Palm Sculpture and Spring Delights

Today I worked on a coconut palm sculpture most of the day.  The clients who commissioned it visited the studio in the afternoon and we discussed the progress.  They gave me the go-ahead to finish it along the line I am heading.  This has been a very interesting and challenging project for me and I feel I have learned a lot and there are still a few experiments I want to do.  I don’t charge clients for my learning time.  I got that notion from Francis Whitaker.  He said something like this.  “A person comes to you and requests a job.  That person expects you to know you business.  If you need to study and figure out how to do it that cost is on your time - not their time.”

It was cloudy, cool, windy and we got a little bit of rain today.  Spring arrives it “fits and starts” - whatever that means.  We might yet get a dusting of snow, but the march to summer is inevitable.  Is that why we call it March?  Oh well.

Behind Fall I favor Spring most.  I think that I watch every detail of the arrival of the new signs of life and growth.  The first green buds.  The first bloom of this and that.  Now baby squirrels are scampering throughout the tree branches,  Baby bunnies are bounding around the garden border.

I have seen the house wrens this week and orioles and a wood thrush.  The turkey vultures came back a couple of weeks ago.  But, the two snake hibernaculums I watch are still closed.

Betty is cutting fresh asparagus every day and it is delicious.  This bed is only a few years old but it looks like it will be a really good one.  Two previous attempts in other locations didn’t work well.  The peas are growing but the spinach is similar to the Kansas wheat crop - spotty.

A robin pair has nested on the east end of my studio north porch on the east side in a 100 pound roll of 12 gauge wire.  Momma flew off when I approached but I took a photo of her three eggs,

American Robins are thrushes and abundant in most of the US.  Several pair nest on my property each year and some overwinter down by the river.  They seem almost social.  I can be watering and a worm-stalking robin will come up within a few feet of me.

All my cognizant life I have known robin eggs were blue.  I could pick that blue out of a lineup.  But when I heard Francis Whitaker say “quench it when the color is robin’s egg blue” that color took on a different meaning in my mind.  My long time love of nature had one more link to my love of the blacksmithing craft. 

This morning we leave early to attend the BAM conference in Sedalia, Missouri.  We will begin the four-day adventure with a day trip with dear friends to a site which is significant in the history of my Father's relatives.

Getting Rid of Mushrooms

On 2/5/14 I wrote about hitting hard on hard and touched on the issue of tool mushrooming but didn’t go on to address proper tool dressing.

Unless we made the struck tool we probably don’t know about the alloy or how the heat treatment was done.  We trust the working end of the tool has been tempered properly for wear resistance and that the struck end has been left softer to prevent chipping.  Some mushrooming of the struck end can be expected with this strategy.  Still, dressing the struck end to prevent excessive mushrooming is a good safety plan.

I found one explanation of the tool maker’s intent at

http://www.flatlandforge.com/Warranty.htm  operated by Jim & Kathleen Poor.

“Thank you for your interest in our tools. We strive to bring you the best and safest tools on the market today.

We will warranty our tools against manufacturing defects by gladly replacing tools that fall under the guidelines outlined on this page.

Our tools are made of S-7, shock resistant air hardened tool steel. Each tool is hardened ONLY on the working end's, while the striking surface has been tempered back (or made slightly softer). This unique feature is primarily for safety.

With normal use, our tools are designed to mushroom slightly at the striking end of the tool (or top of the tool), and should be dressed back with a file or grinder depending on amount of use. We soften, (or temper) the tops of the tools to reduce the chances of chips flying off the tool when struck by an off (or wild) blow from a hardened hammer face. It takes a little more time and expertise, but we feel, the safer the tool, the better.

The working ends of our tools are hardened for maximum wear. This does not mean that they will last forever! But, with regular care and maintenance, these tools should last you a long time. So keep the working end of the tool COOL as you drive it into hot steel. Don't let the tools get extremely dull, keep them sharp by using a file. Don't drive them into the anvil. Hit them solid and square. Off blows from the hammer are usually the reason forging tools get wrecked.

We hope you enjoy your new tool. Be sure to look for articles on care and maintenance of the tools in the industry trade magazines.”

Some other References:

http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/safety_haz/hand_tools/struck.html

http://joneakes.com/jons-fixit-database/1703-Dressing-your-tools-for-safety

http://www.toolboxtopics.com/Construction/Generic/Cold%20Chisels.htm

http://www.listoftools.com/grinding_operations/chisel_head_grinding.html

Mushrooming which I've accepted.

Excessive mushrooming.

Hitting Hard on Hard

Probably many of us never get a very organized instruction in the theory and use of tools.  What we know just came in bits and pieces.  When I started hanging out around anvils I picked up some tips both in protecting the anvil and in safe use.  The same goes for the hammers and the other types of tools we use.

One of the general principles was that the working surface and edges of tools are hardened and the bodies are softer.  In general we try to avoid hitting hard-on-hard for both tool protection and safe use.  But hard and soft are relative things and not so easy to really pin down.  It may be safe to hit hard-on-hard if we don’t hit too hard.  But that, too, can go down a slippery slope.

A further complication is encountered when we consider the state of the workpiece.  If the workpiece is hot and plastic there is little concern with hard-on-hard because the energy is dissipating in the workpiece through the movement of the mass.  If the workpiece is cold, more energy is dissipated elsewhere in the system and little effective work is accomplished in the workpiece.  The energy dissipates mostly in the hammer rebound movement and to a lesser degree in frictional losses at the contact surfaces and molecular deformation in the tools.

Some energy may go into permanent tool deformation - think of the gradual mushrooming which develops around the annealed struck end of some tools.  What we hope does not happen is that energy is dissipated through fracture failure especially spalling or chipping which can send off a tiny sharp fragment.

The point is we ought to take some time to use our intuition and think about what we are preparing to do and what the consequences might be for working safely and efficiently.

On 11/22/13 I wrote about  working with Kirk Sullens at a BAM meeting.  The project was an ad hoc chasing exercise and we had a limited set of tools which I brought to the meeting.  We discussed how we were going to proceed and I explained I had made the edge tools from various pieces of scrap tool steel so there wasn’t likely to be much consistency.  It would be a game with a lot of wild cards.  He would be striking the tools and I would be doing the holding.  He asked me straight out how I felt about this hitting hard-on-hard.  It seemed to me like a remarkably thoughtful question.  

I made the decision to proceed in a very short time so it is hard to say what actually went on in my mind.  I knew he was a skilled and careful worker.  The workpiece was soft mild steel.  The work was going to be on the delicate end of the force spectrum.  I had used the tools before without any problems.  It was a go and led to a fun afternoon.

Almost always, it seems to me like one idea leads to another and this might be a natural segue to the subject of work hardening but I’ll leave that to another day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_scale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(metallurgy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall

Don Nichols Round Stock Shear

On May 16, 2001 I mentioned my round stock shear made by Don Nichols.

http://persimmonforge.blogspot.com/2011/05/storing-tool-steel.html

Don and Joyce stopped over on their way home from the ABANA conference in Rapid City and we had a nice visit.  I asked if he minded if I wrote a post about this great tool which he makes from time to time and he said I could do it.

He said that his versions have some variations based on what is available as tool steel scrap.  He usually selects 4140 which can be drilled and then oil quenched.  I looked for web references about heat treating and found several.  It sounds like heating to above magnetic and quenching in ATF or a light cooking oil would work.  Heating the oil a little may help too.

The shear design is mechanically a clever four-bar linkage.  The length ratios produce a powerful force multiplication so cutting the round stock requires very little effort but I’ve never taken the time to do the math on it.  I have set up my tool with an anvil tang and a vise tang, added a length stop and padded the handle with sash cord.

I’m on my second shear now only because a piece of 3/8” round 5160 coil spring got mixed up in the mild steel stock and broke a blade.  I’m really careful not to water cool even mild steel which may later be cut.  Water quenched 1020 or A36 may not dependably harden enough to make a decent tool but it can harden enough to ruin an edge tool or bandsaw blade.

http://www.persimmonforge.com/