The course went well. We had two forges, two anvils and six students, I decided that we would have Dave and Tom making axes using the coke forge, and Dick, Angus, Mark and Peter making adzes on the gas forge, it sounds unfair but as the gas forge holds the steel at a constant temperature it is possible to have more than one adze being heated at once, in the workshop I will typically run three blanks in the gas forge, this way as soon as I have finished forging one blank I can pull another one out and immediately start on that, there is no down time waiting for a piece to come up to heat, having many irons in the fire. At Tyntesfied we ran one axe in the coke fire against two adzes in the gas forge.
I broke the process down into stages and demonstrated with Rob striking for me. Next, everyone paired up and would forge to the same stage, then the director and striker would swap places. This way everyone got to experience every process, and if all went well I wouldn’t have to take over at any stage.
Although the starting stages of making an axe and adze are identical they obviously diverge at some point and generally Rob looked after Dave and Tom on the axes and I concentrated on the other two pairs on the adzes. I took some photos but they were totally eclipsed by this set that Peter took.
Scoring an adze blank so the slitting set would locate accurately in the centre.
Axe blank being slit with the new set
Adze completely slit, the bolster allows the set to go all the way through without driving the sharp edge into the face of the anvil.
Rob looking after the axe boys.
Adzes part forged, nice and even eyes which makes everything so much easier throughout the whole forging process
Forging out the lugs on the eye of an adze between top and bottom fullers, the drift is inserted into the eye other wise it would be squashed flat. Tne handle is about to come out if the fuller, a more wedges needed obviously.
Spreading the blade out on an adze with a handled fuller.
Adzes heating in the gas forge.
Quenching ( hardening) in oil.
Adzes showing temper colours and ready for the final grind.
Finished
Although I did help out at a few stages some of the adzes were completely untouched by me, so brilliant efforts all round, it was quite an effort to transplant all the equipment needed to a Marquee 170 miles away but the results, as you can see were definitely worth it.
Comments are closed.