Quick and Dirty No Weld Spring Fuller

Hello and happy Tuesday!

I've been working on a pretty big project off and on for a little while. Now I'm at a point where I have to fuller a bar with 5/8" diameter depressions. I initially was going to do it with a pair of 5/8" rods and a striker. However, over at /r/blacksmith someone asked for a (quick and dirty) spring fuller for our first Tutorial Tuesday, and I can't help but open my big mouth and volunteer.

(Mostly) Finished Product

So Friday I went out and surveyed my domain for a piece of metal the right size. I happened to have a test piece from the early development stage of the same project. I had made a few different scroll ends to see how it would look and tested my scroll form and scroll starter. I have no further need for these parts, so one of them will become my new 5/8" spring fuller.

 At this point I laid it on my (old, beat up) anvil and measured how much room I had before having to deal with the scroll. I had about 14-15 inches, so I decided to make the bends for the hardy hole before straightening the scroll to avoid extra work.

I laid out marks for bends at 5.5",  7.5", and 9.5". As a note, this particular anvil has an unusual hardy hole dimension of 1 1/4" square instead of the normal 1" square. This made bending the 5/8 double an acceptable method for fitting in the hardy. Smaller holes will require more work on the shank for a fuller of this size, but I doubt I'll use this particular fuller very often. A 1/2" fuller is more useful anyway.

I then center punched my marks, heated the bar to a nice orange heat and made the first bend in the vise as shown. On these bends, it's important to make the radius of the bend as small as possible. I made sure to have plenty of heat and to pull back on the bar to tighten the bend. You could beat it into a 90 degree angle with no radius, but I was going for quick.

I forgot to take a picture of the second bend being made, but it was made with the long end gripped in the vise. I went ahead and tested to see how much work needed to be done to make it fit in the hardy. You can see that it doesn't go in straight yet. If you were working with straight bar, instead of this scrolled bar, it would be more convenient to make the middle bend first, make it fit into the hardy hole, then bend down the ends.

I then  flattened out the slight bulge at the end of the shank to make it go in straight. With it in the hardy hole, I bent the scrolled part down, making the third bend. While I had heat I knocked everything down flat and flush against the face of the anvil. It looked really cool at this point (check out that big picture below). I think my time was somewhere around 30-45 minutes, including starting the fire and taking pictures, so time was looking pretty good.

In order to make this go faster, I wanted to skip on tongs for as much of the build as possible. Your hands are the best tongs you have, but they don't like heat and they are harder to fix or replace. So I tossed it in the quench bucket for a few seconds.

Now is the time for straightening out the scroll. This stuff is much easier with a little heat. Ignore the unfinished/abandoned projects scattered around the forge....

This is a handy little tool which is very easy to make. Take a steel bar, 1"x whatever. Cut it as long as you want. Punch centers however far apart. Then drill a few holes the same diameter as your bending pins most of the way down. Then drill a smaller hole from the bottom of the holes all the way through. I used 1/2" bars and spaced the centers at 1 1/4" and 1 1/2". Bendy bendy. Two heats later, it's straight enough.

This is a step that you can skip if you're using a bar smaller than 1/2". I flattened out the spring section to make it less stiff. I'm sure that I could figure out an equation to correlate the bend diameter to the thickness of the spring section, but I don't think it will be necessary. I drew it out over the horn to about 1/4" thick by about 3/4" wide. You don't really need tongs for this if you're careful to frequently cool the end you plan on holding.

Here's how it looked after 2 or 3 heats. I drew this out to about 12 inches long. Make this even and straight if you're a perfectionist, but it's not that important to its usefulness. I did because I don't like things to be very ugly. (Ignore my anvil and hot cut....)

Here I have set my square to the length to the first bend. This is a handy tool too. You could make one if you're more masochistic than I am. Go buy one if you don't already have one. Plastic is a bad idea, by the way.

You can see that the end of the blade is at the end of the drawn out portion. The square is where I will be cutting off the extra material. I sure am glad I didn't bother straightening that part out. Mark that sucker with a center punch. Be sure to brush off the scale when it's hot so you can find that mark.

I only used tongs for one heat so far, and I don't plan on making it 2. Cool the part with the bends for the hardy, then heat your mark for cutting. Ignore the Frosted Flakes box. That's where I keep my newspaper for starting the fire.

Unfortunately this picture is too blurry to see my mark. I wasn't able to make a pretty of a cut as I would have preferred because the scroll got in the way of cutting all the way around. We'll take care of that in the next step.









It's important to have a little radius at the end of these bars so you don't leave marks when you use the end of it. Angle the bar up and the face of the hammer down and vary those angles as you rotate the bar. Using those instructions just smack it with your hammer until it looks right.

Here she is full length. 

Now it's time to heat it up for the bend. You want to get as much of the flat area hot as you can. It's much easier to do this next part in one heat.

You can do this part over the horn of your anvil, using bending forks, or free hand. I used my bending fork and a bending wrench. Don't quench this tool. You want it soft since it's getting pounded on and you occasionally want to change the shape of it.

Placed in the hardy hole to show off.

Be sure to file the faces nice and smooth. This makes the tool easier to use since the metal can flow past it better. It's also important to keep from marring your work. I forgot to take a picture of it again in the hardy after filing the faces and ends, but you get the picture.Beginning to end: 2 hours 30 minutes, including pictures and starting the fire.







This particular tool has to be used with wedges to keep it straight. If you don't want to do this, you can make the shank twice as long and double it over to make a square shank. I didn't think I would  have enough material to do this, and I wanted it to be done quickly. Alternately, for smaller bars relative to your hardy hole, you can spring the shank into diagonal corners of your hardy hole. This requires a little more bending to get the top bar to align over the bottom bar, but it may be more convenient for use. My very first spring swage was made from 3/8" round bar bent cold around a 1-1/2" pipe. The swage had a wooden hardy shank, which had a 3/8" hole drilled for the bottom bar and a slot sawn out for the top bar. The shank broke with time, but it worked. If you have access to a welder you can just weld a shank onto the bottom bar, or fancy it up with a pair of angle iron guides for the top bar to always come down straight.

This reminds me of a quote:
    "Ask 10 blacksmiths how to do something and you'll get 18 answers" --Anonymous

Thank you for reading.