Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Spencer Blacksmithing - Kinda

I saw this combination tool for the Spencer recently and really wanted to have one.



It wasn't available for sale and I couldn't find anything similar at any sutlers, so after looking at musket tools I had accumulated over the years I decided to convert a Burnsides Carbine tool to a Spencer tool.

The Burnsides tool looks like this:

I cut off the nipple wrench part and drilled a hole through the center to look like this:


The metal was soft steel.  The tips would bend and twist with a moderate amount of force so after I reshaped and formed the blade ends to fit my Spencer, I hardened it by heating it up in a grill using real charcoal and a blow dryer to provide enough oxygen to get the metal just bright red hot.  I then quenched it in a bowl of old motor oil to harden it.  

The result (below) was plenty hardened to use fit perfectly in the slots of the screws on my Spencer. 


It's not exact, but it's close enough to use in the field, in living history events or in camp during a reenactment without exciting too much comment.

All in all this was a fun weekend project and has been useful at a number of reenactments.

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