How to forge a leaf

How to forge a leaf

Today I will try to show how you can forge a leaf.
This is a good way to train you hammer blows
as well as a simple and useful technique to include
in all kinds of products.

What you will need to make this leaf:
All you really need to make this
is a way to heat the metal, something
as an anvil as well as a hammer.

If you want to turn this into
something like a keychain or
a pendant for a necklace you
will need a few more tools.
However, in this post, I will
only be going into the
technique itself

And then a quick disclaimer before we start.
Don't do anything from this post if you
don't feel comfortable doing it, there is plenty of ways to
hurt yourself forging, so always use your eyes and head
and use proper safety equipment.

You can make a leaf out of almost any material I would recommend
8-15mm round or square bar (you cud go higher if you really wanted to).
For this leaf, I used some 12mm rebar.

To start off we want to forge a "cone" shape on the end.
You do this by putting the material right up to the edge
and hitting the metal with glancing blows turning the
90 degrees after every hit.

I forge fairly short tapers because I prefer slightly more
roundish leaves but you can really make them any way you
want.

Move the material may be 15-20mm over the edge and give the steel
one hard blow. Turn it 90 degrees and give it another good hit.

It should look something like this.

Now just start drawing out the "stem" of the leaf.

Once you got a bit of length you can move to the rounded off part of your
anvil or use the edge of your hammer to draw it out faster.

This one I ended up drawing out to about 5mm thick and 40mm long,
however, I would recommend going a bit thinner if you wanna make
something out of the leaf.

  

When you have the stem down to the thickness you want you can 

start rounding it off. Simply keep hammering down corners until 

it is round.

Now just make sure you have the cone symmetric, heat it up and
flatten it out.

If one of the sides of the leaf is starting to get larger than the other, you 

can use the peen of the hammer or just the edge of the hammer

to try and move more material to one side.

At this point, you cud just flatten the leaf until it is as thin as you 

want it and be finished. There is, however, a lot of different

ways to finish off a leaf there is how I do it.

I leave the leaf a bit thick and then I use 2 tools like these.

With the straight one, I hammer in the center line.

And with the half round one, I hammer in the side "fibers".

After I got the shape I want I drab a piece of wood, heat up the leaf,
put a ball peen hammer on the leaf and strike it to slightly round
off the leaf.

.

And that is pretty much the finished leaf.

I just bent the stem on mine which turns it into a quick

keyring.

That is all for this post, I hope you had a good read and possibly

learnt something. And I also wanna thank you for taking your time

if you ended up reading true it all.

My next post should be up on friday so see you then !