Forging a Braided Twist handle

it's been a while since we've done the twist so let's go twist again welcome back to black bear forge where I hope to educate inspire and spark the imagination of anyone interested in the traditional art and craft of blacksmithing today we're going to look at a braided twist this is really a lot easier than it looks there's no actual braiding involved it's all twisting and a little bit of Forge whoa I'm gonna leave an inch inch and a half on each hand allow for the Forge weld and you want to twist all of these up in the same direction the same number of times so this is going to be three full revolutions I think it pays to count it after you're done busy talking to the camera not busy counting yep three one two three and just give them a little bit of a straightening up here two and three not too worried about the ends being weird like I say we're gonna Forge weld this next so she'd have three of these now with twists that all look the same I'm just gonna use a couple of pieces of baling wire remember these are still hot you can let these cool down and you can tack weld them with an arc welder if you want to so just get these to wrap up in a nice little bundle and put your bailing wire where you're not going to meet make the forge weld because you don't want to weld the wire into the piece so I've got one near one end and one near the middle and that leaves the other end free for my weld this certainly gets easier if you let them cool down first so now we're just going to heat this end up and get it ready for Forge welding it's going to take a little bit of finagling to get everything to come together so my first heat is just to work these down and get them into a better bundle and then I'll flux it and then we'll bring it up to welding heat this can be really kind of cranky to get to come together nicely so you just do the best you can you might be doing mess with your baling wire wraps so if you did this all the time you could design a pair of tongs designed to hold the the three part bundle just perfectly if that's about the best we're going to do so they're kind of loose they're not just tight together as I would like that all I do is kind of move them around in circles and once we start welding them they'll stay together better and turn them around over and under back and forth and just try to get him to heat evenly and I'm shoveling coke on to the fire I would not put green coal anywhere near the fire during the welding heat that's just gonna suck the heat right out of there you're getting close they're up the bright-orange we want a lemon yellow color [Music] we're going to make the initial weld in this swedge to help hold the pieces together and then force them into a tighter bundle as we will getting very close let's weld initially all I'm worried about is just getting a good stick so they want to stay together I want to try and keep the twist area out of the swedge so they don't mess up my twist that is nicely welded I'm going to take another heat just to refine that a little bit add a little bit more flux not very much though sure it's well that you can square it up at the pace of the anvil don't get this too small think about what you're going to do with this twist this piece of baling wire now so I don't accidentally weld it today the piece something like that welding again but you see that scar kicked out there the heels are welded but the scarfs are not really do all this is one heat but if you need more the animals so that I haven't damaged there might be a nice fireplace pokers or something like that then I'll go ahead and draw this out put a little ring on that end before we finish the twist and then it'll just be done so we are going to finish the twist it's going to head and draw this out metal welding heat helps refine the weld while I'm doing this I'm gonna go right up sure to blur the twist starts so I've got enough to get a wrench on when we do the twist working over the horn makes us pretty quick especially a welding heat it's amazing how much easier things move when they're hot rounding it up so grew it out square and I made it an octagon now we're going to make it round remember there are nine or six bars in that well all the way out to the end so it's a lot like working with wrought iron you don't want to do a lot of shaping when it's cold [Music] a little pearl on there and I'm going to bend the whole thing around into a ring start by offsetting it a little there cool the curl so I don't worry too much about hitting it so a place where a little round bic would be really handy since the torn of my anvil is pretty blunt that's all I want to do there that way can hang on a hook now we get to twist it and see if I've been right this whole time about what it's going to do here is our bar all ready to twist and we have initially twisted it clockwise so we want to twist it this time counterclockwise and I'm messing up my curl so afraid of that now let me get that hot again and go the other direction with this in by other direction I just mean I'm going to lock them the ring in the device instead of that untwist counterclockwise until I just like the results place a rawhide mallet helps I need to clean up my ring just a little bit so back in the fire there that completes our braided twist it's made out of six pieces of quarter inch round bar twisted in pairs so there's three pairs and those are then forged welded together and back twisted then we also added welding it to a handle so now this can be a nice fireplace poker or perhaps a rake or a shovel handle for the forge who knows what it might be I'll figure something out I've got about 30 inches of material there I can make a handle out of or a tool shaft out of so it might be just about anything by the time we're done with it's really a nice handle it makes her a nice large handle and it really mystifies people how it was done really not that complicated there's no actual knotting or braiding or anything else it's just twists three things put them together and then untwist them and this is what you get well I hope you enjoyed that video I hope you can give it a thumbs up I'd love it if you'd hit that subscribe button if you'd like to support the channel financially and help ensure that I can keep making these videos there are links for both PayPal and patreon down in the description and you may contribute to help support the financial cost of the videos it's just a donation there's no obligation and the videos will remain free in the meantime I hope you have time in your day to get out to your shop but do stay safe do wear your safety glasses and we'll see you for the next one you

Channel: Black Bear Forge

Views: 141,538

Rating: 4.9780855 out of 5

Keywords: twist, braided twist handle, braid, forged braid, forged twist, blacksmith twist, twisting steel, blacksmithing, blacvk bear forge, twisting, braiding iron bars, blacksmith, forged, wrought iron, how to, hand made, rope twist, black bear forge, blacksmith shop, basic blacksmithing, blacksmithing for beginners, blackbear forge, john switzer, blacksmith forge, blacksmithing projects, forge welding, hand forged, how to forge weld, coal forge

Id: 3Zk7f-5w9Ag

Length: 16min 25sec (985 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 09 2018