[TheForge] Scale

[Mark A. Pesetsky]

I'm curious how everyone deals with scale?
I've got a couple of problems with it that I find irritating.

The first problem results from the fact that I often hammer metal pretty
thin.
The thinner it gets, the more important it is I have a high heat, or else it
cools by the time I get it to the anvil.
It also means I have often have no time to brush off the scale before
working
it, so I end up with the texture of the scale pounded into the metal.
The high heat, though, creates a lot of scale, which creates a lot of
texture
in the metal despite my best efforts to avoid it.

Dip your hammer into water before forging...The Japanese introduced this.
The water blows the scale off of the piece being worked.

Mark