Welcome to another video.
This time I will show you a simple blacksmithing project to make tooling for the power hammer.
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To make a flatter for the power hammer, I need to make a bottom swage
and forging the bottom swage is what I will show you here.
Even if you don't have a power hammer or are just beginning with blacksmithing, you might be able to
learn something especially from my mistakes. I am starting with 3 inches of 1 1/4in round
steel. For this project I am using 4340. A medium carbon tool steel.
A lot of the initial forging work will be to upset
the steel to be square in shape. Forging on the power hammer makes this easy.
You may wonder why I am not starting with square tool steel already. For me, it's easier
to get round tool steel and I
just forge it into the shape I need for the project I am working on.
The dimensions I ended with are roughly around 2in square
and around 3/4 of an inch high. I normalize the steel by letting it slowly cool.
I want a round groove in the middle and mark it as such.
Center punching allows me to see the line even if the steel is hot.
Blacksmithing and forging processes allow me to create the shapes I want.
In this case I want to create a round form with a diameter of about an inch.
To drive this form into the hot steel, I start with
small radius round bars that I forge in with the power hammer.
To keep the steel hot, I heat it up in my blacksmith forge which I am not showing in
this video. If you are curious, it's a side blast forge with a water cooled tyuere.
One interesting consideration when forging on the power hammer is the transfer of energy.
Since I am just using round bar, the hit of the power hammer can easily transfer to my arm
if I don't hit the bar straight on. You can also see that I did not heat
the steel evenly. Unfortunately, my initial forging was off the center line
and now I am slowly trying to drift it back into center by keeping on side of the steel colder.
I have advanced to a large diameter round bar now
and the form of the bottom swage is almost complete.
As a blacksmith, I often forge tools to allow me to forge other tools. In this case, I am forging
a bottom swage, to forge a flatter to eventually help with forging axes. For beginner blacksmiths,
these kind of blacksmithing projects are good examples to learn basic skills
and for most blacksmiths the best way of learning is to make tools to make tools.