John Deere Africa | Forging a Steel Leaf at the John Deere Historic Site

Welcome to the replica of John Deere's original blacksmith shop for today's demonstration. That's a piece of 3,8 inch square stock of mild or low carbon steel. And right here inside that piece of steel is an ornamental decorative leaf. And it's just screaming to get out of there. So we're going to bring that out. So we're going to get our steel in the forge, we're going to heat it up to that white hot or malleable steel temperature right at 2,000 degrees. So we'll take our steel right out here to the edge of the anvil and we're going to draw it down to a nice square tapered point right up there to the edge, straighten it out. I'm going to overhang the edge of the anvil using a half face blow. Going to neck that steel down, come up a quarter of a turn, gonna go from here. We're gonna manage our steel in a square. Get down the size and shape you want as a square. Just keep hitting it and slowly roll it around until my edges are all are gone. Otherwise known as round. Okay, so in one heat, there's a stem, a mass of steel and a point. It's a leaf. However, from this point forward, every time it goes back into fire, it's at risk of melting. So I want to kind of dance with it in and out of that hot spot to get to the right temperature or color without melting like that. So now I don't want to mess up the point. So we'll start back here at the back edge, draw that metal out and use the cross pin. Driving from the middle out. Got labor with my right hand.