Finial posts cut

A note before I go into the work today.  Currently I am working at a slower pace.  There are several reasons for it.  The primary reason is just that it has been 5 years since I consistently did blacksmithing.  As a result, I am not as in good of shape for it as I need to be.  The primary issue is my hammer arm.  I am still building up the endurance.  However, the moment my arm feels weak at all, I stop.  An arm that is tired can cause a bad hammer blow that can lose hours of work.

Anyway, excuses aside I feel that things will begin to accelerate now.  I am feeling good.  Things are looking good.  I am sure I will have some setbacks but that is part of working on this project.  I hope to get the corners done next weekend.  Once those are done, the rest of the frame is rather easy to put together and things will really start moving then.

So today, I worked on cutting the posts that the corner finials will sit on.  It really was not anything special, it just involved cutting some metal and shaping up the pieces just a bit.  Right now, the lengths are not the same.  That is not an issue because they have not been cut yet.  So nothing terribly exciting but here are the work pictures.

In the top photo are three of the corner pieces.  The top piece is after being cut, the middle is in the process of being cut (using a chisel) while the bottom one is just marked for cutting.

Finials all cut...

I managed to get a little bit of forge time after work today.  I pretty much just finished cutting the finials.  The photo shows all 4 as well as the bolster plate used for punching the holes.  The look a little rough right now.  From my previous experience they start looking nicer as I punch the hole and especially once I do the file work.

I also cut and formed a punch for use on the finials.  I have that annealing right now.  Since the punch was cut from an old car coil spring, I like to anneal it to help get any stress out of the metal.

Not that much otherwise but I am making progress.

Good weekend

So today I started remaking the actual finials for the corner posts of the clock.  Yesterday I made the bolster plate but that really was not used today.  The importance of the bolster will come in to play a bit later.  But anyway, the start of today was very similar to yesterday's work up to a point.

I started with scoring a line around a bar of 2.5 cm (1 inch) bar stock.

Using different fullering tools, I put a curve shape around the bar.

In this photo, I have cut off one end of the bar.  I will actually get two finials out of this.

Using a hacksaw, I cut at the thinnest point, that frees one finial.

I then hot cut the remaining finial from the bar.  These are the two finials as well as the bolster plate that will help me make the hole in the finials.  As a reminder even though I am in the US, I will be attempting to make all comments and photos using metric to give it a more world wide relevance.  So in this photo, that is a metric carpenters square for scale.

That was it for tonight.  I was actually in the mood to make the other two finials but daylight was fading so those will have to wait.  After I make the other two, I will use a square punch and the bolster to create a mounting hole in the finial but that will also have to wait.

Working on corner finials

Today I returned to the finials for the corner posts.  I tried to do this a bit last week but results were not good so I gave myself the week to think about how I was working.  I want this effort to be better than the first attempt so I am looking for better results and I think I have it.

First off, what I am working on is a finial design that sits on top of each corner post.  It is just a few centimeters across with a a curved taper tip.  This part is significant to me because when I made the first clock, it was a part that really made me feel like I was going down the correct path for learning to make the clock.  This is today's work...

I started by marking square stock that is about 1 inch or 2.54 centimeters square.  I drew a line around the stock and then lightly scored it with a hacksaw.  Note:  The end of the bar has kind of a mouth or split in it.  This is from a previous project and I am removing that end of the bar because it had some hammer work from that project.  That is why the starting point for this line is not closer to the end.

Next, I heated the piece and used a normal chisel to expand the line just a bit.

After that, I used a fullering tool to begin to make the indent curved.

And another fullering tool expanded the curved area even more.

The end piece is cut off leaving the shape of the finial.

A comparison of the piece today to one that is on my first attempt at the clock.

Finally today, I hammered this piece that I so carefully created into a block of hot steel.  The reason that I am doing this is that I want to create a mold or bolster for actually creating the finials.  I forgot to take a picture of the piece and I will do that tomorrow.  Rather than try to explain it any more, I will hold off that discussion until I can actually show the process.