wood chisel

today I forged a wood chisel from a piece of car spring.

It's a gouge, useful for.. well, gouging.  I quenched it and accidentally let the tempering colors slip up to a blue rather than a straw/light brown.  Tempering is a process of reducing some of the stresses caused by quenching.  It softens the steel a bit, giving it strength.  We'll see how it holds up.  I may need to heat treat it a second time.

The tempering colors are just barely visible in this photo.  You can see the yellow color shifting into a blue towards the cutting tip.  The red reflection from my camera messes things up a bit.  Is that why expensive cameras are matte black?

  I also forged a few nails.  Each one took me at least three heats to draw it out, cut it from the stock, and form the head.  A real smith back in the day would have forged his nails in a single heat.  What a skill!

while we're on the topic of forged things, here's something I made earlier this year.  The proportions are pretty ugly, but I think the scroll turned out okay.