My skills at drawing are so bad that when I draw a stick figure, people think it’s a doodle. So I use prosthetics to sketch designs and see what I like and what I don’t. This is intended to be a bread-scoring knife for commentariat(tm) member jazzlet.
Electrochemical engraving seems to be pretty easy: you order micro-screen masks from tustech [tus] and they appear remarkably quickly. I sent them a large PDF of the badger logo Ieva did for me and they had the masks in my mailbox 5 days later.
I had the idea of using a small stainless steel hatchet as a cut-off tool for forging. It seemed like a good idea – stainless is not very sticky and it’s pretty tough stuff.
Some closeups of metal using a Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens. The depth of field of the lens is very shallow, and it’s a pain to hand-hold.
Big chisel-grinds have always been my favorite; I never really thought about why.
Doing flat-grinds on a belt sander is an eye/hand skill you never completely forget. But you can get rusty. So, I’ve been working the stiffness out of my muscle memory, while experimenting with my whole tool-chain to see what works best, where. My tool-chain has gotten vastly more powerful and complicated since I was in high school, making “prison shiv” style knives with just a file and a bench grinder.
Something seems to have clicked and I’m getting good results forming welded bar-stock, now. I’ve started to consistently and easily (it’s still work, it’s becoming predictable work) get forge-welds and I’m producing bars that harden nicely, don’t warp or blow apart, and seem to be very tough with good edge-holding properties.
One of the dynamics I always like about making things is that you get into a weird loop in which you’re making things to help you make things – and you spend a lot of time making preparatory things before you can go full production. [Read more…]
I’ve been continuing to experiment with welding, and have tried to actually make a few things out of some of the steels I’ve been assembling.
I love my oxy/acetylene torch. Somehow, I have never gotten one before. Now I am the death-god that can shoot 6000F flame and burn through all that stands before me!