Todays object is a ring pull lifter.

The idea came from Nicholas Wicks’s “The Everyday Blacksmith”. I like the book because it gives a very simple set of pictures which illustrate how to form the objects.

This was a quickie, less than an hour from lighting the forge to going in for dinner.

This was interesting, firstly because I had some internal resistance to lighting the forge when I’m not going to use it for long. It heats up really quickly, so I don’t know why it should seem like a waste. I took advantage of the heat to upset a couple of pieces of bar which were a tiny bit too small for using in a hardy hole.

Why do they call it upsetting? Probably because I made them shorter and fatter by hitting them on the top.

OK, so thin bar heated in the forge.

Hammered it flat, keeping the edges nice and straight.

Took a centimetre of the thin edge, positioned it over the edge of the anvil at 45 degrees and hammered in an isolation.

Gently forged this out as a long finger and really carefully made it lovely and round.

Then tried to loop it back on itself. This didn’t go well. I ended up having to use a punch to drift it open as I’d created a loop back on itself.

Once I’d got it back to about the right shape, I gave it a tap to flatten it and squished all my nice rounding. Grumble.

I thinned the main body out as much as possible. I need to round the face of my hammer a little more as I keep leaving marks when I don’t want to.

Then I cut it off over the edge of the anvil, and used another heat to flatten and tidy the end. Cleaned it up with a file and removed sharp edges.

Finished with a bit of linseed oil. I’m fairly sure I could make a nicer one.