Archive for the ‘Tools’ Category

I’ve been trying my hand at larger forge welding projects and decided to make some simple anvils in a style common to the Viking Age. The anvils were presumably mortised into stumps fairly deeply to give them good support for hammer work. The main challenge in anvil forging is to weld a high carbon steel face plate to a body of mild steel. The weights of the anvils shown range from 5 to 8 kilograms (11 to 18 pounds). The forge welding is done in a coke fire with the high carbon steel face tack-welded on the corners to the mild steel body. The most important thing is to be patient and get the pieces evenly heated to a very bright welding temperature without burning the steel face. Anhydrous borax is used as the flux. The welding is done with striking hammers wielded by two-man teams – usually myself and a friend. It typically requires 8 or 10 heats to finish welding and shaping a small anvil and the work is hot and strenuous. Nevertheless, we are gaining experience in heating larger masses of metal and learning different methods to get the welding done. The videos show short segments of the welding work. Someday I hope to turn out similar anvils with horns so I can forge Viking style axes with the proper tools!

Video: First Welding Heat

Video: More Face Welding

Video: Blending the Seam Between the Face and Body

Video: Smoothing and Shaping the Face

One of my longest standing goals as a professional blacksmith has been to forge socketed wood working axes in the traditions of northern European examples.  In my opinion these axes are quite possibly the most beautiful tools in the world.  The forge welding in these axes is complex and requires a strategy, tool-set and control of form which showcases the extraordinary skills possessed by many traditional blacksmiths.  After tackling asymmetrically welded eyes on traditional Viking axe forms over the last 4 years (by no means a finished topic for me) I have recently turned my attention to the techniques needed to produce socketed axes.  I have researched various techniques and followed the work of wonderful blacksmiths in Scandinavia, Europe and the US to see how I might approach this.  The pictures below show the progress I’ve made by my 3rd trial socket.  It is produced by free-hand forging on a power hammer and was made without a mandrel.  I learned a lot on this piece and in the work leading up to it.  I hope to travel this year to meet some of the smiths I admire so that I can learn much more about this process from them and about specific axes produced for timber framing and carving over the last several centuries.

3 lb. Viking style hammers

Two new 3 lb. Viking style hammers are on their way to customers today. One is going to a blacksmith in France and the other to a friend just north of me here in California. Both have low-carbon steel bodies forge welded to high-carbon faces and peens. The process is very time consuming but it is very satisfying to do. One advantage to it is that the punching and drifting of the eye is done in a fairly soft steel and is much easier to perform. This is a big help since the strong, asymmetric taper of this hammer profile makes it difficult to keep the eye-hole straight. These hammers should give many years of good service.

I thought it would be an interesting challenge to develop a 3 pound version of the Viking style hammers I was working on a few months ago.  Those hammers were in the weight range of 24 ounces and made excellent, small blacksmithing hammers.  It seemed natural to try a larger version which was for more general purpose forging.  As in the smaller versions I forge welded faces and peens of high-carbon tool steel to soft steel bodies – in keeping with the older traditions of hammer-making technology. In changing to the larger hammer size I discovered some interesting fine points about hammer design and the forging process. I am now consistently able to hit some of my more subtle design goals regarding the proportions and basic geometry of the hammers. These hammers are all about 5″ long. If I haft them I usually use white oak or hickory.

Over the last several months I have been practicing the forging of Viking style hammers with forge-welded faces and peens. I am gradually developing a set procedure and a set of proportions to make these beautiful hammers in various sizes. I have settled on using mild steel for the bodies and W1 steel for the faces and peens. W1 is a high-carbon tool steel which can be heat treated very hard, and appears to hold up to forge welding quite well if care is taken not to burn it. After I am done with this form I will move on to others which intrigue me. These hammers will be for sale starting in June when I return from teaching Viking style axe forging in England.