Forging a Billhook

it's still summer here in beulah and that means there's still plenty of work to be done outside around the property both gardening and clearing brush and today i thought i would take a look at a tool that is more inclined for clearing brush than it is anything else and that is a bill hook i'm john switzer and you're watching black bear forge a bill hook is a one-handed tool used kind of like a machete but it has a hooked in that can hook brush and really kind of drag it into the cutting edge of the tool they're usually fairly smallish they're not great big heavy tools not only have i never made a bill hook but i've never actually had one in my hand or seen one in person so i'm interpreting this based on numerous pictures on the internet there are lots of different styles of bill hooks i don't think it's a project you can get wrong as long as you hold it in one hand and can chop with it and it isn't a meat cleaver or an axe it's probably pretty close to a bill hook so for today's project i've got an old scrappy piece of leaf spring and this measures this measures about 10 and a half inches or 270 millimeters to where the mounting hole in the leaf spring was and that's just where i'm going to go ahead and cut it off it's about an inch and three quarters wide so that's about 45 millimeters wide and it's about 3 8 of an inch thick or about 10 millimeters thick i don't think there's anything magical about this size it's just what i happen to have on hand i'm going to start with the far end of this and we're going to start by working a handle shape into this most of them have a tang so the handle is one solid piece and the tang goes through the handle usually secured on the back end but i'm going to make a handle that will get slab handles so the handle is continuous all the way through and then has a wooden grip on either side of the handle just because it sounds interesting then we'll worry about forging the blade end finish size is just whatever the finish size happens to be i don't have a goal in mind other than making it look like a bill hook i have a fire going already but before we get to work i got a box in the mail the other day from pay tool and apparently a lot of you folks have asked where i get my hotmail gloves and i send you over to paytool and you've bought quite a few of these gloves from paytool so ally the office manager over at paytool sent me out a pair of gloves to say thank you so thank you ali and thank you amy because you're probably the one that paid for them i really do appreciate the gloves they also sent out a new style of glove and this is a single they're sold individually and i think they're ambidextrous there's no left or right just put on whichever hand you want to wear them on and this is a knit hot melt glove it says it's a new item the heat eliminator glove sold by the each try us and let us know what you think so if i need a glove for today's project i think i'll wear this one they also sent out a nice pay tool t-shirt so i appreciate that i've been burning a lot of holes through my t-shirt lately and without the rocky mountain smiths conference this year i won't be getting a new t-shirt there so glad to have a new t-shirt anyways that fire's still lit and we need to get to work so i'll meet you over at the anvil so you unbelievable now i'll be honest after some of the cracking issues i had with that wrought iron for the ads in the last video i was looking forward to a video that i didn't have to deal with issues like that but that's what i get for having a positive attitude i guess old leaf spring has been used and abused and it's not uncommon for it to have cracks that's why in most cases i don't really advocate too much for using old salvaged materials they're going to have flaws occasionally now you might make a dozen of these out of old leafs where you only have one break and the fact that it broke in the handle i can still fix this i can still deal with that but if it breaks again in the blade there's really not much we can do except make some other kind of blade out of it and if it has that many flaws in it then this just goes to the scrap pile so there's always a risk when using old or salvaged materials that they're going to have flaws that you can't see till you start forging but to fix that what i'm going to do is i'm just going to draw this out into a tang which is the way most bill hooks are done anyways so that's just what we're going to do on this one but it's just something to be aware of when you're using old materials and staying flexible means you can recover sometimes if not get a new piece of material so so so uh [Music] you you you okay so foreign you oh do so i'm just going to let that cool on top of the coals there as the fire dies out and then i'm going to pick this up again tomorrow but for you watching the video it'll be just in a few seconds so [Music] [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] ah [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so so so so [Music] [Music] so so i have the blade hardened and it has been through that first tempering cycle but that leaves it an even hardness throughout and i would like it to have a little bit of a variable temper so it is a little bit softer and not as inclined to be brittle along the back of the blade this is the kind of tool that i would rather have a little bit tougher a little softer have to sharpen it a little bit more often then i would like to have something that might chip or crack in use because this will get heavy use and some abuse and things like that so i want to temper it a little bit softer than what that did especially back here in the back of the blade and that will help support the cutting edge better make the whole tool a little bit tougher more durable the tang was not hardened although i will probably soften just this little bit again so i have this really big block of steel here and i'm just going to put this on there and watch for the temper colors to run i don't quite want to get this to blue along the cutting edge but certainly into the purple range would be okay again i'd rather have a tool that needs to be sharpened or even bends before i'd rather have a tool that breaks and this may take a while i may have to reheat this block once or twice this could be a 15 20 minute project just depending on how heavy the blade is and how heavy a block of steel you've got to work with here foreign so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: Black Bear Forge

Views: 47,494

Rating: 4.958909 out of 5

Keywords: Blacksmith, blacksmithing for beginners, black bear forge, john switzer, Blacksmithing, Blacksmithing project, how to blacksmith, blacksamith shop, blacksmith forge, learn blacksmithing, billhook, bill hook, brush hook, forging a bill hook, leaf spring, firging a bill hook from leaf spring, knife making, forged blade, making tools, how to forge a billhook, how to make a billhook, making a billhook, brush tool, selfsuficient blacksmith, homestead blacksmithing

Id: dIctVM0KbIU

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020