I've got 24/30 tapped out. After christmas I'll forge the rest and then grind and harden them. I'm having some trouble keeping the neck centered. The head and the socket are in line with each other, but the neck in between where the dimple/seam is from rolling the fishtail is a real turd to keep centered. This in no way should affect flight or strength, only the perfectionist creator. When I review the youtube videos, it all seems so easy, but there's a key difference. Their mandrels come almost to a point, and mine is ~3/16 fat at the end, same as an arrow shaft after cutting with 3 Rivers five degree shaft cutting tool. They've got to be able to be easily put on a shaft. I could easily grind down my mandrel and they'd be easier to keep centered but that would be a ton of custom fitting for each shaft and I'm not going to do that to you guys. The fatter mandrel is not playing nice when I'm fitting the socket on it, when it gets up near the neck, it gets off center because where the socket is folded over opens up easier than the back and so it gets off center. Every point I forge I try and address this issue, and some are better than others and grinding will mitigate a lot of it but it's frustrating. The points are still absolutely usable but if it's a deal breaker just shoot me a PM and we'll work on it.
In other news, I've contacted a forge about making me some bodkin forging tongs. It's tricky because I forge the socket first and size it, but then need to grip the socket to forge the head, but the long pliers I'm using are deforming the socket even though I've ground the pliers to be as friendly as possible. Its simply a matter of thin walled malleable metal taking stress, it's gonna move. They're going to make me tongs that are basically a 5 degree cone on one end like my mandrel and then the other end clamps it down. This should make forging them a lot easier and faster. Right now I've got to tinker with the socket at the very end by holding the end of the point which is tricky, and then hammer on the tip to punch the socket onto the mandrel, which 50/50 chance deforms the tip, depending on how thin I forge it. I'm forging them thick now so they don't deform but also to allow me to grind it to center if it's a little wonky.
Well that's my update on forging bodkins!!! I like making them and I hope to get better and better. I love shooting them and think they're 100 times better than field points (even if that much more expensive). I've shot plenty of rocks and the tips get rounded after a while but nothing like hitting a rock with a field point, which is a good way to "cold forge" blunt tips for squirrel hunting?! I've never had a point break, even my early ones riddled with cracks from quenching in water (W1 is water hardening but for this size, a fast quenching oil is appropriate).
