Forged out a tool (of sorts) today!!

[keykeeper]

Been teaching a 4H youth blacksmith class since Saturday. Had a little time to play after the class, so forged out this tool just to say I did, and to get a little hammer time in for myself.

Before anyone asks, it IS a tool....for Barbeque use.....a steak turner, just hook into the steak, and flip it right over!!!

Made from a reject railroad spike, the head had each side clipped off in manufacture for some reason. I left the head as is for a handle. I'm gonna give it to my buddy that works for the railroad.

I still have a little finish work to do on it, but that won't take too long at all.

[Papaw]

Could have used one of those two weekends ago!

[64longstep/Brian]

Nice!!

[Nolatoolguy]

Looks good to me

May I recomend plastic dip as a handle

[rusty]

Great project tool : )

Railroad spikes are nice for that sort of thing, well behaved steel, and small enough to make in to many different types of things.

The odd head shape may have been intentional, there was , for a brief time, a kind of metal dog that went into the tie plate next to the spike head to keep the tie plate from cutting the head off the spike as the tie plate worked back and forth. It didn't really catch on, all it did was move the wearingout problem from the spike to the clip, you still had to replace something when it wore out...

Installing the clip required a spike with the back, and sometimes the sides of the head cut flush.

When you teach splitting you can make a matching fork ; P

[keykeeper]

I doubt the head was made that way, Rusty. This started as a brand new, never used spike of very recent manufacture. All the others I got in the bunch were correct, with the same head markings as this one.

[lzenglish]

I like the looks of it, Nice Work!

Wayne

[Aunt Phil]

Reminds me quite a bit of the liver hooks that were once an important part of the tooling in every butcher shop display cooler.

[clovis]

We are VERY active in 4-H here. I wish we had blacksmithing classes, even if they were for kids...I'd be the FIRST volunteer dad!!!

I have most of the tools already.

[kxxr]

In my experience, the long spikes were used to secure the planks that run between and parallel to the rails where the road crosses the rail. No plates, just straight through the wood into the underlayment. Underneath the planks, the rail would usually be secured to the ties with the usual spike, plate, anchor system. There are more fastening systems in the rails than you can shake a stick at.
The shape of the head would seem to indicate a special purpose. My job was to secure the planks, so I don't know what the other guys were doing with those spikes. I know what I was doing with the round ones though, and the head shape is burned into the back of my eyeballs. The railroad union was very fussy about who did what back then. The guys using those spikes were probably making $5 more per hour than me. Nice thing about the railroad, at least in my experience, was that the less brute strength your job required, the more you got paid.
Ahh, the memories.
Nice barbeque f-stick though.

[rusty]

When I was a kid, I found a bunch of discarded spikes along the rail line that runs through the ct river valley in VT. I decided to hammer one into a green log.....That one goes into the catagory of 'educational experience'....

There are 2-4 spikes per plate, 2 plates per tie, and the ties are , say 2 foot apart, so, figure something like 10,000-20,000 spikes per mile of track....

And the track crews used to lay several miles per day.....

[keykeeper]

This spike never saw the rail bed, nor a railroad tie. It was new when I started. Compared to the others that I procured with it, it was a manufacturing anomaly. No other explanation why it would be with the properly made ones.