DH-2 Specs?

You're right about the chisels -- or chisel-like implements -- but the process is surprisingly fast. Filemaking was a specialized trade and the filemaker used a leather strap and a foot pedal to hold the file to the bench. With the hammer in one hand and the tool in the other, an experienced file maker could cut the teeth in a medium grade single-cut file in a few minutes. Things like punches were used to raise the teeth on rasps.

--RC

"Rick Cook" wrote

Some of the last tools it's still done on are stone-cutting rifflers for sculpture in marble and such. The hand-made Italian ones are really cool-

Chas

Ya, they used chisels. I imagine that in skilled hands it could be fairly quick and accurate.

to see an early machine look at;

Paul K. Dickman

"Paul K. Dickman" Spaketh Thusly:

most, of it was hand-forged. What a job that must have been! The original owner must have put out a lot of cash for something like that. I wonder if it was that pretty and shiny during its working life.... bet not. Thanks for the pics, Paul.

I want one! :-)

-- Bill H. [my "reply to" address is real]

Molon Labe!

It's described in Bealer's book, one of the bits that book is quite good for.

Most farrier blacksmiths could make their own rasps, but filemaking was a specialist trade. They had their own style of hammer and everything.

Well, part of a sword's strength comes from the shape (cross section). The most common failure other than bad heat treatment is shear failure at the shoulder, where the cross section changes dramaticly. You see this a LOT in imports and wallhangers, designed in for insurance purposes. My

5160 swords test out at 38 tons before shear failure at Rc53-55, which is more than any human can muster in 'normal' use. The only thing I won't warranty is laying the sword on a train track and waiting for the Pacific Flyer to come by at 60 mph or so. I have had swords run over repeatedly by tanks and SP artillary vehicles with no effect other than cosmetic scratching of the mild steel hardware. Fancy alloys are no substitute for good design. Considering that real mideval swords test out at 1040 to 1060, any modern high strength alloy will make a superior product to 'the real thing'. I use 5160 because it's cheap, available locally, easy to work, easy to heat treat, will take and hold a razor edge and a mirror finish. I have yet to have one come back for anything other than routine maintenance. My customers have used them for machettes, crowbars, building demolition, car scrapping, brush clearing, firewood chopping, bread slicing, butchering, and defense. The worst notch I 've seen came from a 3/4" grade 8 bolt, max depth .053". The bolt failed. YMMV.

Charly

Actually, fullers came first. Fullering was used to widen the billet, to make the iron go farther. Fullering was originally a forging operation which pushed the iron to the edges of the billet before forming the bevel. Around the 11th century, improvments in blast furnace design allowed smelters to actually melt the iron out of the rock, instead of blooming the ore then pounding the gelatinous slag out with hammers to consolidate the iron filaments into a billet. The resultant increase in supply allowed smiths to go to the diamond cross section, which took less time to fabricate. Time is money. You get what you pay for. I fuller with either a dieset for the LG or with a mill, depending on how much the customer is willing to fork over. Both methods increase the overall strength due to shape. A fuller turns the center of the sword into an I-beam, oriented against the bending force applied in use.

Charly

In Ye Olden Dayes, that was the case. Then Leonardo Da Vinci designed a file making machine that would automaticly move the file blank with every incision of the forming tool, and modern versions are a parametric variant of the original design.

Charly you learn the wierdset stuff on PBS

Charly the Bastard wrote: >

Both methods increase the overall strength to weight ratio.....

Yeah, but milling actually removes mass, fullering just pushes it around. Start with two billets the same dimension, make swords. The milled one will weigh less than the forge fullered and beveled one. Not by much, but measurable. And... since

5160 is a deep hardening alloy, all that 'grain refinement' that you supposedly got from all that sweaty hammering disappears in the tank. The grain in hot roll looks like a flattened tree in cross section from the supplier, lots of concentric ovals. After it goes through the dies, it still looks like concentric ovals, just squeezed a bit in the center and at the edges. For all the energy and effort, it's just not that big an advantage in the finished piece. I took ten blades, five milled and five forged, and took them to the testing lab and put them against the Big Press. There was less than 1000 pounds difference from the weakest to the strongest in a shear failure mode. Considering the average was about 38 tons, why bother sweating?

Charly

Cool. Merry Christmas, heres an axe. All I ever get is socks and jocks.

Fraser

You can still get hand-cut rifflers and rasps for wood carving as well. The random pattern of the teeth makes them especially effective. However I don't know of anyone making hand-cut files any more.

--RC

Fullers go back even further than that. Bronze swords had them for strengthening. (See Oakeshott)

--RC

The other thing that produces the transverse failure at the tang is that a lot of smiths don't bother to radius the shoulder. That leaves a stress point and you either have to compensate by making the tang thicker and broader, or you'll have a failure there.

As you say, fancy hardware is no substitute for good design.

--RC

Nothing like a trade for your trade :-)

Cheating ... Yeah, I'd do it too if I had the tools.

A Sen is high on my list of tools to make. After I learned to scrape off material with the draw file action, I heard about a sen and the lightbulb went off. Just havn't got around to it yet.

Hmmm, I'd do that for a brush cutter tool. Want to get good a long gracefull blades first. Ever see the commercial fantasy blade that belonged to the elf chick in Lord of the Rings? Gives me goose bumps when I see that kind of work. Jody Samson has a thing he calls the Seaward sword that is sort of along those lines. As soon as I figure out how to make my forge distribute the heat more evenly I'll be doing something like that. I'll be treating my Wak next but I experimented enough while I was forging it to know that it's going to be tricky getting the ends at the same temperature as the middle. Right now, by the time the ends are hot enough, the middle went too far. I'm going to try an extention so that maybe I can get a long enough area that the heat doesn't change too much. Thought about creating some convection in the chamber too...

GA

Now hang on a minute here. Mass can be planned in the inital stages. Just start with less steel. As for sweaty work, I happen to like hammering hot metal in the back yard as the sun drops over the horizon and hanging out by the forge is kind of like kickin' it around the camp fire. Poetic, ya know? Besides, in the summer time I loose more sweat in the shop than I ever do pounding steel in the back yard. And, a well forged blade makes the shop work a lot easier (Not that I claim to forge well ;-) )

GA

ROTF - Now that's what I call an all purpose tool! Problem is, folks get really cagey when you show up at work with a sword...

GA

Whoa! :) I've recently discovered hand hacksaw blades with variable pitch teeth. :) They work so-good it's a wonder why they weren't made that way all along. :/

MSC sells 'em, got some fine toothed ones from them and coarse toothed ones from town (Kent's Tools). I've been using the coarse ones (which are extra coarse) for those small wood handle slabs.

Was using a new miter saw that I'd modified the handle on so the handle was down even with the teeth for less chatter... don't use it anymore! :)

Try 'em you'll like 'em. :)

Man, there is no stinkin way I'd buy a new carpenter's saw without varible pitch teeth! :/

Alvin in AZ

As a hobby, yeah, I like pounding hot iron too. But when you try to pay the bill$ with it, you look for the fastest, easiest way to turn stock into parts. Mill blades take a lot less time and energy than forged ones, and the price of energy is a growing factor. That gas meter sure spins fast when I wake Elliot up, and Mr Sparky charges more for each dance we do. I've been pushing the top end on price for years now, I don't think the market will go much higher. So, with the vend price topped out and energy costs climbing, I have to try to speed production up without sacrificing quality to keep the profit margin stable, or I go hungry. Cold equations, totally merciless.

Charly