Making a letter opener/desk knife from a horse shoe
I finally got the time to fire up my forge from Chili Forge in San Marcos. After years of struggling with home built ones, we splurged last spring on a commerical quality. It's a blazing hot little beastie and below is running on about 4 psi propane and one burner.
You can see the horseshoe heating here. Below we cut it in half...
Straighten, flatten, and shape the head...
Shape the blade on the anvil, de-slag with a wire wheel, and then grind the lines true...
then harden the edge with a water quench, temper in the oven, parkerize, and engrave the chisel marks
Ta-da! All photos are by Ben as part of his photography merit badge.
Nice work!
Where'd y'all get the anvil ... ?
Can I have a forging lesson when Laura and I visit ... ?
-doc
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We got it from Old World Anvils on the web. It's not an English design so it lacks a shoulder and has a second horn.
Sure, but we are all still learning here. So much more to figure out.
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