Excellent make, John! Beginnings of a matched set of grilling tools video series, perhaps? Long fork, tongs, skewer set, steak Turner (I know, but again for the series), beer can chicken stand. 🐾🔥⚒👍
Very nice video this week John. Always really like learning from your videos. Keep up the great craftsmanship and hard work my friend John. Keep up the great craftsmanship and hard work John. Forge on. Keep making. God bless.
Your, or my, timing is impeccable. I just got a request for one of these from a friend who does Pre-Rev War reenacting. Thanks for posting, John! Cheers! Whipple
Nice job, I like your fire starter. I use mine all the time for campfires, yellow dogs, and torch lighting for my oil field engines. Thanks for sharing.
Excellent video! And thanks for the protip on the abrasives! I just bought a used belt sander and wanted to find some quality belts for it for metalworking.
Hi John Great, an accessible manufacturing for me. Thank you. I also noticed this original and very effective tong to hold this form of iron. Did you make it ? It can’t be easy.
Big fan of your work! I would love to see how to make a top swage! Really no videos on it. Need to make some for my swage block! I think it’d be a good video just like your others. Forge on.
Great project! I have a couple questions: In any if your videos have you talked about avoiding diamond shape when working something square? I have a terrible time getting back to square once a diamond starts. If you’ve addressed this already I’d love to watch it. Secondly, and related to some degree, sometimes when going square-octagon-round, I somehow manage to introduce a quarter twist, and I’m not sure what I’m doing that causes it, and usually can’t manage to undo it, usually it’s not a huge deal, but sometimes it looks bad and I’d like to learn to avoid it. Again, If you’ve talked about it point me in the right direction if you can. I really appreciate your videos, I’ve done some little projects in a friends shop in the past, and have just started working on my own. I built a cheep gas forge and got a few tongs for free cleaning up a place, bought a couple hammers and a ok-ish anvil off Amazon, and a decent rounding hammer and set of tongs off blacksmiths depot, (although the hammer I had to re-handle right away, it was put on only with a short ring wedge and came loose first day) So now I have been trying to get back at it after a broken wrist. Got into it today and made a couple holdfasts, and then shouldered down some leaf spring to make a hardy tool. (That was more work than I expected, leaf spring sure is tough stuff!) Not perfect, as I’m fighting a recovering arm and inexperience, but serviceable tools got made! Your videos have been a huge source of encouragement and education while letting my wrist heal, and I’m excited to put on my safety glasses and make stuff!
I'm sure I have discussed the issue, but I have no idea in which video. The main issue is that you hammer blow isn't level at the point of impact. Could be from technique or it could be your anvil is too high or too low.
@@BlackBearForge thanks! It’s probably technique related, I was careful to get my anvil height right, and I know my hammer technique is weak at the moment dealing with discomfort and reduced strength. Practice and time.
I have a question for you, Switzer, if you can take the time to answer it. What was your biggest step forward while building your blacksmithing business? Was RU-vid a major contributing factor for your success?
Many years of not having to earn a living as a blacksmith. That allowed me to reinvest into better tools and equipment. But my biggest single step was being recognized by a high profile woodworker that writes magazine articles, books and blogs. His single blog post on some hinges he ordered from me really helped. However, there is no way I could have planned the series of events that led up to that hinge order. The harder you try to make something like that happen, the less likely it will come out the way you want it to. So in the long run its still just doing the work and improving year after year. While I set out on RU-vid with the idea that it would bring in customers for the work I was doing, it turns out I was more popular with other blacksmiths and RU-vid has never been a big influence on sales of product. RU-vid has become its own branch of my blacksmithing business and now produces about 1/2 of my overall income, with a bit more than 1/2 of the work. Again this is after several years of making videos and improving my skills for little or no compensation. But its still improving and in a few more years RU-vid will likely be my main source of shop related income.
Would you condition that with vegetable oil for food use, or do you prefer something else. My wife puts everything in the dishwasher so my handles have to be wire wheeled and re conditioned every so often
Both still waiting along with many other projects that can't be completed in a timely enough manner to keep consistent videos coming out. The window grill project probably needs several weeks of just practice pieces and then a full month to complete if I don't video the process, twice as long if I do.
Simple projects don't require long videos and if I make them long just for the sake of stretching it out, people quit watching. Currently this video is at about 55% average watch time. The walking axe is about done, hopefully by tomorrow so I can start editing it.
Yes, that is exactly the way I take care of items like this. However I am also trying to keep this one a bit shiny, so I don't heat it as hot as I would for a black finish
Yes it is. Its been a few years. Making axes and such is really hard on a gar forge and I wear them out much faster than a shop that doesn't do a lot of heavy forge welding. Same forge would last most people many years. The last one will get repaired and relined for the next rotation.