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I Forge Iron

jimkb8tbi

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  • Location
    Hemlock, Michigan
  1. ​I have made a lot of these using a piece of 1-inch by 4-inch bar about 8 inches long with a 1/4(minus half a blade thickness) by 1/2 rabbet milled on the end as a holder with a HF horizontal bandsaw. Use a visegrip to hold it in position with 1/4 inch of the stock projecting past the end of the holder. You can use the same holder in a vise and guide the portaband along the end of the holder. Will have to shift grip for the long cut. Use a rubber tipped spring clamp to dampen vibrations if desired.
  2. Visit the Max Carey Blacksmith Guild, every Wed nites ,1800 to 2100, at the Bradley House Museum and ask for John the electrician, or Fred Berg. Some one there can answer your question. It is a great group and a free lesson (informal) every week, just ask.
  3. Add to the above: After drawing in any CAD program that can export a JPEG file, look at BigPrint at woodgear.ca/bigprint to print a tiled print at full scale. This guy is a woodworker making machines out of wood. I am currently using this for a routed sign with 5 inch letters by 12 feet long. 13 sheets in landscape mode. Can do the same for a scanned sketch and will blow up as required. Free evaluation, full cost $22. I have no connection to this program other than use.
  4. The hot box concept works well. We had a project calling for 500 grapes 5/8 diameter. We used a box made of perforated stainless about 1/8 thick formed into a box about 3 in x 4 in to heat 10 at a time before texturing. The stainless has a higher melt temp so sticking to the balls was not a problem and the perforations allowed the balls to heat quickly.
  5. For tubular chimes there is a fabulous site for calculating length and hanger position. Wind Chime Design by Lee Hite An excell spreadsheet is included to calculate andy diameter, any wall thickness and notes desired. I made perfect C Major chimes with good tone. drill hanging holes and insert handles from the little spring steel paper clips for an internal connection and no interference from string. Used copper braid wire to hang. might be interesting to calculate for solid rod.
  6. Another suggestion for guillotine is a necking down tool for pipe. I have two sizes in same pair of dies. One inch and half inch squares cut on the diamond and rounded edges like a fuller. Pick sizes to fit your needs. Works much better than straight fullers because it supports pipe from flattening out. Faster too, in my opinion.
  7. I make quite a few of these in 1/2 inch stock and got tired of all the sawing. Even on the band saw it is tedious work. I have a jig which is a piece of 1 inch by 4 inch stock about 8 inches long. There is a 1/4 inch deep rabbet on the end which is 1/4 inch minus half the blade thickness in width. I fasten this in the vise so that it just touches the blade in the band saw. Then mark your stock and clamp the stock in the rabbet with a visegrip and start sawing. You have to watch as the saw approaches the mark and stop appropriately. this will leave a slightly angled cut because the saw blade is not going to full horizontal. Finish in the bench vise with a hacksaw, about 6 or 8 strokes. Rotate, switch ends and repeat for the other cut. Works great. If you are doing a lot of them you can also fabricate an extension for the shutoff switch so that it shuts off automatically.
  8. I use a mixture of boric acid and iron oxide 1:1 by weight which costs me $10 for 5 lbs of each ingredient, plus $12 for shipping from Continental Clay Co, in minneapolis. Gave 5 lbs to our local group, Max Carey Blacksmith Guild, for use in our classes. Works good. I do not think scale is the same as iron oxide because this stuff is red and scale is black. The difference lies in the valence state of the iron.(I think)
  9. A quick caution--do not assume that the 4x8 sheet are true dimensionally. I am in the process of building a project with 10 sheets of this. I found out that the best that you can count on is 47.5 by 97.5 because of variations in size and alignment of the edges. Mostly i could get one side and end to square up and had to trim the other sides. Use a jig of OSB to guide your angle grinder. Eats up cutoff wheels like crazy. (About one per sheet)
  10. This is great. Just got into the house after trying to unload a 1/8 inch sheet of steel 4'x8' out of my trailer. got it up to the top of the trailer before I quit. Now have to move it 8 feet laterally to put on top of a frame. Lots of good ideas. Thanks, to all. Jim
  11. My ID is my first name plus my amateur radio callsign (which is guaranteed to be unique in the world). I have never found a duplicate. There are thousands of Jim Curtis's out there.
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