Forged ButtPlate

[David R. Pennington]

Forged from some old wrought iron plow braces. Pretty low grade stuff that kept separating like spaghetti. Have to work at welding heat and keep welding back together. Still a lot of filing to do.

[James Wilson Everett]

David,

What you have noticed with the splitting is rather common when forging wrought iron.  I call it "broomstraw splits".  It has been my experience that real wrought iron will always give the broomstraw splits at the free ends of the piece.  Certainly a more refined piece will give you less, but even with well refined W.I. it is still a problem.  The only solution I have found is to forge the part somewhat longer than required, then cut it back to the proper length to get rid of the splits.  It does help to keep W.I. at least orange hot while forging, when it cools to red the splits are more common.  You really have to keep W.I. a lot hotter than mild steel.

The piece looks really well done, good luck on your next try.

Jim

[Jay Close]

Ah, the joys of poor quality wrought iron!

One strategy is to further refine the bar before you begin your project. Draw it out at welding temperature then fold it back on itself and re-weld. If the splitting is just the result of limited refining at the mill, this will often improve your chances of working without excessive splitting.

An extreme application of this would be to criss-cross the grain like plywood as you draw and weld. I did this to make sheet stock for a shovel in my younger days. The finished sheet rang like a bell when tapped and had almost no splits along any edge forging from about 1/2 inch thick to about 1/16 think.

When drawing out plane irons with welded/laminated blades, I also learned to keep the end of the the bar thick to help hold most of it together. Then, just thin the end with one last blazing, dripping heat.

If, on the other hand, the splitting is because of impurities like sulphur in the iron it will crack cross-grain and not much you can do will help.

[delivered]

Got a Virginia style from Jerry Etner a few years back with the following instructions; "I hammer you file" 

[Mark Elliott]

My experience with wrought iron is to not bother to pull it out of the forge until it is yellow.   When it is red it is too cold to do anything with except burnish.   George Suiter told me that all die work must be done white hot.   By that, I assumed he meant just below welding temp.   Actually,  it still looks very pale yellow to me at that temp.   Of course color perception is dependent on the ambient light and is very subjective.   Color perception can even vary from eye to eye in the same person.   It does in me because of a detached retina I had in the left eye.   It is too bad that high temp infrared thermometers aren't more affordable.   Then we could talk about actual measured temperatures.     

[David R. Pennington]

There is a difference working wrought as opposed to mild steel for sure. It takes some getting used to. The heat you need to run wrought at will burn up the steel. The piece I used for the butt plate did get refined a little. I had it in the fire almost welding heat in the shop I was working in and the other smith was wanting to show off the power hammer so I let him have at my stock for a little while. He helped it a lot.
I keep my eye out for wrought iron junk and picked up several pieces recently. Some I believe are old oil well hardware, chain etc..,. Found a couple good wagon tires also.

[PPatch]

Dave that is is going to make a fine butt plate after you file  on it for a few days. Good job.

dave

[jerrywh]

 Dave. Nice job Dave did you braze that in the forge? 

[helwood]

Dave
I agree with Jim and Jay working W.I. you have to work hotter that mild steel.  I'm working on a brace of Miquelet locks using W.I. from anchor chain.  It's  high quality but you still need to remember it's unique properties.  The thing I have also found is that my files will pinn quicker even with chalk, so watch when you get to your whitesmithing stage .  Many years ago in a class, forging a barrel one of the students didn't keep his work hot enough and it looked like he forged a tree, "bark", all students using, same, a good quality source of W.I. he was the only one having this result. Nice job.
Hank

[David R. Pennington]

Jerry, no I didn't fire the forge up for this one. I used oxy / acet. torch for heat source.  It was pouring rain and my blacksmith shop has no roof. I cleaned pieces and pinned together. Bent three small pieces of brass wire and laid them down in the inside at joint and fluxed with borax. I heated with torch from outside till it brazed. I rather do them in forge.