Forging a Basket Twist S Hook // Blacksmith Projects to Sell

Hello everyone, welcome back to the shop today, I'm going to be showing you how to make a basket twist s hook. Thanks for watching Okay, everyone here we are at the workbench So the first step in making this basket twist s hook is we're going to need multiple bars to do this Now there's a lot of different ways that you can do this You know, you can do it with square bars. You can do it rectangular stock You name it. There's a whole menagerie of different things you can do you could do a square bar and you could have it twisted first and then put all those together and then make a Make a basket twist for a different effect. There's a whole lot of different options that you can do here But today we're gonna just focus on the simplest of them and that's using round rods so the first thing we're gonna need is we're gonna take a need to make a Uneven amount well or an even amount if you will Amount of rods blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Take two Okay, everyone here. We are at the workbench So the first step in this basket twist is we're gonna need to take and cut ourselves multiple lengths of rod now That being said how much rod to cut to length. I know most of My s hooks take and require at least eight inches of material to make the s hook But I also know that after we've bundled all these together We're gonna draw out the ends a little bit of the basket twist to turn into the hooks So I don't need quite eight inches of material I'm needing more of about seven inches of material and actually a little less We're needing about six and a half inches of material for each cut length of rod The reason why we have to take and have an inch and a half difference Is that that will leave me about three-quarters of an inch on each end to take and draw out to the full eight inches of rod That will need or the total length before we make a hook out of this thing So the first step in this process is we will cut six Bars or seventh if you like to do seven or six or five or whatever floats your boat But we're gonna cut six lengths of rod All at six and a half inches in length Then we'll bundle them together Give them a little tack weld on the ends just to get just to get ourselves set up If you don't have a welder you can just wire them with some Lacing wire. I do not have lacing wire Otherwise, I would show you that method and I have a welder so it's just easier for me to tack them up so I'm gonna tack up both ends and I'm not gonna put a lot of weld on this just enough to tack the ends together and I'm gonna show you a different method of forge welding or fire welding and Then we'll get started Okay, everyone here. We are at the workbench All I'm doing is stacking up all six rods on top of each other and just gonna put in tack weld up the ends You don't have to Forge weld actually when you're working with a small rod or small You guys are doing this and you're trying to watch the material you really need to take and wear a set of This way you don't go blind Instead of welding goggles Here That one rod don't want to blend in well fix that Go ahead and flux it again just a little bit As you can see that's already been forged welding except for that one rod that didn't stick in Like why it's hot Forge that out a little bit more at a later date So bringing it back up to heat It takes a little bit with the torch because you don't have the closed-in nature of the forge fire But that's okay. We want this to take and have it a good localized heat right on the end and Now I'm starting to draw it out a little bit. I will switch to a larger hammer after a little bit after I get the other end tack welded together and Finish drawing it out before we turn it into our hooks I'm just dressing all sides making sure everything's consolidated And as you can see, it's all welded up So that's one in now. We're just gonna flip it around And we'll do the other one I'll do this off-camera and I'll be right back with you at the workbench Okay, everyone. We got both these things done now As you can see I drew out the ends quite a bit I actually came up and I heated up about another half inch or so Back into the bundle from my original tax and then Ford's welded that down as well I decided I needed the little extra bit of material there For when I go to start to form these hooks So now that you're getting to this point you're saying, okay, well, what's the next process? You may think that it would be advantageous to go ahead and bend the hooks But it is actually better to go ahead and do the twist first If you bend the hooks First and then you go to twist it Then you're dealing with an odd shaped hook But you have to overcome how you're twisting it and it doesn't really give you a good spot to be able to clamp on and get A really nice twist this bundle. So the next step in this process is we're gonna heat this up in the forge We're gonna get everything really nice and hot in this section and in this area And then we're gonna clamp one end in the vise like usual and we're gonna put a wrench on this other side And we're gonna twist this bundle up. This bundle already has a little bit of a natural twist to the right So I'm just going to continue to follow with that and then you know crank it up a lot tighter You want to go at least one full revolution with this twist to do a good basket twist? And then you'll see what will happen when we go to actually unveil the actual basket itself but after we get This portion completely twisted up Then we will go ahead and make our hooks and keeping in mind that we're going to do about a half twist or a 180 degree twist Back out with one of the hooks to get to open up the basket If you're keeping that in mind, and that's how then then you will know that Okay, I'm going to take an untwist this one half turn so that means both hooks need to be formed onto the same end of the bar when you Untwist it they end up like an S shape This is my method there's other methods out there you can try what would work well for you But this is the way that I'm going to be taking you all through the process here Just do whatever works best for you Like I said before not everyone has a torch and that's okay. You can do this in a coal forge a coke forge You can even do it in charcoal No problem, the main important point or even gas forge the main important Point is to take and get a good localized heat on the ends and forge weld them down and draw them out So as long as you guys can take and do that you're pretty much set for the rest of the project The rest of it's just simply twisting and there's a few other little tweaks and you know bending hooks and whatnot Anyways, so the next step we'll go ahead and get this twisted up and then Bend our hooks and finish her up Okay, we've got our bundle nice and hot We're just gonna lock one end in the vise and then I find it easiest to grip this round bundle with a pair of tongs So that's what I'm gonna do here As you can see, I'm like, oh, well I need to grab it up on top to get a little better grip and twist it back towards myself Working with that piece of rod that was already twisting in that direction You're gonna see me take maybe another heat or so on this and I actually probably took two or three heats to tighten the bundle to where I want it I Originally had told you about 360 degrees and that is about right but in this video You know, I forgot to take my own medicine I guess and I actually went a little bit overboard and more than 360 degrees But this is our first initial twist. We'll go back in the forge here and get it hot again Here's a few minutes later. We're gonna go ahead and bring it out again, and we're just going to continue that twist Now I would say I probably tighten this up maybe 360 plus another turn like at least another half turn half to three-quarters of a turn It was kind of hard to gauge it considering it's on a round surface The main thing that you want to do is you want to get your twisted rods to start laying down more horizontally or Contrary to the length of the piece of original parent bar stock This helps when you untwist for them to pucker out and open up into the basket If you did not twist it further enough when you first started the twist You won't have much of a basket when you're done The bars will lay flat against the stock and they won't really bulge out like in a classic basic twist Consequently this could be a very interesting element all in of itself to make a hook out of Even without opening up the basket. So this is just another potential variation of an s-hook that you can do So we'll take another heat on this here and Before we take an open up the basket We are going to go ahead and bend both of our hook ends as you can see I've already got one done, and I'm gonna bend this other one Reason for this being is after that that baskets gonna be our last part because the basket can't take the Stock cross-section Changes as well as what it can right now. So you want that to be your last little bit? If you'll also notice because of my over twisting I had to form the s-hook like an s-hook So this way I could still accomplish the same effect considering I went over 360 degrees if you just do 360 degrees you will be able to open it out 180 or Back turn it 180 and it will come out fine This particular thing. Like I said, I had to untwist it a full 360 considering I went over 360 to begin with to get my basket to shape out, right? Take your time make sure your heat's good and even and then get everything kind of squared up The next thing you're gonna see me do here in just a second, I'm just kind of adjusting things with the basket There's not too many basket twists that get made that are perfectly open the first time out the gate or at least not for me, so I always have to take and adjust the individual tines of the basket and Tweak them to make them look really nice This will essentially finish up the basket and all you have to do is wire will it from here and just Adjust the tines to where everything looks even with equal spacing in between everything There's a whole lot of room for improvement in this considering this is the first Twisted or first basket twisted s-hook I have done in quite some time So it's kind of funny when you shoot YouTube videos on a process like this of trying to make them perfect for the camera When you haven't when you've been out of practice on this particular style for a long time It's probably been at least three years since my last basket twist, but as you can see it came out pretty neat. I Will put a photo at the end of this video here For you guys to take a look at and see the final result with it all wire willed up. I Thank you all for watching. God bless you and let me know what you think in the comments. We'll catch you on the next one