Salvaging a Project

This one started as part of the Fitchburg Forge-In, a competition I do every year.  This was the two hour session.  But it's fair to say I wasn't happy with the result. I accidentally used the wrong stock for practice, so I screwed up the cups, and ran out of time to do cleanup.  So I took another hour or so to go back and clean it up.

The first step was some grinding and filing to bring the points into line.

Then straightening out and cleaning up the arms, combined with removing the existing, unsalvageable candle cups.  One went ahead and removed itself, leaving behind a gorgeous blue temper color, so I cut the other to match.

A spring fuller to clean up the shoulder, and a top and bottom swage to push the arm to round, so I could cut a 1/4-20 thread on it.

Then came making the new cups.  This was done by swaging a piece of candle diameter pipe down to  a diameter small enough to take the same thread.  You actually go a little undersized, then use the remaining hole as a pilot for the tap drill.  This is obviously not a medieval solution to this problem, although you could take the same basic approach and peen over the arm inside the cup.

Work the opening of the cup over the horn for a nice decorative shape, cut the two halves of the pipe apart for the two cups, drill and tap, and you're good to go.  A little bit of oil baked on for a nice finish, and I'm much happier with the final product.