How do I forge bar stock into a triangle?

[mattmaus]

Title pretty much sums it up.

My only thought so far is to bash it into a swage block with a "V" groove.

Is there a mystic ninja pirate dwarf smith trick that I'm missing?

[losthelm]

Do you need a taper?
if not you could use a lathe and form dies for a rolling mill of some sort.
Working around 1350 or would let you use mild steel dies and adjust the spacing on the rollers for each pass.
Much like planning down a board.
A beeder or slip roll may work, a planetary bender may work but its going to take a lot to justify the investment.

This thread suggests V blocks,
hwww.iforgeiron.com/topic/11844-forging-triangle-cross-sections/

[Ckanite]

I would roughly hammer it first at the edge of an anvil and then move on to the v groove swage block. The pre forming will make your life much easier when you move to the swage.

[schreiber]

Heh, as long as we're suggesting equipment intensive processes, why not draw it?

[Sean Powell]

The only way I know of is with a V shaped swadge block. You might carefully turn a round into a hexagon but there needs to be something on the other side to take the impact.

Profesionally they would probably roll it but I don't know any sources for triangular stock.

Good luck!
Sean

[mattmaus]

Heh, as long as we're suggesting equipment intensive processes, why not draw it?

Right? Reading some of that gave me flashbacks to an old bugs bunny cartoon where they fell a tree at a lumber yard and send it through this huge mill, end up sticking it into what looks like a pencil sharpener and grind the whole thing down into a toothpick.

ANYWAY... it sounds like a swage is the way to go then.

Kinda figured, but I wanted to make sure my thinking wasn't trapped in a box.

[Cet]

Round, square or rectangular bar stock? What kind of triangle?

[Steve S.]

First thing I was thinking of was a musical triangle. I was like, "Well, fold it once at 120 degrees, then fold again at 120 degrees, you've got a triangle!"

[woodwose]

I haven't tried it, but I think perhaps right angle stock could be made by hammering a bar into the angled spot between the face and table of some anvils.

[The Iron Dwarf]

right angle triangle?
equilateral triangle?
or would you rather be obtuse?

[The Iron Dwarf]

I do have some triangular stock, tool steel about 3/4" each side in 12" lengths

[Thomas Powers]

Or find a triangular file and remove the teeth----How I tend to make Gunner's Daggers and misericords.

[mattmaus]

Round, square or rectangular bar stock? What kind of triangle?

Sorry, Triangular cross section.

Though, I do eventualy need to get around to a triangle like Steve has posted.

I haven't tried it, but I think perhaps right angle stock could be made by hammering a bar into the angled spot between the face and table of some anvils.

I follow. Thanks. That's the kind of thinking I was looking for.

or would you rather be obtuse?

This one. All the way. I'm already there, and a fan of "Go with what you know!"

Or find a triangular file and remove the teeth----How I tend to make Gunner's Daggers and misericords.

And a fabulous repurposing for that task. But no good for what I'm scheming on.

FWIW, found an example of a viking arm band with a triangular cross section, stamped, with beasty heads on the terminals. My daughter really liked it, and I am currently somewhat "flush" in heavy brass.

On top of that, it, and another piece I'm scheming at were stamped with triangular stamps. The tool steel I have on hand for those is either way too effin big, or just a smidge too small to approach from a stock removal way to be. But probably "just right" if I can forge it.

[Thomas Powers]

Cast it

[mattmaus]

Cast it

The original arm band, being silver, I would guess likely was. I'm not (yet) set up for that.

And it doesn't solve the need for the stamps.

[Konstantin the Red]

right angle . . .?
or would you rather be obtuse?

Well, that'd mean two of the angles would be good looking.

Acute ones.

[hrolf]

I haven't tried it, but I think perhaps right angle stock could be made by hammering a bar into the angled spot between the face and table of some anvils.

yep. The step works nicely. You'll draw it out a little while you're at it, too.

[schreiber]

The original arm band, being silver, I would guess likely was. I'm not (yet) set up for that.

And it doesn't solve the need for the stamps.

How big was it? Unless it was fairly thin, it might have been hollow.

[mattmaus]

Saw it in a kids book. I'm not sure how big it was, but guessing by scale of the ring, equilateral triangle, 1/4"-3/8" on a side. Pile of money, but not a mountain.

[schreiber]

Pile of money, but not a mountain.

Yeah, probably 6-7 oz of silver, which would work out to under $300 these days, or in other words, still less than what people erroneously think your work is worth.

On a side note, I did a bunch of experimenting with making coin two years ago. Bear with me.
I'm trying to arrange for our household to replace some old brass coin we made back when fish were still learning to breathe air, and I have a ton of cartridge brass sitting around, so I was seeing what I could do with that.

I haven't made a real study of old coinage, but I know some things about it. One of the things I know is that copper and its alloys were used for coin in the ancient world, and then it seems to disappear. It's only really used to debase coin, from what I've seen, up until the later renaissance where copper coins start getting made again. So I knew I was off the authenticity path by using brass.

As far as I know medieval coins were generally made by melting a known quantity of metal into a blob, then hammering that blob flat, then stamping it with the coin die. The reason for this is because coins are supposed to be inherently valuable - the metal's the thing, not the authority which stamps it. Casting would produce mass variances which would have been unacceptable for coinage. But I digress.

In the process of trying to make a few coins, I learned a lot. First of all, it's ridiculously easy to cook the zinc out of brass. So as you anneal it, you have to do it under controlled conditions: hitting it with an O/A torch is probably not efficient as you have to baby it.

More importantly, I found out why people didn't make coin out of brass until modern times. Because it *&^%ing sucks to work it.
So I made little dots of the stuff (by taking a .40sw cartridge and hitting it gingerly with the torch until it formed a blob). Then I tried to hammer it flat, when dead soft, and it took way more effort than I was expecting.

So I sent some to fellow archiver Jacob, to have him hit some with his 80lb treadle hammer. And it took 10 blows with an 80lb hammer to make it flat enough to be considered coin... and it was still over 1/16" thick and not wide enough, and the edges were all cracked. You don't see this on medieval coin - silver pennies are quite thin and still even at the edges.

The moral of the story is, I hate brass, and I suspect why they didn't make coin out of it is because they probably hated it too, or at least knew that you had to cast it to get anywhere with it.

If I were you, I'd probably just save up and spring for the silver. They didn't just use it because it was worth something - brass is worth something too, but since its value is low they would have ended up needing to produce massive amounts of these coins to amount to anything and it sucked to work, so the idea was probably a non-starter.
I'm convinced they used silver because of its working properties, too.

[mattmaus]

Some good points.

My own experience has been similar, yet counter all at the same time.

I scored something close to 2.5 square feet of 1/8" thick brass plate, as partial trade/payment for "Little Brother". It was bought as scrap from a dump made by a chandelier company. They were laser cutting parts out of it. Left some give or take 1/8" strips that I dinked around with. Part of them got mauled into give or take 1/16" x 1/4" strips, which I inteded (and still do) to use as trim on a vendel hat. So... mashing it out went FINE. Getting it to move after that, not so much. I'll be anealing those parts to get them to fit now.

I also made some penanulars out of it. They involved a gread deal of learning. I took the "square" and hammered it out round. and that was about it. Anneal. Carefuly with a propane torch, heat it up.

I might should back up there, I through some in my 3 burner "whisper low boy" to heat it for anealing, turned my back to light a smoke, and crap... Oh well, the youngest girl has an altoids tin full of "gold nuggets" where it melted into a blob at the bottom of the forge.

So... back off the heat a LOT, and use a propane torch. It got hot FAST. Small stock mind you, but even still. Quench it, and it's DEAD soft. Buttery goo. Wrap the rod around about a 1 1/2" thing. Stiffened up a bit, but... not much. Flatten the ends out... good and stiff there, but not so much in the middle. So I worked them pretty gently on the "thing" until they stiffened up again. That made my rings.

On to the pins. Turn the "square" down round again, mash one end flat, draw out most of the point, and they're good and crunchy. I want these, especialy, to stay pretty rigid. They need to stab through stuff to work like they're supposed to. Nice and hard now, but there is no way in hell I'm gonna be able to wrap them around the ring at this point. I wonder if we can selectively aneal it? Did some quick math to figure out how far to go. Pies and stuff. Put the faintest nick in them to mark it, because sharpie is gonna burn off. Heat starting at that end, until it runs up to my mark, and quench holding it in the busket at my mark.

Sure enough, tip is still nice and stabby. Back side is dead soft. So I wrap it in this little wire bender jig I have. Take it around effectively a 3/16" post.

At this time, I'm concerned that my wrap will get stiff enough to hold. Remember that I'd wraped my rings to a 1 1/2" diameter and found them a little softer than I liked still.

No damned worries. Wrapped them around that 3/16" post and barely made it on a couple of them. Needed to finish them off with a hammer. Used a few swear words to close them up.

It was interesting as hell to see a large circle not harden them much, but the smaller wrap jump from buttery soft "It's so wimpy I'm scared to touch it for fear that if I squeeze to tight my fingerprints will imprint like clay" to "Holy crap that got stiff, get me a whapping tool!" in a heartbeat.

So.... I expect theres a fair learning curve in figuring out what, and how it hardens up.

There are of course diferent "alloys" of brass, and I'm sure folks have done science to figure them out. I'm just a tinker though....

I WAS under the impression that cartridge brass especially, was of an alloy that was chosen because it's "soft" brass by way of comparison to steel, but of a variety that work hardened REALLY well, and as far as brasses go, was "hard".

[schreiber]

I WAS under the impression that cartridge brass especially, was of an alloy that was chosen because it's "soft" brass by way of comparison to steel, but of a variety that work hardened REALLY well, and as far as brasses go, was "hard".

Ah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. I was just reading an article yesterday talking about annealing cartridges. Serious reloaders anneal between every firing, so that the state of the part of the case holding the bullet is identical each time (and also to prolong useful life). Though they're really careful not to anneal the back of the case, where most of the pressure is built up.

Seems like you've figured out a lot more of it. As for me, though, I'm going to move on to silver as soon as I can.

[Thomas Powers]

Well brass wasn't as popular as bronze was due to not being able to get metallic zinc to alloy with the copper, (look up Biringuccio's chapter on "colouring copper" in the Pirotechnia where they are mixing a zinc containing *ore* with the molten copper to "colour it" .)

"Metal Technology in Medieval india", Mahmud, Syed Jafar discusses how they finally figured a way of making metallic zinc using alembics to guide zinc vapour into an oxygen deprived cooler area to condense it as the "burning temperature" of zinc is below it's refining temperature.

ANYWAY workability is VERY alloy dependent---pretty much every blacksmithing forum has a thread on what alloys can be forged or hammered.

As for set ups: if you have a forge you pretty much have a casting set up; I've done a pretty good number of casts using my forge as a heat source and stainless steel creamers as disposable crucibles: silver (sterling and fine), copper, brass, bronze (including making my own). Note that recent pennies are copper plated zinc making a very nice metered source of zinc to add to brass melts as it gets burned off. NOTE TOO THAT SUCH FUMES ARE TOXIC!

I would probably make an open trough ingot mold in a sort of triangular shape and then hammer the annealed as necessary ingot into a better triangle.

[mattmaus]

One of the bigger problems I have using the forge setup I currently have as a heat source is that it's pretty purpose built for knife making. VERY low profile. For a big cast, I'd need something along the lines of a small frying pan for a crucible. On that, before you try it at home, my understanding is that teflon coating in pans is pretty damned toxic fume wise too.

The other being "What to pour it in?". I've got a couple recipies for homemade investment. Garrick says the best recipie is "Hello? Rio Grande? Send me some!"

But now thinking on it...

I wonder if a chunk of 1/2" o.d. tube split and capped might be a way to make some low profile vendel/viking type center crests on the quick and dirty.