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From: "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking
Subject: Re: make - forge? - wedge for feathers-and-wedge rock-split
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2024 08:59:53 -0400
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"Richard Smith"  wrote in message news:m1v856w8d2.fsf@void.com...

Making them anew with something like forging could be a good project.
-----------------------------

I'm only a novice blacksmith. Much of my practice was in drawing out a round 
bar into a long tapered one of square cross section. The idea is to compress 
the whole width of the bar under the hammer, since flattening a solid round 
section applies internal tension to areas protruding outside the hammer 
strike that can open voids. If desired it can be rounded after tapering.

As thinning an area widens as well as lengthening it, the thickness had to 
be reduced gradually and evenly on all sides, keeping a square cross section 
and immediately correcting bending, twisting and the tendency to become a 
rhombus. For me lengthening with a cross peen hammer caused more trouble 
than it was worth.

The height of the anvil top affects how squarely you can consistently hit. 
My anvil is too light for serious forging which I can't and don't need to do 
anyway so I raised it to a more convenient bench height for less strenuous 
work on sheet metal etc. It cured the temptation to hammer on the milling 
machine table.

For a wedge my guess, based on pre-curving a single edged froe blade to end 
up straight, is that the blank might have to be started with a square taper 
before converting to a parallel sided wedge. Undoubtedly a real smith could 
tell you more. Modeling clay is said to be good to practice with.

The wedge can be cut/broken from the bar by notching it all around on a 
chisel standing upright in the square (Hardy) hole. The instructor was 
amazed at how square and even the tenon on my attempt was, until I told him 
I had used my milling machine. They have an ethic of using only traditional 
methods, which is fine for artistic work but not the machine parts I wanted.

It was remarkable how many shapes the smith could form with only a hammer 
and anvil. I didn't progress past drawing out a taper, stepping down a 
shoulder and bending over the horn. My efforts at twisting can't be called 
progress, or art.