Bronze jewelry, my first pattern steel blade and a musical ... thingy. | Blacksmith Show and Tell | Forum

Showing and telling - these are a few things I made.

The bronze/steel patterns were made by taking the thin springs from the inside of tape measures and slap bracelets, hammering them around a mandrel with a ball-peen (to get them nice and irregular) and then either dipping them in bronze or using a torch to braze the bronze over them. It's a very wasteful process but I really like the way the patterns work. 

The knife has issues, but it was my first successful use of pattern welding techniques (2-pound hammer on a 110-pound anvil, Borax as flux, 1095 and 15N20 steels. 

The gongs are made from old oxygen bottles and there are leather-covered strikers on chains bolted to the frame (the rope on the frame was meant as a temporary holding measure while it was moved into place, but I decided I liked it so I left it). The gongs were actually tuned ... slowly. A friend who is a musician volunteered to judge the tone, while I adjusted it with angle grinders, torches and lots of cussing. It was a very slow process, especially since my friend had to leave while I did all the noisy stuff so as to not risk her pro-quality ears and her livelihood.