Any blacksmiths here?

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Well, here was my first attempt at a railroad spike knife. It was a good introduction to shaping metal, and I learned a little bit. The forge was just thrown together with paver bricks and a propane weed burner. Worked great, but used some fuel.

Haven't ground a bevel on the blade yet so it's more of a butter knife right now.

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RussellSullivan said:
Well, here was my first attempt at a railroad spike knife. It was a good introduction to shaping metal, and I learned a little bit. The forge was just thrown together with paver bricks and a propane weed burner. Worked great, but used some fuel.

Haven't ground a bevel on the blade yet so it's more of a butter knife right now.

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Pretty cool....I mean hot!! LOL
 
A while back I was looking into getting an anvil and trying to learn about them etc. There is a great video somewhere, in which this crusty old blacksmith lays it out pretty well. All you "need" is MASS under the hammer blow and it doesn't need to be a "real" anvil. He didn't care much for railroad track because in his head, the narrow center reduced the effective mass under the hammer strikes. His claim was that the sides were not of much use. A better alternative was to go find as large of a block of steel as you could. He described an example that was something on the order of 4x12x18. He had it standing on end so the 4x12 was the striking area.

I'm not a blacksmith in any way shape or form, but what he said made a lot of sense and it might be easier to find a large chunk of steel than a real anvil. Of course you won't have a horn unless you add one but it's a good start.

A wild example was a big old diesel cyl head I saw used in a pinch.
 
Not technically blacksmithing as i made these cold but it sure was a lot of hammer work.


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Im am proud of them tho.
 
Cuda416 said:
A while back I was looking into getting an anvil and trying to learn about them etc. There is a great video somewhere, in which this crusty old blacksmith lays it out pretty well. All you "need" is MASS under the hammer blow and it doesn't need to be a "real" anvil. He didn't care much for railroad track because in his head, the narrow center reduced the effective mass under the hammer strikes. His claim was that the sides were not of much use. A better alternative was to go find as large of a block of steel as you could. He described an example that was something on the order of 4x12x18. He had it standing on end so the 4x12 was the striking area.

I'm not a blacksmith in any way shape or form, but what he said made a lot of sense and it might be easier to find a large chunk of steel than a real anvil. Of course you won't have a horn unless you add one but it's a good start.

A wild example was a big old diesel cyl head I saw used in a pinch.
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I found that if I tried working with the spike perpendicular to the rail, it became banana shaped. I had to turn it parallel with the rail, to keep the entire blade touching the surface. A trip to the scrap yard may yield a decent chunk of steel
 
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