Following on from the box joint experimentation of the 7th, my partner has sanded, stained and finished her craft trays. She’s even put castors on them. All they need is handles. So I made some.

These started out as round bar. I flattened the bar slightly and then squared it up a bit to leave a wider, flatter cross section. I then spread the ends with the cross peen side of the hammer.

I did some rough shaping of the curves over the horn.

Added in the sharp bends on the edge of the anvil and used the taper side to straighten things up.

The was still a bit of a twist/misalignment in the ends, so I bent them straight in the newly installed leg vice.

Then I ground the ends to a nice round profile, drilled and countersunk the mounting holes. Finish was a coat of linseed oil.

They’re not perfect, but they will work well and I made them.

OK, what did I learn from this. This was a quick bit of forging, it should have gone smoother than it did. I learned a lot about how to make bends by tilting the work and then flattening it onto the anvil. Both handles came out reasonably consistent which is nice.