[TheForge] Hammer's Blow

[Ries Niemi]

I am too lazy to go in the house and check, but I am assuming you are 
talking about the piece by James Viste.
He demoed at LaCrosse, and he has a real nifty technique for forge 
welding those little squares on.
He gets lots of punch leftovers- I think those came from an ironworker 
with a square punch, but he also uses ball bearings, round punchouts, 
and all kinds of scrap the same way.
he has a clamshell gas forge he built, and he uses it to forge weld-
He heats up the base metal- I would guess the one on the cover is 
probably a piece of 1/4" plate about 5" square. Once it is hot, he 
fluxes it, reheats, and places his little squares on it. Then he takes 
it to the power hammer, and uses that to forge weld the pieces on.
If he doesnt want to squash the little parts, like if he is using ball 
bearings, he makes giant spatula looking things out of old oak pallets- 
2 feet long by 4" wide by 1" thick or so. He puts the hot iron on the 
bottom die of the power hammer, then puts his oak spatula on, then 
whacks it. the oak spatulas burn up every 10 or 20 uses, but he just 
bandsaws out a big stack before hand, and after they get crispy they 
become firewood.
I am pretty sure Roger Degner of UMbBA has a dvd or video of James 
demonstrating.
He has invented quite a few clever techniques, and his demo is well 
worth watching.

ries