Just for the record this post has nothing to do with MC anybody. 😉
Sunday morning was under 80 degrees, so it was tolerable to fire up the forge and play a bit with some hot metal. And of course since I’m twisted, my metal needs to be twisted too. Lol. First things first, I had to make a simple boring handle for heavy steel crucible I made to use in the aluminum melter mentioned in a previous post. Time to get the coals hot and ready.
Lets see…. Forge full of coals, hammer, water bucket, more charcoal, and a big piece of metal heating in the forge. We are all set. And to save you the boredom of a simple piece I will fast forward to heating the metal for something more interesting, a slender version of an ‘S’ hook.
For this post I’m going to show you some of the steps to make one of these hooks. A few cranks on the forge blower brings the coals to a bright yellow, almost white, heat and gets the metal to be worked temperature up to speed. Lets get the hot metal over to the anvil and start tapering the end to a point.
The metal has cooled to a cherry red while I try to take a picture, but even at this temp its still workable. I hammer the end, drawing it out to a point and trying to keep the taper consistent and concentric. Once I have the taper to the point I want (no pun intended) I place the very end over the back of the anvil and start scrolling the end by moving a little more rod over the edge and hammering it over. I heat and re-heat the rod as necessary to keep the metal workable.
Once I have the end curled, or scrolled, the way I want it I heat the rod and use a cold chisel to cut the overall length of hook off from the rest of the rod. Then its time to start scolling the other end. Once again it all starts with tapering the metal down to match the other end. A taper in progress looks like this.
Keep adding heat and hammer work and you will end up with a double scroll, one on each end facing each other. Once I’ve got both the scrolls roughed in I go back and try to make them symmetrical, even in curvature and point and laying flat on the anvil.
So are you wondering why I made a ‘C’ shape when I really want an ‘S’ hook? It because of this last step, where I have to twist the hook to get that spiral in the shank. I need to heat just the center portion of the ‘C’ and keep the scrolls fairly cool so that they dont distort when I twist. I should have taken a pic of applying heat to the iron since most people use a torch to apply heat to a confined area, I use coals and bank them in areas to heat and remove them from places I want cooler. I’m not against using a torch, its just more of a challenge to me not to use one, and in my mind its truer to old world smithing. Once the shank is properly heated I grab both scrolls with tongs and give it 1-1/2 twists to make the ‘S’ shape.
The scrolls distorted a little bit, but I’m not going to rework them. I kinda like the imprecise nature of this one, it doesn’t look machine manufactured. Narrow ‘S’ hooks like this look better than the fatter ‘S’ hooks that I make for certain things. for instance, hanging my hummingbird feeder looks better with a narrow and long hook because it matches the lines of the feeder better.
Till the next post, keep it hot and hammered. ;)-