Lot's of different pics of this sign.

Lot's of different pics of this sign.
"I don't make hell for nobody. I'm only the instrument of a laughing providence. Sometimes I don't like it myself, but I couldn't help it if I was born smart."

1st Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden.
"From here to Eternity"

Paul Valery

"You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time."

The Wisdom of the Ages

"When a young man, I read somewhere the following: God the Almighty said, 'All that is too complex is unnecessary, and it is simple that is needed',"

Mikhail Kalashnikov
"Here lies the bravest soldier I've seen since my mirror got grease on it."

Zapp Brannigan

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Spike Swage

I love it when I get paid to do my R&D. A customer asked after the availability and feasablity, of a version of the Clement's Knuckle Knife but with a triangular cross section.
I've pondered this for some time, the forging of a triangle when hitting iron with a hammer on an anvil tends to produce only parallel surfaces. I've known right along
what I need to do to make it happen. I was just to lazy to make the necessary tool. Well, money provides a powerful incentive so it got done. It's a swage and its photo occupies the lower positions. An unfinished blade along with a finished one with one of the handle castings is pictured above.
It's just a big slug of steel with a groove cut into it, a groove the size and shape of the blade. I cut it with a hacksaw, files, a cold chisel and an angle grinder, and none worked well. A big coarse file probably would have eased things somewhat. But I didn't have one and was impatient. It seems to leave the forging functionally smooth anyway.
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