High grit sand and maybe a buff for cocobolo. Its an oily wood so I haven't had much success in oil finishing it. I haven't used Zircote so I can'...

You can peen, then grind flush, check the fit, peen closed any gaps, grind flush. This will progressively get you to a place where the fit is tight....

Very nice. Clean and great looking.

soak in a bucket of boiled linseed oil. The oil will not evaporate. It actually hardens so after the handle swells it should lock in.

I use the cheapest instant coffee I can get. I add an entire jar to a 3X24" PVC tube with cold water. It etches Damascus jet black and is stable s...

Dito on the steels. One can also make steel either from ore or by doing hearth remelts. Hearth and bloomery are usually water hardening. I use s...

Every time I use tape on any steel part it pits it. And I have to go back to hand sanding or the grinder. Any suggestions on stopping this? I li...

File cards are very stiff and coarse and mine are a few inches wide. You should be able to get one at sears. And you can get them on Ebay for abou...

I own a lot of files. I seem to have a bit of a problem and have had times where I cleared out bins of them that went to scrap. At this point I lo...

My pleasure. Great story and the skill of 70 plus years amazes me too. Also I love his bladesmithing anvil set up.

This is a pic of the tongs I made for a customer. He found that the pickups were good for cooking crabs too.

I was reminded of this today after I posted here and in it the smith uses a one sided hot cut to make 3 right angle forgings on small folding knife bl...

Having pondered this I took the way that a tenon is started in blacksmithing and used a 1 side hot cut or hack. Here are some pics of how the heel o...

I second the castible refractory. I cast a forge that took a real beating and the flux barely touched the interior over the course of a year.

The sugar at 1500 degrees is going to burn up. IDK about the rest of it. I would suggest getting some rutlands smooth furnace cement and thinning ...