Practice work - Herb cutter

Hi All,

I were looking for a forging project, which did not demand too special raw materials and would be easy enough for a beginner / novice. I actually had some rusty mystery-steel laying around the yard and I thought that maybe something made from that. The piece itself was found half buried in the grass lawn I have, and I used it to stirr stuff in the barrel while burning some garden rubbish. But as it was definately "Black iron", I thought to give it a go, just not use it for anything too critical, like knives etc...

So, this is how it goes:

1. Get the forge out.
1. I actually had to mend the front wheels as one of them dropped of. They were actually fastened only with self drilling screws to 0.8mm sheet. The bottom plane of the forge is actually a layer of something similar to urethane and it has a steel sheet on both sides. I drilled some holes through and put M6 bolts and washers, and now the forge is much more solid.
2. Pile kindling on the hearth and light the forge up.
1.  Start with wooden charcoal and firewood and birch bark. Then when the burning is strong, advance for rock-coal / coke.
3. Build a temporary base for the anvil.
4. Carry the anvil for the built base
5. Carry the real anvilbase out and position it near the forge and make sure its not flimsy.
6. Move the anvil to the right base.
7. Get the iron to the forge and start the oscillating phase of heating and hammering.

Raw material:

The flat stock, approx 3x30mm

Quench:

plain water

Start by hammering a dent to one side and start drawing the rest to a length

 Proper heat is required, plain fire does nothing for iron.

Sadly I have no pictures of the actual forging process, but it is more or less like this:

1. Make the handle
1. Draw the handle out, make it round or square based on your preference. I made square and dressed the corners a bit.
2. Turn the handle around.
1. Heat the handle from the center
1. If this is difficult, you can heat bigger area and cool the ends of with the quench. If you need to cool some parts, you need to act fast as the heat dies quick anyway.
2. Good rule of thumb is that set your vise and other tools to match the size of the workpiece before the heat, then you don't lose time when adjusting the tools. 
2. While the handle is hot from the center, you can put a twist to it.
1. Attach the workpiece to a vise and grip the end of the handle with a proper monkey wrench / vise grip / etc and twist the iron.
2. Remember, you can re-heat and correct this to some extent if needed.
3. Often the workpiece also bends in addition of twisting, this is easy to correct with a hammer and more thorough heat.  
1. Taper the end of the handle
1. If there's excess on the handle, remove what you must.
2. Hot cut hardy tool is good for this.
2. Make the end point nice.
3. You can make a curl or even a scroll to the end, this makes the use of the cutter easier as it works as a stopper for your hand.
2. Make the blade.
1. I wanted mine to be round as seen often in the ones on the internet. This makes the rocking motion easy on the cutting board.
2.  I hammered with the peen end of the hammer to the outer side of the blade. This is known as fullering. When the form was nice, I started hammering with the normal end of the hammer to get the edge full.
3. Finish the form with a smaller hammer if necessary.
3. Harden and temper
1. This would need information about the steel used.
2. I had no such info :-)
3. So, took it cherry red, then to water, then heated until some tempering colors formed on surface, took it out before the golden turned to red, as I read that this would be the traditional method before proper annealing ovens...
4. Sharpen the blade
1. Belt sander is advisable, I had no such thing, so I did mine with an angle grinder.
2. first grind with a rough grinding stone.
1. Gentle touches only, as it easily eats too much steel.
2. Get the rough shape.
3. switch to finer sandpaper-blades
1. This phase should not eat too much metal, but it should smoothen the blade and get some primary sharpness to the blade. Also here is when the profile of the edge is formed.
2. Pay attention.
3. Do not grind too long / with too much pressure - It causes the temperature of the workpiece to rise and it will annull the hardening and tempering. This is also often very localized so the blade will have spots that have different hardness.
4. Finish with a whetstone.
5. Test for sharpness, repeat phases as needed.

Tempering

More tempering

After natural air cooling the piece is ready. To my eye its fairly pretty. In its gritty rough kinda way.

Some questions arose with some friends that how is one supposed to hold it. It doesn't really matter, as long as the handle rests in the palm. If you hold the blade with your fingers, I think this is the most steady way to hold this.

Here with a cutting board my son made.

The mystery-steel behaved relatively well, so for some basic work its not useless, but I would not probably use it for for anything of great importance.

See you next time. If you have any questions or comments, shoot, I'd like to hear it.

The Establishment

Hi All,

This is my yet another blog, but now in english. This blog works as a memory lane to my forging hobby and a practice area for english writing.

Now, I start from scratch, without any real experience on the topic and in a bit challenging time for this hobby. Nevertheless this has been pounding in the back of my head for quite awhile and currently I feel very excited about this.

The Initial Setup

So, we have reached the first step on our journey to awesome badass blacksmithery.

Most of the beginners tools are now acquired and here is a short introduction to my tools of the trade:

The forge is the heart of works, cold steel is just too tough for primitive tools to work with. Now, there are numerous ways to build a forge. Internet has several kinds of introduced and ready schematics available. Most people seem to build from stuff that's just laying around, and the case is the same here too.

I had a stainless steel cart that used to serve as a mobile table in the kitchen of a restaurant. It had lost its cover but othervise it seemed to be in decent condition. I've had it lying around my yard for a couple of years and it is nice that I finally thought of some use for it.

Initially I thought it could serve a purpose as a portable table around my grill, but plans change.

 Next some mocking up. I had read that a car rim would be a nice hearth for a forge, so I acquired a couple of van rims from my father in law. Notice that having the rim on the side is a planned feature from the start. This leaves space to the right of the hearth to leave tongs and other tools to rest when the work piece is getting heated up.

Next thing was to acquire the sheet metal for the table and some steel pipe to work as a air channel (and dispose channel)  I got a recommendation from a friend that 3mm steel sheet would a good compromise of price and durability. It is not too heavy either but can stand fair heat and is not dented very easily.

Tracing the rim to sheet prior to cutting.

Every man should have a portable table like this, it really makes life better :-) (or not... this you can read from my other blog, in Finnish though)

Some Tailgating.

Some rough squares and triangles inside, which should be pretty easy to cut out with an angle grinder.

 Ready to be cut.

Because I had no strict plans in the first place, just an idea of the basic functionality, mocking up took place several times.

First prototype version was so, that the edges of the sheet were just turned down to the rim...

From this cue you can guess that it didn't end up so, but lets not ruin the suspense :)

 Some mocking up on the cart.

So, 30mm corner profile would work as the sides so that coal would not escape etc.

The same from different angle

yet another angle. Notice my nice 2kg Blacksmiths hammer

So, while waiting for access to weld at a friends workshop, I decided to clean up my anvil. This one I bought as a second hand piece. Nameless, brandless, basic 100kg anvil.  It had been laying around for about 10 - 15 years unused and then the owner decided to sell it. Along came the base and some tongs and hammers also. Almost ready starters kit, I would say.

But laying unused for over a decade had gathered a layer of rust on the anvil. While this is not a big issue per se, it happens to be so, that when forging steel on a rusty anvil, you end up inserting the iron oxide to your work piece, and with bad luck, to insides of the piece, therefore making the structure weaker and this can be critical if the product has a purpose that requires strength. (like knives and the like)

Luckily its just a thin layer of surface rust.

 15 mins with a sander and steel brush head for a power drill and we have a nice clean surface.

Some dents are pretty deep, but well, if you want new, you have to pay for the new...

 In the next pic the mockup is quite ready. The change to the attachment of the rim is visible now. it is completely welded shut.

Because it was raining, there are not much pics of the welding phase...

So, next the forge is in its final form. The seams are welded shut, as are the holes in the rim. Also the vent for disposing of ashes is in place.

A couple of pics before painting the forge.

The principle of air channel is very simple, it is on side, so that hot ash / burning coal can't access the blower

The rim is welded shut

While the visual appearance of the forge is not that important, rust prevention is. While not completely avoidable, limitation and reduction of corrosion is very good to have.

 The table is black and shiny hammerite I had one can left over. This is the "direct to rust" -stuff, which I prefer on welding seams. The Hearth / bowl was coated with heat resistant paint and the sides and the air channel with regular matte black. (Insert "the Fast show" -black  -painter gag here.)

It's new only once.

The nether regions...

 So to the first burn...

The Hearth is laid of loose stuff, so undermost is a brake rotor, on top some fire brick pieces to support the grill and more fire bricks to make a snugg hearth. This layout reduces the consumption of coal and minimizes the unnecessary exposure to heat on the forge. ( working on bigger pieces will of course be done without the bricks etc.)

This approach is called "Introduced air" -approach. Where some air is if not forced, anyway delivered to the hearth. This speeds up burning of the coal and at the same time increases the heat output of the fire.

This is just a big industrial blower I've had around for almost 15 years... It used to cool down my computer in the 90s... And so it is usefull again.

No smoke without fire...

 So, Here's my first setup. I't not much, but it's mine. I've had a lot of help from friends and relatives to get here and soon it starts.

Some wooden coal is on top of the axe blade I'm heating up for my first work. I plan to make a hardy cutting tool from it.

The axe blade is barely noticeable

While the anvil stand is quite traditional in look, the forge is very modern and industrial... Might have to paint the forge...

 To increase the efficiency of the forge, one can reduce the heat escape in many ways. Here I made a roof to the fire with fire bricks.

So, Here we are now, my next post will introduce the cutting tool and some other stuff maybe also.

See you next time.