Blacksmith Beginnings: Lesson 2

1. Introduction: no welcome to blacksmith beginnings lesson to. If you haven't checked out less than one yet, I encourage you to do so as I've spoken a bit on safety in that lesson, and I will build on the techniques that I've demonstrated their in this lesson. One of the unique abilities of a blacksmith is that he can make its own tools. This allows him to make tools that best suits the way you works and fits the working is doing. For example, a bar still could be turned into a pair of tongs. Hammers and chisels require a bit more working knowledge but are still well within the skill set of a blacksmith. This listen will begin your foray into making tools. 2. Project and goals: for this class will be showing you how to make a bending fork. A bending fork is a tool that is used to make. Ben can be done either hot or cold. The fort needs to be a little bit more robust if you're doing gold work. The general shape of a bending fork is a length of steel with do or three problems, which come off at a right angle to the The one I will demonstrate today has two problems or times. I will be using a piece off 1/4 by one. Steel 12 to 14 inches long works well. Thicker stock can be used if you want a more robust pork, the skills you will be working on for this listen, grilling still cutting with a hand hacksaw more on busy, including convenience bending, upsetting into a right angle and again turning square in around. I've already demonstrated in less than one basic bending and going from square to ground using play, so I'm only going to cover the writing, bending with clay here 3. Right angle bending: Okay. Now I'm going to demonstrate how to forge a sharp corner 90 degrees in steel. I'm using plays, a substitute for steel. But clay is not the best substitute. I will demonstrate why, As I go along, you just come up and say I want a shirt. Bengal there, you're going to think, OK, I've got a short corner here and over. You look at it and this has come up a little bit, so you're not quite sure? Corner damn around the corner. Central line makes a good 90 degrees. The outside is curved in the inside has a little crease in it. That Greece is a point of weeks at some place where stresses will build up. So this is not a strong corner, nor is it a good 90 degrees on both the inside and outside. If you're going to make a good, strong 90 degree corner dark, start over the edge, gonna have 75 or 80 degrees initially and you need to build up some additional stock of its some additional still, in this corner. The method to do that is referred to is upset hit And here, like this. And this is why that does not act the same as click steel. When you're doing this, you want just here. So you heat. Just hear you isolate your movement in this corner, Clay. There's no easy way to isolate the movement like that. And still the equivalent is going to be eating here. Hammering here will constrain will be like being here. The reason you can see right there were starting to Greece in four minute cold shut. That's why you don't do this for money degrees. You do it from a bit of an angle, so you build up that inside corner. Once you've built up some still in that corner, then you're going to start hammering on the outside here to make your angle nice and sharp , both the inside and outside. As you do this, you're going to be spreading your still out a little bit. So you will on occasion, need to through this up burger hambor And if you behind that, you hammer and do that over the edge of the amble, strict it up. You can hammer into the corner from here. You can great this. You may need to straighten your other leg. This results and a sharp corner that has a little bit of curve on the inside to keep that from concentrating stress in that corner. This is a good, sharp, 90 degree bent. 4. Laying out for drilling and cutting: before we can make the cut for the tongues of our bending for we need to lay out that cut. To do this, we're going to need to take measure or major new place a straight edge in some way to mark this deal. This is soapstone. So stones common presently and popular because you say Nice break, Mark. Easy to see. This is also a mark that will stay on in the Forbes. You can also use a marker if you're steals rested or still has guilt on it. Not shiny. It can be harder to see. I like using a scribe for this myself. First thing to do since we want to equal legs, be to work very cut halfway across. I like this point to make my mark for help deep to cut it. This one. I'm going to go about two and 1/4 inches. If you go shorter, you wind up with the shorter legs that are close together. Go longer. You can't longer legs close together or sort of legs farther apart. You know those marks made Just line up your straight edge. Do those marks and it's great. You're wrong. If it's did a bit. Scribe. You wish to use soapstone? Same procedure on the instead of you can describe to make you work there is a marked made with soapstone. 5. Drilling steel: Before we start making our cut, I'm going to drill a hole at the bottom of the cut. Having a drilled hole. The bottom of a cut will prevent stresses from fracturing your tool at that point later for bending fort used hot. It's probably not a big deal for other tools. It will be. I've got a center punch, a vice or a clamp. Excuse me to hold still in place on my bench top. I'm going to be using a hand drill for this one, Although you can use a drill press if you have one. When you drill still a couple of things to consider. You should use a slower drill speed than you would for wood, and it is extremely helpful to have some sort of cutting lubricant on your drill bit. You can buy a commercial lubricant. You can use a light machine oil. I generally will dip the job it into lard before I start my whole. The first step will be at the end of your mark to make a dip it with a center punch at the end of our line. Center punch is going to be used to start the whole it prevents the job it from wandering around. There are techniques. If you're a little bit off in our drilling a large in full to get this precisely in place for this small of a whole, I'm something about 1/16 of an inch. Yeah, pretty much. If you make a mistake, you either punch a another div it or turn it over. Start fresh. You want to secure your stock so it doesn't move around on you with a nice sharp a little bit that in the debate and start really remember slightly sort speed and for wood, keep steady pressure on and just before you come out the other side, you'll want to relieve the pressure back up on the pressure a little bit. This is a little bit trickier to do with a hand drill, because you need to keep your whole perpendicular to the stock, but it can certainly be done 6. Cutting with a hacksaw: when getting with the hand ax so you can set up the blade to cut either on the push stroke or the pole stroke. I prefer to set it up on the push stroke, which means when I do the return stroke, which is true for either direction, you want to remove pressure from the Blake. This will increase the span life span of you believe notice. I did not start by pulling this all backwards. I started with push using like them as a guide again. This will increase the life span of your blade once you get your cut started, your other hand should go to the far end of the hacks offering. This will aid instability and make it easier to perform the cut. Also, you want to cut using the full length of the blade you paid for all the teeth. You might as well use all the teeth. I'm cutting slightly uphill. This allows the leading edge of the cut to follow the flying I scribed earlier. It becomes a little bit tedious to maintain your cut. If you don't want to try and brush the cut, this will make the blade hot. And that will also shorten the lifespan of your blade as you approach the end of the cut, which is where you build your whole you'll want to level the blade out so that you end the front and back of the cut in the well you drilled at the same time. 7. Forging on an anvil: first, I'm going to make convenience bend and get one time out of the way so I could work on the other one. I'm going to make this tying round following the same procedure I used in less than one getting a square shape and taking that to an octagon and then round. After I finished making this bending fork, I'm going to do one on what could be called a bench anvil. So it's just a block of steel. It is a little bit more difficult because of the way it moves around. Just study, not I'm going to have it just setting on the amble. I'm doing that to demonstrate. You don't have to have an anvil to do the work. Once I get this round, I'm going to straighten out the other leg and bend this one up so it's out of my way and I can take get around if you notice I'm working this without using tongs. Yeah, because I on occasion cool the far end of the work piece off and I can keep cool enough. I can hold it with my hand, get a good square shape, Then an octagon then refined the shaped around. Once I get this round, I'm going to straighten both legs so I can separate the prongs. Then I will start bending them up to create a fork vending fork on this one. I'm not going to spend a lot of time making a sharp corner, demonstrating different ways that this can be done. Sometimes you'll find that it's not completely obvious the most efficient way to work. I encourage you to try different techniques to find what works well with you investing the point of this time on the horn of the anvil and using that angle, look there to start my term. And by working over the square horn, it's easier to finish this shape and refined it the legs of this particular forker relatively long but our set closer together than the other one is going to turn out. At this point, I'm just refining the shape a little bit, straightening things up, and I'm going to call it good enough, and finally I will demonstrate the use of the bending fork 8. Forging on a "bench anvil": Now I'm going to show working on a bench ample, which is just this block of still that you see sitting on the Andel. The first step is still going to be a convenience. Been. Did you notice that the anvil moves around a bit? It would be a lot easier to do if the bench anvil was secured. There are a few different ways that it could be secured. But I'm doing this to demonstrate that you don't need to spend a lot of money on it and bull to get something that can work. Same procedures before too. Turn the prongs round, get it square, make that octagon and then round right. You should already notice that this is taking more time. The bench anvil. It is the block moving around. Take some of the energy of the hammer blow instead of it going into moving the work. Okay for this one instead of bending this time, when I'm done up out of the way, like I did the other one, I'm going to start putting it where it's going to ultimately go. That is been into the side. You'll notice when I do this that it's a little bit harder to get into the other leg. What you can't see on this is with the opening from my guest forward. It also becomes a little bit harder to It takes a little bit more working around to get the fork into the forge. I'm still not using tongs. I'm able to do that. Still, because I do get the killed in of the work into water to keep it at a temperature I can hold. Now we're working on the other leg. You can see I don't have quite as easy access hammering that. Once I get this round, I'm going to bend it off to the side, the same as I did the first leg. You hear things get a little bit trickier since I don't have a lot of weight. Had to figure out a different way to start this bend. I'm spending a little bit more time on this one to refine the shape than I did on the other one. Here. I'm cooling the end of the times down. You can see this isolates the heat where I'm going to be making my sharp bend. If you're working with a solid fuel forge it's much easier to heat just the area you want to work. You're working in a gas Ford's. You frequently will need to cool areas you don't want to move because they still moves most where its hottest. Now I'm making a sharp angle. Even though I didn't show quenching the ends of the times on this particular heat, I did do it. That is evidenced by the ends being cooler than the rest of the fork, getting a pretty decent shape here, and you can see where my kinds have. Ah, sharper angled in the one I did on the Anvil. They're also further apart and a little bit shorter because I'm satisfied with the angles just and refining the shape here. For that, I don't need to worry about cooling off the ends of the times. And when I finished this work up, I did heat some still and use this fort to bend that to demonstrate how a vending for quirks to demonstrate how the still moves more where it's hot. After I put a little curve in here, I turn it over and do a sharper bend 9. Final thoughts: Now that you have a pending fork, I encourage you to heat some still and try it out. Work on figuring out how close to the end you can ban where your fork likes to place the bend relative do It's Bronx. Having Georgia problems will limit you to fairly narrow stock. That's okay. And with the problem set far apart, you'll find that you will be able to get white so close to the end. Yeah, that's OK, because you're a blacksmith. You could make tools you're willing make. You could make the tools that will fit the work you're doing at the moment. Hopefully, by now you started to think about how this deal moves and what steps are needed to accomplish your vision. Also, what order the steps need to be performed in. Sometimes one step will be a lot easier if you started before you do another step and then come back and finish it later. As you learn, you will realize that there are many ways that you can create. Your Final Four seldom is one of these right. Sometimes one works better than the others. Be sure you upload a picture to the Project gallery and what for my next class