Steve Ballard, of Ballard Forge. He uses A514 for the steel. I never heard f it up until now. Pretty tough stuff at a claimed 100,000 psi.
Yeah dude, he's pretty good with wedge locks too. He's also one of the only people I've seen actively doing hot rivet related things. He has a post of working on a bridge.
That is some righteous tooling! And your hooks are looking mighty nice, too. Getting that fine a point, and then rolling it up into a nice scroll is always fun!
I agree, worse part is I won't get to use them until tomorrow if I'm lucky. But most likely Thursday. The tools are INCREDIBLE dude. Great feel and balance. Handles also have the straightest grain of any handled tool, I've ever owned. I don't know if straighter grain even exists. The scroll was definitely fun, the initial crispness got washed out due to scale. I'm starting to get a feel, for how thin I can forge without losing too much in the forge. Check out the key ring on the tong blank, it's crazy cool. I'll try to get a closeup of it tomorrow or something.
Seriously, I'd love to see how he does it. I know he doesn't have a power hammer, so how in the world does he get such crisp corners and such? It's "easy" to do if you take your time and work with files and whatnot, but that eats into anything resembling profit. He's got to some some kind of technique I'm not understanding if he's able to make such beautiful tools in a timely fashion. Makes my arms hurt just thinking about how much quality time he must spend with the file and grinder to get everything looking so crisp, clean, uniform and matching.
Today I gave a go at 4140. Made a Mark Aspery style hot cut, a center punch, and a mini Aspery hot cut from coil spring. Warming up: I ended up using several different hammers. Here they are roughed out Cleaned prior to annealing. I should have done it after, but wanted an idea of how it would look Annealing
Sweet! I like the Aspery design because it keeps the blasted things from rolling around. I still have problems with getting the divot lined up with the cutting edge like I want, but at least the punches don't roll around on me! Thinking about a heat treat for them, or just leave them soft?
I like everything Mark does, that guy is a freaking wizard at forging. I'm having the same problem, your talking the indexing part right? I was only able to forge mine on the off edge with a rounding hammer. Did the best I could, but I think if I had a horn, it would have turned out nicer. Although for my first one, I am pleased. Definitely going to heat treat, I need to get it dialed in.
Mark's another one of those aggravating smiths. I can follow his videos step for step, in real time, and my work doesn't come out looking anything like his!
Very true, I've heard many people say the same thing. He's extremely efficient. It's probably all the extra power he has stored in his sweet mustache.
The most important tool in the blacksmith shop??? Gotta be the apron that keeps me from catching fire! Before I started on the apron kick, I was catching myself on fire a lot. Sparks seemed to love catching on my shirts. Sometimes they'd catch on my beard. Either way, I was annoyingly alight. After two years in a cheap apron and fighting it every step of the way, I decided to go with a custom apron and couldn't be happier. Giovanni Zappetta (pictured) was kind enough to take on the job for me, and his years of experience in the field of horse tack really made the difference. There's no way I could have managed even half as nice a job! The Dragon Hide is 7-8 ounce leather with an oil tan that I'm hoping will shed sweat and grime reasonably well. You might notice that there aren't any rivets, and that was something I specifically requested since I can fix a torn stitch easily, but not a rivet that's corroded out. Maybe that wouldn't have happened with some quality rivets, but I was just leery about them after working on the cheap-o apron I have been using. Solid brass hardware and quality leather straps -- super comfortable as well as durable.
I don't. Seriously, I've seen a lot of people do that, but I've never been very comfortable with it because it means I have to put my anvil lower. Then I'm doing 99% of my forging hunched over just so it's the right height that 1% of the time when I need the third hand. With my back as it is, I'd rather stand up straight 99% of the time and figure out another way of holding a bar. It's not as quick and convenient, sadly, but it's better on my back. I'll take a measurement today to see how low I'd need my anvil for it to work.
