Drawing out

Guilty of burning time again this week. A brief attempt to explain drawing out a length of bar. The first step is to make a point on the end of the bar like the one standing up in the foreground. I am going to make a six sided length of bar that tapers down to nothing on the end.

The hammer resting on the anvil is there to demonstrate what happens when you don't point up the end of your bar. This was a normal lump hammer head that I experimented with, shaping it under the fly press. When the hot metal is struck the surface shifts and spreads, while the central mass remains unmoved, so a kind of crater forms at the end of the bar. In the case of the hammer this was kind of what I wanted. I ground off the rim of the crater to form some blob shapes that make it very useful for texturing the surface of bars and whatnot.

While applying the point to the end of the bar and also while drawing it out it is best to forget the section of the stock you are using. It does not matter that the bar is round square or whatever, it is easiest to work it square and try to keep it that way until you have your taper, then work it back to the section you want. When making the nice tall pyramid shape on the end of the bar, you hold the tip pointing at the floor just on the very edge of the anvil so that the face of the hammer can strike it without the bottom edge of the hammer face striking the anvil.