Blacksmithing for Beginners - Basic Hammering Techniques

in this video I'm going to be covering all the basic hammering techniques that a new Smith needs to learn and master in the last video I showed you how I shaped my hammers and in a video before that I discussed how I shape my anvil face in this video I'm going to be putting all that together and showing you how the hammer and the end will work together to become a forging machine that will help you get through the work that you need to do so here's where we all got started I think this is day one for just about everybody you take a bar put a dead center in the anvil and then take a hammer and start beating on it it's the basic driving a nail home technique it does have its uses but unfortunately the processes that are going to give you the most trouble can't be approached in this way so the first thing that you have to learn is that working in the center of the anvil with the flat face of the hammer is the most inefficient way of moving metal so that technique is only used for processes where we either don't want to move any metal at all or we're making very very slight changes to the shape of the piece so for example here I'm turning a square bar into a round bar I'm not making the round bar any smaller I'm just turning that square bar into a round bar so all I need to do is to drive the corners of that square bar back onto itself and create a round bar if for example I wanted to flatten this bar and turn it into a rectangular shape with rounded corners the first thing you're going to notice is that you're going to have to really step up the amount of hammering that you're going to need to do to get this done it's okay for short runs and for making slight changes like I have here but you would use this technique to make any drastic change to this shape the second technique that you need to learn is called drawing down and that involves making drastic changes to the thickness of the bar but not necessarily to the width of the bar and for that technique you need to move away from the flat face and tip your hammer over slightly until it starts forging with the rounded corner of the hammer face if you're only forging a slight taper you can stay in the center of the anvil and just use the corners of the hammers to start forging the borrowed the rounded corner of the hammer drives into the metal much easier than the flat face can so it pushes the metal along the same way that a rolling pin does with a piece of clay so you use this technique to do the rough shaping and then you go back to the center of the anvil and with the flat face start refining that surface to the finished dimensions that you need if you need to make more of a drastic change to the shape you can use the same hammer technique but take the whole thing over to the edge of the anvil now the rounded corner of the anvil works with the rounded corner of the hammer and the metal is being pinched from both sides so that has a very dramatic effect on the shape of the metal especially as it gets thinner this is a great technique for moving a lot of metal but it's also a dangerous one you get hooked on seeing that metal growing out of the bar it's pretty easy to overshoot your target and to forge in a thin spot that you can't hammer out later so as you can see the basic technique that I use is to hammer a series of Fuller's along one edge of the bar and then I'll flip it 90 degrees and do the same thing to the other face of the bar the metal here is going pretty much in one direction so there really isn't any need to tumble the piece back and forth I just find it easier to do a run of Fuller's on one side and then flip it through a rough lers on the other side and again the basic technique for all forging really is to do the rough work during the hottest part of the heat and then as the bar cools down bring it back to the center of the anvil and use the flat face of the hammer to start refining that shape to see where you are and where the next heat has to go the third technique that you need to master really isn't a technique in itself but it's the ability to shift gears and to be able to go from heavy hammering move into something that really requires very little effort a lot of people have trouble putting a point on a bar for example and it's mainly because they really haven't been able to develop a sensitivity for how little pressure it really takes to move such a small piece of metal the key to forging a point on a bar is to first establish the slopes on the four sides and then to develop those slopes into a point if you try to mash the two sides down to a point and then turn it over 90 degrees and match those two sides back to a point you're basically just going to start work hardening that piece and it will crack hammering a chisel plane on the other hand is really just a matter of putting a slope on two faces of the bar and then turning the bar 90 degrees to control the width of that chisel point [Music] the rounded corners of the anvil can also be used to hammer in what I call offsets and offsets are basically just areas where bar transitions from one dimension to another around the corner of the anvil is a pre convenient way of putting in a smooth transition into a bar here I'm using the flat face of the hammer because I want to push the entire piece into the corner of the anvil so what this transition allows me to do is to continue drawing down the end of the bar into a much smaller dimension and when I'm done that offset will just turn into a smooth curve between the two sections anytime you're drawing down a long thin taper you always establish the point first and then you draw the taper down to that point now that the point is established I can go back and establish the main dimensions of that section again notice the rough forging and then finishing up with the flat of the hammer on the flat part of the anvil now we're shifting back into low gear again and returning a loop on the end of this bar I start by wrapping the tip around one of the rounded corners of my anvil and then the rest of the process is really just tapping and into shape with very very light hammer blows the key here is to have a very smooth taper without any irregularities so it just naturally wants to form into a curve when you tap it around here I'm setting up the next part of the process and you can see how that transition really simplifies the sharp Bend this sharp Bend is going to turn into a larger loop on the end of this bar I'm going to be able to start it the same way I did the smaller loop but I won't be able to complete it there I'm going to need to finish shaping this bend over the Horn of an anvil that can either be the Horn of your main anvil or as I have here a small stake anvil and the reason I have to do that with this one is because unlike the smaller loop where I started from the tip and started curling it towards the back this one I'm starting at the back and working towards the tip so I don't really have any way of shaping that loop without hammering it around some kind of a form so here's another angle of what I was doing the tip isn't hot because I dipped it in water before coming over here I need to hammer on that section so cooling it down will keep it from getting bent out of shape so here's the technique for hammering a bar around a horn or a mandrel to tighten the ring hammer the unsupported end of the loop down off of the tip of the horn to hammer the ring back open you move the horn over to the unsupported side of the loop and then you hammer down on the section of the ring that is attached to the handle so now that we've covered the three main techniques of forging metal along with a few related topics we're ready to move on to the fourth technique which involves using the opposite end of the hammer the crossbeam is the wide narrow face of a forging hammer and it fits 90 degrees to the handle and its job is to move metal across the width of the bar so it's basically doing the same job as drawing down only instead of making the bar longer cross painting makes the bar wider the last technique that you need to learn about is called upsetting when you're upsetting a bar you're hammering the bar back onto itself to make it thicker the simplest form of upsetting is when you just need a little bit of extra material at the end of the bar so for that application all you need to do is to take a short heat off the end of the bar and take a very light hammer and drive the end of the bar back onto itself I always use a light hammer when I'm upsetting the lighter hammer seems to deliver more of a sharp impact which seems to be beneficial for this process I also rotate the bar as I'm hammering so that tends to correct any tendency for the bar to veer off in one direction or another now it may look like I did a whole lot but when I push the metal all over to one side you can see that I've actually gained a fair amount the other application for upsetting is to provide some extra material somewhere along the length of the bar here I'm setting up to a demonstrate what's normally referred to as a square corner when you bend a bar without modifying the shape in any way the inside and the outside of that Bend are curved when you're forging a square corner you're actually tightening up that curve to such a point where you're able to hammer the ends of each bar that's going into that corner and once you do that you can start upsetting those two bars to get the extra bit of material that you need to fill in that radius and provide that nice outside square corner so that's the whole story in terms of forging metal there hasn't been anything made in the last 3,000 years that has used anything but the techniques that I've shown you in this video there are a lot of variations and there are countless numbers of combinations of techniques that you can use to build something but it still all boils down to a series of sequences that involve these basic techniques hi I'm Dennis and thanks for watching as most of you know for the past few years I've been producing YouTube videos on a part-time basis I am NOT looking to turn that hobby into a full-time job and for that I really need your help a small monthly contribution from a really small number of viewers will generate the income that I need to achieve that goal so if you're still the work that I'm doing and you want to lend your support please click on the patreon icon at the bottom of the screen thank you we'll see you next time

Channel: DF - In The Shop

Views: 202,708

Keywords: blacksmithing for beginners, blacksmith, wrought iron, ironwork

Id: J46hnxQ4HBA

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2017