Projects

Bottle Opener
Three-Legged Table
Metal Rose
Pineapple Twist
Iron Heart
Tools

Bottle Opener

5 bottles of Maine Root and Izze soda, waiting to be opened. The two parallel arms of a spring fuller are applied to a glowing red bar. Hammering down on the arms creates a pair of indentations on each edge of the bar. Here you can see the 'spring' end of the fuller, which curves around more than half a circle before straightening out in the arms. The bar is thicker near the neck, and may need to be hammered flat again.

The first student project assignment was to make a bottle opener. Start with a piece of bar stock 1/4"x1", and put a notch in it 1.5" from the end. This will become the neck between the handle and the opener. Use a spring fuller to neck the material at that point down to 0.5" wide. Hammer a taper into what will be the handle of your bottle opener, up to the area that was just fullered.

It's easiest to work on the corners by bracing one edge against the anvil, leaving the other corner up. After a few heats, the corners are quite round. A round 1/4-inch punch is applied to a yellow-hot workpiece. The metal directly around the punch is visibly cooler than the rest, as heat transfers quickly out of the workpiece. The workpiece and punch are moved to the corner of the anvil, over the pritchel hole. Another view of punching through over the pritchel hole. The punch is about an inch through the hole, but hasn't yet widened to its full width. Working over the hardy hole, since the pritchel hole is narrower than the punch. The hole in the workpiece is nearly an inch wide now, with the help of the hardy anvil. The hole is wide enough now, and has been centered in the end of the workpiece.

Start rounding off the corners at the end, by hammering on them at a 45° angle. Use a punch to begin to create a hole in the center of the bottle opener head. Continue to heat and punch until you are approximately 3/4ths of the way through, then flip the stock over and punch through the other side. When you are close to punching through the material, place the piece over the pritchel hole. This way, when you do punch through, the punch will not damage the anvil face or shatter. Continue to use the punch as a drift to open up the hole, until it is big enough to fit on the horn. Hammer the drift into the material over the pritchel or hardy hole. Flip sides every heat to prevent unwanted distortions. Extra hands may be needed to hold the punch steady while hammering. A hardy horn can be used to open the hole, as an intermediate step between the drift and the anvil horn.

A rapidly cooling ring is widened around the hardy horn. Widening the hole using the anvil horn. Widening the hole using the anvil horn. The hammer comes in to hit the ring against the horn from the side. More hammering from the side.

Widen the hole using the horn of the anvil, a small hardy horn, or a succession of larger drifts, until is is roughly the size of a bottlecap. It should have a roughly round cross-section. While hammering using the horn, the majority of your blows should be around the circumference of the piece, not on the faces. You do not want your piece to become thin and weak during this operation. Only hammer on the faces to correct unwanted distortion created by hammering on the horn.

A flat round punch 1/4-inch wide is used at the neck of the bottle opener, pushing metal out into the hole. It's helpful to have an extra hand to hold the workpiece while hammering on the punch. The opener is fitted against a soda cap. The top of the ring should lever against the cap when the tab is fitted under the edge. The finished opener is cut off the stock with a hardy. After putting a notch in each side for alignment, the piece can be laid flat on the hardy to cut across instead of through. Gripping the opener with tongs, the corners are rounded and the surfaces hammered smooth. A bottle opener and an open bottle of soda. Polished bottle opener on a newspaper.

Form the tab for lifting the cap using a blunt punch, pushing the metal towards the hole. Test the result on a bottle to see if anything needs altering or neatening up at this point. Cut the workpiece off the stock, leaving 4-6" after the neck as a handle. A hardy or hacksaw can be used. Tidy up the corners and faces, as needed. Crack open a cold soda and enjoy! The finished bottle opener.

A sharp punch defines a line across the end of the workpiece. Zooming in, the red-hot metal is nearly cut through, so a bronze plate is placed under the workpiece with a hold-down. The cut is almost finished now. Photo of the cut off metal, the bronze plate, and the bottle opener, which shows the hole is now relatively centered in the end of the bar. The melted metal at the end of the opener is so weak, it can be deformed just by pressing it against the anvil face. A close-up of the ragged, scorched metal. Opening a soda, after the end of the opener is rounded again and made an even thickness.

This student punched a hole too far from the end of the piece, and decided it would be easier to remove the extra metal than even it out. Using a sharp punch, a curved cut is started and then reinscribed until the cut is complete. Note the use of a bronze plate to preserve the anvil face and punch tip from damage. Leaving the piece in the fire too long or at too high a temperature can melt the metal, deforming the shape and weakening the structure. Here, the student successfully salvaged the opener.

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Three-Legged Table

A curved piece of metal being measured with a yardstick. The student mimes placing something on the surface defined by the top of the table leg. Creating a right-angle bend at one end. Not quite a right-angle yet. Using the horn to create a curve. Touching up the point at the bottom end. A leg is clamped in a vise and twisted with a tool containing slots of different widths between two handles, to allow various widths of stock to be manipulated. Holding the three legs together to check for variations in height or curvature.

The student TA for the course designed and built a table with three curved legs. First, measure the legs to define when the curves should begin. Is this a comfortable height? Then make the legs with a right-angle bend at the top, and a curve at the bottom. To avoid buckling, align the top and bottom supports. To finish, the legs need to be welded or fastened together, and a glass top added.

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Metal Rose

A sheet of brainstorming about a rose with a twining stem and leaves. The finished design, showing a scroll at one end, two leaves on separate pieces wrapped and welded around the stem, and an indeterminate flower at one end. A leaf shape, showing striations from the hammer peen. From the side, the hammer comes down parallel to the striations. Hammering with the other, flat, side.

Sketching the design helps identify problem areas and estimate how much stock is needed. Here, a thin cross peen is used to spread the metal into a leaf shape. Use the hammer's face to flatten the dents made by the cross peen.

The hold-down works by being hammered into the pritchel hole, so it wedges down against the workpiece. Veins have been chiseled into the leaf surface. Holding the leaf with a tongs, the rest of the metal is rolled up into a scroll. The metal leaf has been melted off, being thinner than the rest of the piece. Close-up of the melted metal, with the bulk of the workpiece still glowing red-hot.

This piece needs to be clamped aggressively, so it doesn't move while veins are incised with a cold chisel. On the other end of the bar, a tight scroll is formed. Re-working metal too much runs the risk of weakening or melting it. Fire management is especially important when working with small, thin sections of metal.

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Pineapple Twist

A twisted 1/2-inch square bar begins to be bent over the corner of the anvil face. Flattened corners show where the hammer has fallen. The yellow-hot bent end, close up. The twists are tighter near the end. The other end of the bar has fewer, more even twists. Chiseling on the other side. Chiseling down the center of the bar. The red-hot bar shows grooves in two sides, all along the center between the bent ends. Close-up of the twisted bar, having its corners hammered flat. Close-up of lines chiseled into the flattened faces. A deep groove runs the length of the face. A hold-down keeps the workpiece still while chiseling.

One end of a square bar is twisted and curved, then the other. A cold chisel is used to make a groove in all four faces of the bar. Then the grooved section is twisted, and hammered to create four new faces in line with the original faces. A second set of grooves is chiseled.

Carefully aligning the two ends after the center has been heated and twisted. Photo of the finished piece. A close-up of the center part, showing the diagonal patterns of bumps.

Finally, the middle section is heated and twisted halfway back towards its original position. The finished twist resembles the bumps on a pineapple.

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Iron Heart

An instructional sheet for creating an iron heart puzzle. Drawing a taper on one pair of faces of a 1/2" square bar. Tapering in the other direction. Adjusting the space between the coils of the scroll with a pliers. Hammering the scroll up farther.

To implement this classic brainteaser, measuring the dimensions accurately is important. It consists of a heart, a twisted bar, and a U-shaped piece with loops in each end. A taper is drawn and coiled up to form the wide end of the twisted bar.

Checking the gap in the point with a pliers. Based on the instruction sheet, the scroll needs to pass through the point. The pieces fit well together. A rough heart shape in the fire. Hammering on the inner point, with the curves against the anvil face. The ends of the bar have crossed too far, and need to be pulled apart with a pliers. Adjusting one red-hot curve with a pliers. Hot metal can easily be bent farther than is desired. Evening out one curve using the anvil horn. The twisted bar lies on the anvil face as a loop is made in one end of another bar.

The inner point of the heart needs to be wide enough for the twisted bar to pass through. Then form the rest of the heart. Bending the stock into a precise shape is typically an iterative process. Heating only part of the metal at a time, to limit where deformation occurs, is helpful.

Forming the loop on the anvil horn. With the twisted bar through the loop, can the heart be taken off the U? The loop is large enough to let the heart come off. Now the only thing left is to finish the U and put a loop in the other end, and finish the assembly.

The final part of the toy requires making a loop large enough for the inner point of the heart to pass through. Putting it all together, the pieces fit!

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Tools

The handle of a poker made of round stock twisted around itself like a rope. Two round and two square bars are forge welded together, twisted around each other, and scrolled at the end. A square bar is hammered into an octagonal shape, twisted, and then hammered a bit more. A new punch ends in a misshapen piece of slag, compared to the square punch next to it.

Tools in the forge are often made or repaired there, and display various decorative effects. Managing fire temperature can be difficult, and mistakes can melt the workpiece. This was going to be a new punch.

The flattened end of a round bar, heating in the fire. The red-hot section 6-inch from the end of the bar is curved over the anvil horn. Hammering the bar further, to create a recurve. Sparks fly as the flat end of the hold-down is ground to shape with the power grindwheel.

Having enough hold-downs is helpful when doing lots of work with punches and other hand-held tools. Luckily, they're not hard to make. First, flatten one end of the bar. Next, curve the bar up and over into a perpendicular post for the hardy hole. Last, neaten up the end to remove any sharp corners.

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