[TheForge] Re: spaghetti: blacksmithing content

[Mike Spencer]

> Not long after that a neighbor brought his ram's head poker back to
> get the point tweaked. Heated the pointy end and laid it on the
> anvil, and the first time I smacked it the ram's head on the other
> end popped off and rolled under a table.

I've had some trouble with that, Andy.  I've made several door
knockers like this:

   http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/gallery/img/dragon-knocker.jpg

I'd do the head, then draw out the taper and make the claw.  A couple
of times, as I did the drawing-out, a transverse crack developed near
the head.  The first time it happened, the head fell off, just as
yours did.  [1]  The next time, I was able to save the piece by putting
a deep arc weld into the crack and peening it down but it didn't make
me happy.

I attributed the failure to (first) multiple reheating of the neck to
too low a heat, trying to avoid burning the finished head detail and
(then) continued vibration of the cold part from pounding on the other
end. And I didn't have to use tensor analysis to imagine that. :-)

Of course, I have -- or had -- an excessively high opinion of my own
ability to imagine how/why things happen.  I had a carefully
constructed mental image of just how my hammer traveled when I was
forging.  Even wrote up a description once.  Then I got a chance to do
high-speed photography of myself hammering. [2] The hammer flight path
was nothing at all like the mental construction I had formed.  A
little mortification now and then, they say, is good for us. ;-)


Ho hum,
- Mike


[1] Um, your poker ram's head, that is.

[2] http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/hammer.html

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^