Cheers RB, I Pm'd Mike about it a while back but got no reply
, hopefully someone else will take up the challenge.
PS My dolphins near the surface yet ?
Regards
Stephen
Hi, Stephen, and ... y'all.
Hmmm ... I thought I had answered your PM. I know I answered somebody's PM about belt buckle strikers. Or is this another of those things my uncle calls a ... senior moment?
First, rust isn't a problem - except for the rust stains on clothes. If it rusts, you just clean it off with steel wool. That rust doesn't hurt the steel - only the "visual" appearance. So just dry it, clean it, maybe give it a light coat of oil every once in a while, and it will be fine. In time, the steel will develop its own "patina" of stains and polished areas.
The big problem is having a striker thick enough and tough enough to work as a belt buckle without having to worry about it cracking/breaking, yet heat-treated hard enough to work well as a flint striker. To work best as a flint striker, it should be heat-treated as hard as you can get it. But that makes it much more brittle, and susceptible to chipping/cracking/breaking from a bad "hit" on something hard enough - like dropping it on cement or a rock, or bumping/falling against a rock when out climbing. That direct hit flat against it is the problem, instead of that light ticking/glancing hit when striking sparks.
The other problem area is forg-welding that cross-bar in the middle of the classic buckle shapes - squares, rectangles, ovals. That crossbar would need to be of soft iron - to take the extra stress of having the one end of the belt lapped around it, and having the "tongue" pivoting on it for the other end of the belt. Soft iron (low carbon steel) would not heat treat hard, so that would be needed there.
But a thought just occurred to me. If a buckle is make with a short stubby hook/stud on it to catch the holes in your belt, then some other possibilities come up. One good version would be an Oval striker made into a belt buckle. Just punch/drill a hole through the middle of one long side for a rivetted pin to work as that hook/stud. Then loop your belt through and around the other long side. To use, just pass the other end aroung you and then in through the back of the center opening of the oval "buckle". Then "hook" the appropriate hole in the belt with that stud. And have a loop on the leather belt to keep that loose end from flopping about. It would then be a lot like those big rectangular cast brass belt buckles. The only other thing to do them is make sure to have that oval striker be extra thick to take the stress/strain.
A good option here would be to start with one of my "kid proof" oval strikers. They are a modern "alloy" steel, and are almost impossible to break once they are properly heat-treated. I took one that was fully heat-treated and threw great sparks, and then laid it on my anvil and hit it a dozen hard forging type blows with my 3 pound hammer - trying to break it, or at least crack it. I even turned it on edge and hammered it again a half dozen times. I managed to bend it a bit. And it still struck sparks just as well as it did before I started. So I call them my "kid proof" strikers. They are great for kids to learn with - as there is almost no way for them to break them instead of a regular flint striker with bad/poor "technique". I've seen kids who got ... frustrated ... while trying to get sparks, and ended up only remembering that if you BANG the flint against the steel you are supposed to get sparks. So they ended up BANGING the two straight together at arms length! A clear case of lack of proper one-on-one supervision while teaching those kids how to strike sparks with a traditional flint/steel.
So a belt buckle made from one of my "kid proof" oval flint strikers would be a possibility. Then it just becomes a matter of how wide of belt to fit. The standard size has a center opening around 2 inches wide. But the narrow ends could be ... squared up also ... then being about 1/2 inch wide for a "longer" belt buckle. (Could be made wider.)
Interesting possibilities. I may just have to ... tinker a bit.
I'm generally opposed to ... combo tools ... of most kinds. You tend to sacrifice the best qualities of each part of the combo tool, and end up with just "servicable" functionality for them. My opinion is to just get a good version of each tool, and hump the extra weight along. But I use my tools HARD. So they have to hold up well.
Well, I guess I know what my next bout of ... tinkering ... will be. Belt buckles. And I've told many people in the past that I don't want to make belt buckles. (usually too much work for what they are willing to pay - especially when forge welding)
Mikey - that grumpy ol' German blacksmith out in the Hinterlands
- who spent part of this afternoon making up some of those documented 18th century Irish flint strikers
so I rechecked, nothing there, but I do remember Tony saying some PM's were lost on a server change over, shrug, no matter.
