Today I forged another smaller hook and added it to my collection. This is my third attempt at forging a hook and I can already tell that I’m getting better.
On another bright note, yesterday I found an old and well used Cut Devil Tool at the flea market. It is the head of an old Railroad hammer and was used to cut rail lines once upon a time. I thought it a steal at four bucks and I already found a use for it today as a hot chisel. It needs some TLC. As you can see in the picture below, it has seen a lot of action.
Practice Makes Perfect
Learning how to do anything requires enough practice to improve until one reaches the desired level of excellence.
How much practice is enough? All of it!
So I made another hook. My goal is to forge 100 hooks of varying designs and I figure by the time I hit 20 I’ll get into a good routine and then be able to make them faster and with fewer mistakes.
Who knows, once I have enough maybe I’ll try selling them.
Forging a Small Hook
The design of this hook is similar to the last hook I made. I called that an “Over-the-Door” style hook. Like the description suggests, the hook hangs over something like a door. That hook had around one inch of clearance.
Today’s hook in comparison has 3/16th of an inch of clearance. It can hang over a small cable or parachute cord, I suppose. However, I designed this hook to hang over the top of a small pin-board.
Material
About two inches from a leaf spring U bolt.
Last week I used half of the U bolt to make that hook. Today I used about 25% less material.
Forging the Hook
This was the same process as described in my last post so I’ll list the steps.
- Drew and squared the U bolt until I had a 3/16” by 5” piece of metal.
- Cut the new material from the U bolt using my new cut devil.
- Forged the scroll and hook.
- Drew out and flattened the top of the hook until I have about 1” of material.
- Forged the flattened end into basically a small square hook.
- Hot brushed piece and sealed with boiled linsead oil.
Lessons Learned
I learned two main things today.
- Forging smaller items requires more coordination.
- Using the right tools makes blacksmithing much easier.
Final Thoughts
Today was the first forge session that I haven’t walked away with blisters and hot spots. My hands are getting stronger, and I’m looking forward to being able to blacksmith more frequently.
Secondly, I want to double tab point two above. Using the right tool for the job makes a huge difference. First with the bolt tongs and now with the cut devil, I can do things that I struggled with before.
Today was fun!
