The Armour Archive

I recently obtained a 14.125" X 14.25" X 3 1/2" piece of 4140 tool steel and have access to and the ability to use solidworks, gibbs and a fadal cnc mill. What forms would most advantagous to machine in it for armouring?

That's a hefty chunk of steel. very nice score. in terms of shapes, a lot of it is going to depend on your area of interest, but the obvious anser is a few bowl shaps of differant depths.

Based on the size, if it were me, I'd have the chunk seperated into two peices. one maybe 6" wide and the other the remaining 8" On the 8" wide peice, you shoud be able to work out two depths of bowls on one side of the peice. For me, I'd also look to see if I could machine a stake holder in the center of the chunk, for holding any stakes you own. On the other face maybe a tear drop shape, with smaller(gauntlet gatling size) dishes. Probably also add a groov for doing flutting. And have one edge of the block radius, for rolling edges

On the 6" peice, I'd have one end rounded into a convex U shape, and the other in a concave U. Along one of the 3.5"x14.125" edges, have a series of channels cut in varius depths(from write to finger size approx. I'd leave one face smooth.

Most of those shapes are common on blacksmith swage blocks. There are still other faces that could be machined, and I'm sure there will be other ideas coming along.

I would start looking for additional pieces of qualty steel for other shapes.
Acesss to that machinery needs to be used asmuch as posible without causeing a problem with the shop/owner.
Car axles, railroad track sections, and parts from rail or large industryal machinry provide good sources for material.

You can never have enuff hammers, stakes or hardies for metal work.
I would look at some of the shop pictures other members have posted for intresting shapes, Hal also has made several custom forms for differnt projects as well as silversmithing and blacksmithing tools for insperation.
An anticlasical curved stake would be on my short list.

I think you'd be wasting a lot of steel and effort making dishing forms out of that, you can get used oxy tank bottle bottoms that would work well instead of using this.

I'd save this for stakes.