Your break at the bend accured because what you have is a piece of wrought iron. This material HAS to be worked hot ! The other issue is that having come from a wagon tire the quality is probably not of the highest quality. To make the bend you want in this material ,it should be bent at the anvil at a yellow heat. It can then be trued a little in the vice. Bending in the vice caused the cracking as the vice acted as a heat sink , making it too cold to bend. The scoring to mark your bend also didn't help as it cuts the fibers of the iron and weakens it. Don't ask me how I know ! 50 years a blacksmith 😊
Very good to know, this was extremely helpful and I really appreciate your comment. I'm going to pin this comment to the top so helpfully it can help others to avoid this same issue. I've never really worked wrought iron before, I don't have access to a lot of it so this is a learning experience for me. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
Your more than welcome ! I'm from the east coast where there is a lot more probability of encountering worught iron. So the experience of working with it is something learned here early on. @@FarmsteadForge
Just got word from the seller of a used vise missing parts, he's coming to town Saturday and I'll be building this spring on Sunday. Thanks for the video :)
Jayce I appreciate seeing the failures and work-through more than you know. These are the videos that help us all more than the perfectly forged perfectly fit every time ones. You did a great job matching the old piece with hardware you can't tell was replaced. Wonderful video.
Wow, thank you, I really appreciate that! It can be really tough to put your shortcomings and failures up for the whole world to critique, but I'm learning that it is worth it if it helps others and it also helps expand my knowledge. Thanks again for your positive comment.
Thanks for taking us along with this project. I have to make the same parts minus the attachment bracket. I have to forge the shackle, spring and key/wedge. This was helpful. I will make a slot punch-drift to do it with also out of some 1" coil spring. Thanks again!
You sound like me... have to make the tools before the official project can even begin. Make your hole just a little off, not as much as I did because mine was too tight - I had to do quite a bit of filing on it. Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Jayce. Glad to see you got it worked out and that we all get to see it plus some experience working with yesteryears metal. Now you can see why us smiths are more than happy to work with new metals as the old metals are finicky at best. Great job!!~ Also, you asked how many post vises I have. I now have just 2 and both working and in great shape.Thanx again~
Most of the wrought iron around here was lost to the scrap drives so this is the first time I've ever had the privilege to work with it. My hats off to the guys that built wagon tires back in the day because that stuff would have been tough to work with! That's awesome both of your post vises are usable and in good shape. Oh, and guess what? I got a huge set of sheet metal shears (4' long!) from the same place I scored the swage block. I'll try to work them into a video here soon... you'll be jealous 😉
Very nice looking vise. The forge weld must be good as hard as you were driving the wedge in. And with the mistake with the steel splitting is just a learning experience for you and all of us that watch your video. Another job well done!
Ya the forge weld really held up great with the beating I put it through. I learned a lot about wrought iron through this project, I hope it was valuable to others too. Thanks for your comment and for watching!
That's wrought iron. They used to use silica sand as flux to refined the iron and forge weld it over and over, giving the iron a grain structure that can split pretty easily.
That's how you learn....experience is the mother of all knowledge. Any blacksmith, that's worth listening to, will tell you of their failures and what they did to work around that failure. I haven't worked much with wrought iron for this very reason (I'm new at this, as I have only been blacksmithing since 2007). I get that you are using what you have, but modern iron (post 1960's) is better for most things structural (and yes that will get some hate, but still my opinion). If you are trying to remain true to period pieces, then yes, stick with the iron of the time you are working in (if you can find it). I have re-done several post vises and have used modern iron because I want them to work past my lifetime without having to redo them again. Not that modern iron can't fail. It's just easier to work with and the heat tolerances are more forgiving due the the smaller grain pattern. Modern iron has more tensile strength (gives rather than breaks) than wrought iron, but wrought iron has greater compression strength. Great work though.
not to be the key board warier correcting you, however when you look at materials under tensile test with respect to deformation and failure, steel with higher tensile strength material tend to undergo brittle failure, and materials with a lower tensile strength will undergo ductile failure, think how a file fractures and a mild steel bar will bend. the file will deformed at a much higher applied force, however if fails catastrophically, also the important material property with regard to resisting of forces is the yield point, this is where the deformation changes from elastic (non permanent) to plastic (permanent) (if you are interested look up the stress strain curve of steel). anyway, i completely agree with you on the advantages of modern steels with the usability, with the main advantages being consistency between different batches (you know what you get we you by a specific alloy), and the absence of impurities (which act as stress rises leading to lower material strength).rather the grain structure of homogeneous steel (not wrought iron) is more dependent of the heat treatment which controls grain growth. hope you not take this comment the wrong way, in practice you comment was correct, i just wanted to propose some of the mechanisms from a more academic perspective
I find I cannot (no luck) forge wrought iron in my gas forge. I get way better results with my coal and charcoal forges. The quality of my wrought iron is low quality and I find the coal and or charcoal works way better for me. Also like mentioned in earlier post, it has to be worked hot, hotter than what you would work mild steel.
good day to you sir i have a vice with similar issues (no mounting bracket, key, wedge or spring) i happened to find your channel looking to make my own hardware but im not sure i am set up enough for this task is there a way we could work something out ? blessings
I replied to your comment on my crooked jaw post vise video with a link to a video that might help you out. If that doesn't help, feel free to send me an email at jaycefulbright@gmail.com - thanks!
@@bc65925 Also, on the backside there is some caked on flux that I didn't get cleaned off. I probably used too much flux, just erring on the cautious side of things.
