A new toy

Well its not really "new". Its a 50mmx1525mm belt linisher from Vanco. Its has a 1.5hp think 2500 odd RPM motor 3 Phase. I was thinking for getting a single phase motor in there but its came with a pretty good 3 phase so I think i will go down the inverter route. I will alter the guard a little so I can get to the platen better. The rubber on the wheels looks pretty good and there is plenty of meat on them. It came with a very strudy welded stand/table and weighs a bloody ton. lets see what I can make with it :)

Somthing big

I have been itching to make a mountain man bowie for quite some time after falling in love with the Bowie that was a main feature in the film Seraphim falls.

I wanted to stay to "mountain man" and American theme so I used American maple for the handle and brass for the guard and butt plate. Its a good size with a 235mm blade (9inch) and a total length of 370mm or 14.5 inches. The blade is 35mm wide and 5mm thick on the spine. Its a big thing and sat here on my desk taking up too much room but I don't know what to do with it now.

But I don't play Tennis?

I have tennis elbow I think. I have had it for a few weeks now and even though its pretty slight, it is starting to annoy me. You would think with all the hammering etc, that would have done it, but no. It was a machete, I was clearing a lot of brush in the garden that I had been putting off for years and I used a small folding saw for the bigger stuff and a machete for clearing and clearing small branches etc. I noticed it a few days after and just thought little of it and thought it would fade in a couple of days. It has stuck around though. I have done some forging, nothing too heavy and seemed to have managed all right. So I will just have to play it by ear but I have a real hammering urge at the moment.

New web site

Well, I have been procrastinating long enough. I had a web site a while back but I really did not spend any time on it. This time around I have (I hope) made a better effort. I am not a computery person so its been hard work and has take a silly amount of time to get it to the condition that it is on now. Its not fully finished, I have a few more bits to do like I have to integrate Paypal and a shopping cart in there if I can work out how to do it. Please have a look. It can be found at

www.farquharforge.com

The International Boomerang Blade

I sold a blade to a good chap in Phoenix Arizona a while back. I shipped it out to him on the 2nd of March, he mailed me and said it never came. So we sorted it out between us and thought the matter had ended. Today, this morning the blade came back, still in its packaging with a Big red Royal mail sticker saying there was no one to receive it. The odd thing is the royal mail don't deliver in the USA but the United States postal service does so why does it have a UK royal mail sticker on it saying there was no one to receive it?....Most odd.

Bronze Forged Pendants

I have been making pendants for a while now, firstly in steel then in copper and now in bronze. I thought (hoped) I could cold forge the bronze like copper but it work hardens very quickly and then splits under the hammer, so alas I had to fire the forge up but only a little heat.

Its an odd material to work with as you have to forge it hot but if you get it to cherry red or hotter it just turns into mush with out warning. When its hot its very soft but then in two seconds its rock hard again, steel and copper on the other hand tend to harden slowly as they cool.

I had a play and made these today for pendants or key chains.

Forged Steel pendants

I make these quite a bit while the forge is warming or cooling. People seem to like them as they have a nice organic rustic look to them and there a little bit ironage like. I like to experiment with the scrolls and loops and each one is pretty unique. They are a little fiddly to make as you have to keep the steel hot to form it and as its pretty thin stuff it likes to cools fast.

Stacking rings

I always liked the looks of stacking rings as they give the appearance of a band but give you the option of how and how many you want to wear. I made these from 2mm diameter sterling silver and 1.5mm copper. I thought about fusing them together to made one ring but I think they work better loose. I would model them on my finger as they just about fit on my pinky but my hands are no models hands.

Punch from Spring

One of my neighbor's kids was out on a walk when he came across a coil spring of some kind. He brought it to me as he know i could make some strange thing from it, Its is good steel and it hardens well. I was asked by a British Blades member http://www.britishblades.com to make him a couple of punches for him to emboss some thin copper he was going to make into some fishing lures. I cut off some small sections of the spring and annealed them then got to work on them with some hand files and shaped the tip to be like fish scales. I oil quenched them and gave them a good clean and tested them some some old copper pipe. The customer was very pleased with them.

My Jeweller's bench

I been wanting a place of my own to do my silversmithing and my wife is getting a bit sick of me taking over the kitchen table. Normally jewelers benches cost about £200-400 each!!!, that's a fortune for a table with a semi-circle cut out of it. I went down to one of my local DIY stores and bought some spruce batons and some 1x2''and some timberboard some drilling and screwing later and a couple of layers of diamond hard varnish later and I have my very own jewelers bench. Its cost me a afternoon and about £60 for all the materials. Its much cheaper and bigger than a bought one.

Forgotten but not gone

I post up adverts for some of my items some sell and some just sit there for a while. I use photobucket for my image hosting and I always leave the links up so the photos are still there long after I have forgotten about the item for sale. I had a customer message me and ask me for a forged knife that I posted ages ago, the knife has been sitting here on my desk for a long time. Well its sold now so I figure its a good idea to leave adverts up for as long as you can as its a great way for people to see the sort of thing you make and they may even buy something you have forgotten about.

Some of my previous knives and blades

Here is a couple of photobucket slide shows that I did a while back.

Some of my previous knives

http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...t=f7bd40b9.pbw

Some of my previous knife blades

http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...t=c9652a7e.pbw

Making Mokume Gane

I have been experimenting in making Mokume Gane. This is one of my first rings, this was made from copper and sterling silver and was commissioned by a gent in in the middle east. I love mking this stuff, i really like the way the pattern reveals ists self as you sand the ring to shape. I am trying to master making Mokume in a kiln but i am finding it hard to source some of the sundery parts in the process. I do a google and you find a dozen sites in the States who sell exactly what you need but none in the UK, I know its out there its just a question of finiding it and finding what they call it here.

First day/post

I have just set this blog up and have never done a blog before. i plan to use it to keep track of things that I make, mostly out of metal, I just hope it does not turn into one of those blogs where people rant about the news and politics all day as we have a zillions of those.