Tooling up

Here are some racks and such that I've been working on with the help of a couple of buddies to use in 'hawk making.

First up is the handle that I'll use to suspend the 'hawk blanks in the heat treatment furnace for normalizing and hardening.

 

It's sitting on top of a temporary lid for my kiln (which I will usually use for tempering and baking the Durabake finish) that will let me do the normalizing and hardening while waiting for my new Evenheat heat treatment furnace to be shipped.

These three racks all have their intended specialization.  The one in the front is built to fit inside the kiln and let the tomahawks hang while they temper and while the Durabake cures.  The one in the middle is for hanging the 'hawk blanks to air cool during the normalizing phase.

And the one against the wall is to store and organize the blanks waiting to be worked on.  Much better than sitting in stacks on the floor as I showed earlier!

Believe it or not, it holds all 60-odd blanks that are cut from a 4' x 8' sheet of 1/4" 4140 plate.