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Historical Inspiration This forum is dedicated to the discussion of historical knife design and its influence on modern custom knife work.

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  #1  
Old 05-02-2006, 05:54 PM
Jesse Frank Jesse Frank is offline
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Bloom Forging

Well, I finally got off of my butt and consolidated the massive center part of the bloom created almost a year ago.

Here is the link to the thread on it:
http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index.php?sh...=birthday+bloom

Anyway, I had a few hours with which to do something today, and got to it.

Here is a shot of the piece before adding heat:


I couldn't get a big enough fire in my coal forge, so I had to make a quick and dirty charcoal forge on the ground, similar to the Japanese styled forges. It works great!


Here is a shot of it after the first heat, it was quite solid, more so than any bloom I've forged so far, but I still had to baby it so that it wouldn't fall apart.


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Old 05-02-2006, 05:55 PM
Jesse Frank Jesse Frank is offline
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By the third heat, I had it more or less square. Fairly solid still, but if I were to push it too hard, it would come right apart on me.


The fourth heat saw more significant stock reduction, but it started crumbing on me, so I decided to call that heat short.


By heat number six, I had been able to bump it down pretty good.



By heat seven, I was fairly sure that I had all the gaps closed up, so it was getting closer to the real work.


For the next cycle, the bloom saw its first welding heat. Once that portion was nice and welded, it drew out just fine.


Finished the welding on the ninth heat.


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Old 05-02-2006, 05:56 PM
Jesse Frank Jesse Frank is offline
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Five more heats saw it drawn to a roughly one and a half by half inch bar roughly three feet long.


I used roughly forty pounds of charcoal in the process, not including the seventy that it took to make the iron to begin with. There was still roughly 15 pounds left in the forge when I finished. I think that the amount necessary would be about two thirds of that if the bloom were forged still hot out of the smelter. It took quite a while to bring that big ol' chunk up to heat.

Anyway, I hope you all have gotten a kick ou of it, and My sincerest apologies to those poor souls with dialup


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Last edited by Jesse Frank; 05-02-2006 at 05:59 PM.
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Old 05-03-2006, 10:14 AM
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J.Arthur Loose J.Arthur Loose is offline
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Waste not your pity on those with dial-up; they are the forsaken.

That's a great piece of iron, Jesse.

Now what are you going to do with it? :P


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Old 05-03-2006, 10:25 PM
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Very cool! Thanks for posting those pics.


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Old 05-05-2006, 01:05 PM
Jesse Frank Jesse Frank is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by J.Arthur Loose
Waste not your pity on those with dial-up; they are the forsaken.

That's a great piece of iron, Jesse.

Now what are you going to do with it? :P

Ask and ye shall receive


So the next step is to cut it up, draw out and carburize some of the bar. Her is a shot of the four thinner bars to be carburized.


Since this is to be a period piece, I decided to do it old school. As in Y1K Theophilus wrote that to make soft iron hardenable, one way is to smear the iron with pig fat, cover it in leather, and bind it with linen thread. I didn't have any pig fat handy, so some vegetable oil somehow found its way on it instead.


Here is all four stacked and bound.


Hen then states that one should encase the iron in in well kneaded clay before being brought up to heat. The rod is a thermocouple. As much as I like that good ol' monk, I thought it prudent to know what temp I had the inside at As it turns out, it took more than an hour to bring the center up to heat.


So, for the thickness I have, I baked it at 1950f for 45 minutes, and pulled the sucker out.


Broke the thing apart, and there wafted to mine nostrils the essense of burning leather . That's good, It means that there was very little O2 in the chamber. It's always amazing to me the fact that if you do it right, the bars will come out almost exactly the way they went in, sans any scale that was on it beforehand.


I spark tested one of the bars, and it did a good job of sucking it up.


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Old 05-05-2006, 02:25 PM
Jeff Mack Jeff Mack is offline
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Soooooo cool! I'm green with envy!

Jeff
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Old 05-05-2006, 05:47 PM
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Right on, right on, Brother.


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Old 05-05-2006, 07:18 PM
mstu mstu is offline
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Way cool Jesse. You are The Man

Michael
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Old 05-09-2006, 09:00 AM
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Alan L Alan L is offline
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Jesse, Mike and Randal left a pile of fireclay at Harley's Sunday, and I have some firebrick and a 12x12 flue liner. Guess whose brain I'm gonna pick shortly...
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Old 05-09-2006, 08:58 PM
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WOW


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Old 05-12-2006, 01:52 PM
Jesse Frank Jesse Frank is offline
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I'm glad you all are getting a kick out of it. Hopefully it'll continue to go well

Here is the four HC bars welded and folded a few times. I took it up to 64 layers.


Here's a shot of the billet as it is now, waiting to be welded up. The two slightly thinner bars are the HC stock.


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Old 06-05-2006, 11:44 PM
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Jesse

This is so awsome! Thank you for taking the time to photograph and share your progress with us. Im sure you have several folks waiting for the next installment! I know I am!!

What would you say the Carbon content of the bloom was before being refined? Is it similar to Tahamagane?

Thanks and God Bless
Mike


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Old 06-07-2006, 12:18 PM
Jesse Frank Jesse Frank is offline
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Smile

Glad you're enjoying it.

The bloom basically had little or no carbon, but there was a small streak through the center that had a little more.


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Old 06-08-2006, 03:53 PM
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Way too cool... keep it up! This is fun !


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