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[kisame12794]

Thank you. Another good site for projects is Anvilfire. And yes while it does get very hot, the it isn't hot enought to catch the walls on fire. And yes while making knives is a time consuming process, it is really wrth it in the end. The polished one is my first knife and it took me about at 72 hours of straight work. Bear in mind that this was my first knife. The second knife has taken to date around 8 hours. They are both made out of a railway spike. Eagleon that is a fine looking sword. What material did you make it out of? How long did it take?

[Eagleon]

It's a mild steel, 3/4"x1/8" (the picture might make it look a lot wider than it is), all cold work - lots and lots of grinding and polishing, about an hour of actual hammering to get the curve and tip and give it some strength. You can't see it very well in the picture, but there's a distinct ridge where the back has been hammered out so that it won't buckle as much. Filing the edge to sharp was absolute hell - I couldn't use the grinder because it heats it up too much, not to mention it'd have been tough to impossible to get the right profile for it, so that was all done by hand.

[Anvilfolk]

If it's mild steel, then it will never hold an edge, independently of the tempering. It needs to have more carbon content to actually become rigid. Still, I've gotta say that it looks pretty nice

One thing about smithing is that you're forging volumes, which means that as the crossection of the material increases, the volume that you're hammering on increases to the power of three. In other words, if you forge something which is relatively thin, it'll be super easy to forge. Anything above 3/4" is starts being pretty damn hard unless you're doing it everyday and can handle a 2+ pound hammer. I remember when I was able to swing those, eesh. Long time ago

How thick are railroad spikes?

When I got into blacksmithing, I was all about swords and knives and weapons and whatnot. Then, I started realizing that there's so much art, and so many other techniques than the ones you use for bladesmithing that you're limiting yourself if you only do that. I really, really loved some of the projects that I did (links to their pictures on my 1st post). We were given the design, but they were so aesthetic. Love it

[kisame12794]

The spikes are about 1 inch square. I regularly use 3+ pound hammers so forging out up to 1 1/2 is pretty easy for me. I'll work up a sweat sure but i won't get so tired out that i can't recover during heating.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Epicness, my only exp in blacksmithing (if using welding in the process counts) is making a long-sword to hack down some of the menceing thisle plants that grow all over the place on the farm. Also works nicely on bur-docks damn those mini-trees. Altho its heavy ended, it just adds to it's cutting potential

[kisame12794]

Nice. Anybody who has anything they think is interesting, post it! Got an idea? Post it! This is not just about me, I want to help You.

[Komra]

Heh. I've always been the creative type in terms of anything other than drawing (stick figures FTW), so I find this quite interesting.
In any case, if anyone needs some ore for their work, I found out that I own a pickaxe. So there.

[Anvilfolk]

There's some awesomely crazy people that actually do that. Gather ore, then a bajillion tons of coal, and melt the ore, then hammer whatever comes out. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, and it takes forever Like a whole day or something crazy

[kisame12794]

Ahem. I am one one of those crazy awsome people. I spent around 6 or 7 hours recording data for the smelt. We put 24 kilos of ore and 160 kilos of charcoal and the resulting bloom weighed around 5 kilos. Me and another guy hammered the bloom down to size, then using an axe, cut it into 4 sections. One of those sections was then pounded flat. It was awsome.

[Anvilfolk]

Oh, wow, that's great

How did it come out? What did you guys use it for? Do you have any pictures of the process, result, or what you did with the result?

[kisame12794]

I do not know what happened to the other pieces. I got a little that fell off the rest of the bloom and have yet to do anything with it. The bloom itself was similar to wrought iron. I will post a picture of the bloom soon.

[Girlinhat]

Posting to watch...

As if.  I respond to FAR too many threads to rely on that, ha!  Regardless of that, I think we're rapidly approaching an epoch.  It's just a matter of time before the forums suddenly shut down and all productive members move to Nevada and start digging out a fort.  We've got some blacksmiths, miners, farming isn't hard...  Unrelated, I think I realized what the 2012 apocalypse is going to be.

Now I'm wondering how we might combine our crafts, and produce some doubly crappy pieces!  We need a leatherworker, to make a sheath, and then we can have you make a knife, someone make a sheath with an image of a dwarf and groundhogs on it, and I can make the belt strap for it.  I don't know!

[kisame12794]

Naw a knife isn't dwarfy enough. I think my next project is going to be a short sword. Or maybe a chestplate.

[Girlinhat]

You're right, it's too Kobold...  A hatchet, perhaps?

[kisame12794]

Nice to see another owl. Yup I could do a hatchet. I may do that first due to the fact that is has some use. Other than being awesome.