[TheForge] spaghetti: blacksmithing content

[peter fels & phoebe palmer]

On 11/11/2010 10:40 AM, Mike Spencer wrote:
>
>> 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
Yea! You gots real good knockers man!

> 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. :-)
I'm about to wrestle with that same problem on a long, double tapered 
bronze piece with worked upsets on each end. Wondering how to damp the 
vibrations to the far end.
Wrap with a buncha wet rags?
> 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
>