Any ideas on how to repurpose

Joined
Dec 24, 2016
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I understand most professional bladesmiths despise repurposing unknown steel and I whole heartedly agree if you are making blades to sell.

Sometimes I just have a tough time throwing away such good scrap iron. Case in point, here is a chopper blade from our sugarcane harvester. I’ve forged a integral hatchet and a couple knives. It BARELY MOVES under a hammer and seems to hold an edge well (with a small skinner I forged I’ve field dressed, skinned, and quartered 2 whitetail without needing to touch up the edge). They measure approximately 33”x4.5”x.25” and are single bevel. I have about 6 of these new that do not fit our current harvester and a couple hundred used that we scrap every year. I can cut a profile with a plasma cutter. I’m leaning towards trying a heavy machete like blade with a large fuller.
Give me some ideas if you have any, I’d like to try stock removal and see how the factory heat treatment holds up.
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Next I have a take off set of Toyota forklift tines. Uprights are approximately 4.5”x2”x24” forks length 40” with a taper on half of the length.
Ive seen a bridge anvil made from forklift forks before. Another one of those things where I have them so I want to do something with them.
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Take the forks and weld one on top of the other (weld the back sides, not the fork tips sides). Once they are welded in a "U", pour some concrete into two holes spaced out the same as the tips. Set the tips in the concrete and you have a very useful 4" thick bridge anvil. If using it inside the shop, cut the tips off evenly at around 30" and weld the bridge to a piece of 1" (or thicker) mild steel plate.
 
I would just use the harvester blades to do what you are doing and just heat treat them the way you are. I don’t see any purpose in trying to keep the stock heat treatment.
 
Sell the forklift tines as forklift tines.
Plenty of folks building fork attachments for skid-steers and such.

If you want an anvil, I see the value in a much larger solid piece of material that you could get used/scrap.
 
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