap and start with another piece. Blacksmithing is not an easy hobby or trade, so getting started cheap is a good thing. It would be much more painful to really shell out for it and go to all this trouble and find out you don't like getting burned.

Been working on a pair of twist tongs. Drew out the reins, gotta taper the ends and knock the corners off, then I will be able to isolate the bit and twist it.

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>>1153251
File knife

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>>1164013
DIY forge/heat treatment thingy

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>>1164016
About to fire up and harden something (poorly at best, but I did attempt a differential hardening which is tough).

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>>1164049
moar file knives

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>>1164051
weeaboo shit

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>>1164053
ghetto stock removal

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>>1164057
newb shit, had no idea what i was doing, just dicking around.

>>1154123
Long post warning---
My opinions on railroad track anvils:
For blacksmithing they are not all that useful to be honest, main reason being that they are too light, a good blacksmith anvil need to have some weight to it, and bolting it down on a solid block of wood will only help so much.
That being said, if you are starting out and just need something cheap to use as an anvil, well it's better than nothing. Try to grind (or if possible, mill) the top as flat as you can.
As for heat treating the track; yes it will make for a better anvil, but I still advise against it until you've been doing blacksmithing for some time and have had the chance to learn more about heat treating. Hardening and tempering a workpiece the size of even a small anvil takes skill and experience, without it you run the risk of hardening it in a way that can cause the steel crack and fracture. In the worst case scenario it can partially shatter while you are hammering on it and send sharp chips of steel flying. I have seen first hand what those can do to flesh.
Welding a piece of tool steel to railroad track is also a pretty bad idea, but something that works well is using a stick welder with hardfacing build-up electrodes. Build a 1-1,5cm layer of weld on the surface of the railroad track and then mill it flat. Works like a charm if you can lay down decent weld.
Railroad track anvils when properly made can be good for light metal work, like shaping silver and red metals, or very small scale steel work, but they are just too light and flimsy for serious blacksmithing.

>>1164156
Seems like putting the railroad track in a big block of concrete and gravel would be cheap and sturdy. I've seen people do that with sledgehammer head anvils, which are an even smaller and less sturdy alternative, mostly for very small work.

>>1164165
It would probably work just fine, but as you said yourself, it would only really be good for small work.

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how hard would it be to make a fork/silverware and not those gay ass 2 prong wires, like a legit fork like pic related?

>>1165876
Unless you want the taste of rust in your mouth you will want to use stainless steel.

>>1165888
thats not what I asked

>>1165888
not entirely true. High carbon utensils exist and do not necessarily taste of rust. Several of my chef knives are high carbon and not ss. If you're going to forge some hi carbon into flatware, you have to be careful of how you treat the surface, certainly do not quench in burnt motor oil. That probably would taste pretty bad and be toxic.

>>1165876
now, how hard would it be to make pic related? Pretty difficult. Likely the only way you could do the forks, is if you didn't mind forging them out into flat little shovel shapes, and then cutting the tines out with a band saw and then filing up the edges square.

>>1166395
I could forge weld the 4 tines together and then forge weld that onto the fork stem. Wouldn't even be that hard.

>>1160349
God damn what is with you anti-scrap crusaders; how is practicing your striking and heating on scrap a bad idea? Christ sake as long as they don't try to sell the stuff, what the hell is the issue? Did some mystery steel rape your whole family or something? Give me a damn break...

>>1165888
Yeah, surely one couldn't say, force a patina to prevent further corroaion. That would never work...

>>1166437
I would make a spoon and hot cut the tines on a hardy, but go ahead and work too hard...