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I Forge Iron

GrandLordKhorne

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  • Location
    South East MA at the moment.
  • Interests
    Cars, knitting and farming.
  • Occupation
    Inspector. UT Lv3, MT PT VT Lv2
  1. As for the second post: Oak works OK as a stand, get your hands on a good chunk of Iron wood, that works phenomenally as a stand that will not bounce around. I have mine strapped down to a stump of Ironwood (got the idea from a friend who had the same thing) with some muffler strapping. I burned the base in a little by heating the anvil and setting it on the log. It works grate, the log has no bounce to it at all and burning it in holds it in place, the strapping is just there so when I pick the setup up to move it the log comes with the anvil.
  2. The closest thing I have ever heard of to what your suggesting was a piece a friend did for a sculpture. It was actually one of those large size GI Joe figures. In the end he took it apart as far as he could get it and made molds from it. He cast the final piece from the molds and then assembled the joints using 1/16” welding wire as a pin to pivot on. When he got it to stand just the way he wanted it he simply heated the welding wire with a TIG torch and locked them in place. To be completely honest if I where you I would probably cast the head and hands than TIG them onto a body/limbs made by hammer. I would even probably make the limbs separate and TIG them to the body. You can articulate it by simply putting welding wire in the joints like a GI Joe is (Barbie has non pined joints in the first place) but that might be really ambitious and I don’t think the little girl will play with a 5lbs Barbie all that much anyways, I think it would be more a display piece. Now the really question is which Barbie are you going to make? Really it would be more like a Nikki doll (the black-esk Barbie)… In the end, just to finish the doll up right I would suggest looking around at doll store, you should be able to fined some doll clothes that look like blacksmithing attire. You could make a blacksmith Barbie! No matter what, it sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you if your going to make one.
  3. Nitrogen is required under certain codes because it reduces the chances of contamination in structural welds. It’s something that some moron engineer wrote into a couple of code books without ever trying it himself. Based on what I know and have been told it is the equivalent of putting on white gloves to make sure your pictures don’t get dirty when handling them (Ya, it keeps it cleaner but not by much). And as I understand it, the reduction in contamination has more to do with water vapor in compressed air than the actual gas composition. They pull the same BS with air/carbon arc gouging now and then. But yes, it eats your consumables because pure nitrogen is not as effective at cooling them as air is and makes for a hotter cut from what I understand. Having said that, some of the guys I know who do it for a living have gotten good enough with nitrogen in there plasma that it looks just like air cut. I have also seen one person do plasma cutting with pure oxygen for a special application (don’t try it at home, from what I understand there are special safety considerations) and that made the most incredible cut I have ever seen in my life.
  4. Thanks for the grate info guys. I will contact that shop up here when I get some spare time. Ya, free may not precisely fit in this case. In reality it was a gift from a friend who I did a favor for. I did a bunch of welding for him last fall, fixing up the bucket for his backhoe. He was talking about taking it to a shop to have it fixed up but I told him I had a bunch of spare rod laying around (I had picked up a 40lbs can and only used about 10lbs out of it, didn’t want it sitting around either) and I would be happy to patch it up for him. I didn’t charge him for it (I generally don’t charge friends for my time, only for materials) and then months later I was talking to him and mentioned that I was looking for an anvil and he said he had one I could have. I asked how much and he said don’t worry about it I patched up his bucket for free I could have the anvil for free. Needless to say, no cash changed hands, so I guess free dose fit. He said he paid something like $25 for it at a barn sale a while back (one of his neighbors died and there kids just opened the barn and said offer what you want to pay for stuff, I got a killer deal on a scythe at the same sale).
  5. I live in Portland. One of the guys I work with is a smith, but he shares a shop and dose not have his own yet either.
  6. I scored this anvil for free, it weights in at 108lbs on the scale but I know nothing ells about it. I’m wondering if anyone has any information that might be of interest. It seams pretty solid and it is in nice shape. Any history? Is this a good brand or was free too much to pay? Note: that is not a big crack in the side, it is a funny little step in the casting, presumably where the mold hafts met, it only exists on one side. Also, I just moved to ME. Any one up here with a shop that would be interested in meeting up some time (I have no shop to work in at the moment)
  7. GrandLordKhorne

    GLK's stuff

  8. It’s at Wyman Gordon in Grafton MA actually. We do no open die in this press we do all the open die stuff in a smaller press. I’m pretty sure the big one in Alcoa is only 35K tons, I’m also pretty sure it only works in Al. It would take 1 hit to do what you’re asking. It only takes 1 hit to turn a 10”x10”x160” piece of titanium into an 8” diameter landing gear section. Or a 6” thick piece of Ti into a 2” thick wing beam is also 1 hit. Nothing we make in this press takes more than one hit, the forge operator says if you can’t get it in one hit, the press is not strong enough to accomplish it. You haft to relies the press forms with pressure not impact. The interesting part is the piece goes into the die and comes out of the die both at near white hot, there is really not that much heat loss. Yes, I have been thinking a pair of plane die blocks and a car would make an interesting piece of Damascus. I would love to make a general blade die for the press and then work the blade once it has been given general shape/welded that way, the grain in the blade would be amazing I would think.
  9. For the most part, titanium aircraft parts. At the time of the photo the die in it was for an F22 raptor part. Now and then we forge Inco for nuke subs and stuff. Like I said I will try to get some pics of the tongs and I will see if I can’t get a pick of the billet before it goes into the die. I would like to get a pick of the oven but in the space it sits in I can’t get far enough back to fit it in a pic. this is the big one of 3 (there is a 35K ton and a 10K tone they use for making the billets the right shape).
  10. This is it, my new hammer. I wish it was bigger but it will do. Actually I’m kidding. This is one of the forge presses at work, 50K ton, it is the largest in North America, but not the world. I will try and get a pic of the tongs we use and the furnace too.
  11. I’m lucky, my work has a lot of old track running around it that belongs directly to the company. All of the tract has been disconnected from the outside lines and is no longer used. My supervisor told me I could pick up strays as long as I was not out there with a bar pulling the spikes out of the tracks. So far I have collected 28 spikes and 1 plate. I’m hoping to talk him in to letting me have a length of bent track that is laying in the yard.
  12. The only thing I haft to say about welding rod is packaging. Normally, welding rod is welding rod, there is a set of min specks they haft to meet and they all pretty much work just as well as the other (Suffice it to say, there is some top quality premium rod out there that is a bit better but that is besides the point unless your doing something structurally supercritical and not overbuilt). At any rate, the one thing I always tell people asking me about any brand of welding rod is look at the packaging for that brands 7018 rod. 7018 rod is sensitive to moisture being a low hydrogen type, so it is important that the rod remain dry and as a result the packaging needs to be of reasonable quality to assure your getting good fresh rod. So what I have always said is if they give enough of a care to make sure there 7018 is in a pretty good air tight sealed pack than, they care enough to make descent rod. If the packaging for there 7018 is complete rubbish (and I’m not talking about beat up by shipping and customers, I’m talking genuinely cheap), there rod is probably only barely built to spec. Having said that, I have only run into one case of truly cheap packaging for 7018. It was some cheap china rod from some local welding shop. They carried Lincoln and other weld rod but the guy had a shelf with rod labeled “economy”. Needless to say, the 7018 on that shelf was in a black cardboard container and when I took the top off the container the rod it’s self was only loosely rapped in paper and in a plastic bag that was folded but not sealed over the top. The rod had yet to reach it’s expiration date and had turned nearly black with moisture (for thaws of you who don’t know, the older and/or wetter 7018 gets the darker the flux turns), all I could do was chuckle at how cheap it was. Than a welder walked in saw me chuckling at the rod stuck up a conversation with me and stated that he had bought some in a pinch and had put it in his oven to dry out, when he went to use it the flux just fell off like powder in most cases and he compared it to welding with coat hangers when it didn’t. I think the box was labeled “Thunder Rod, China’s #1 welding rod” or some junk like that, he only had it in 7018, 1/8”.
  13. First of all, I’m careful not to use any bolts with a coating (like cadmium that will hurt you if you weld it). But I tend to put the bolt in, tack it, take the bolt out and complete weld all the way around. I have yet to get spatter in the threads on the inside of the nut. Having said that, if I’m welding a bolt/stud to a part, I always cover the threads with a piece of tube or something to keep the spatter off.
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