mike-hr

Not much help here, other than I have strings of kinfolks that are loggers. Most everything on a log truck that sees hard work is most likely 4140 alloy or better. Being tough is better than being hard, and breaking like glass. There's a tapered pin somewhere on a log truck, I think it keeps the bunks on the frame from swiveling when not loaded. Anyway, that pin makes a passable cone hardy if you weld a piece of square stock on the bottom that fits in your hardy hole. Sorry I don't know what S-cams are, I try really hard to stay dumb about log trucks, Gyppo loggers get in from the woods at 11:00 pm and need to be rolling again at 3;30 am, I get my favorite sleep in during their down time, and loggers are worse than lawyers about paying their bills at the end of the month.

Another approach, not the best idea, just another idea..
The twisty parts that sit on the table are most likely sharp, and will eventually scratch the wood table. I would consider doing a nice wrap with rawhide bootlaces for the contact area, and use the wrap to hide a shim on the non-contact leg(s). I've also leveled stuff like that with differing thicknesses of felt sticky dots or cork.

I have two western chief blowers, they are very smooth and considered one of the finest made. However both of mine are broke. The early model blower had the axles supported on only one side, and they made one gear from aluminum, and another one from brass, along with the steel gears. I suppose this was a good thing, until the aluminum gear stripped one day. The later model had axles supported on both sides, no aluminim gear, but one brass gear. It was a great machine until one day the brass gear stripped. They used simple square cut teeth, I suppose some day I'll get bored enough to see if I could track down replacements, or get even more bored, and try to make some on the mill with the rotary table.

I have the shop behind the house. Advantages are, short commute, if I don't trip over the dog, security, and not having to drive home after happy hour. I have a pretty nice shop, 3 days a week or more, one of the local coal sniffers comes by with a 12 pack to see what I'm working on, or to use some equipment for something they're doing. It's nice not having to drive home after happy hour. There's also no extra expenses involved with off-site property.
Disadvantages are, If I'm awake, there's something I could be working on. The lifestyle never shuts down. Guilty feelings of missing worktime rise when I'm spending frivilous time with the family. I need to replace the back deck on the house, but the shop's right there, I could make a firescreen instead, and get paid for it. Contractors come in to get their dump truck or backhoe welded up at 9:00P.M. in the summer, they know i'll be there, and they need to be rolling again at 5:00 the next morning. I get paid good for that kind of work, maybe it's not a disadvantage. They know they better have a 12 pack bonus for after hours fab work.
I've worked in big machine shops when I was younger, the owners all had pretty nice mills and lathes in their garages, for prototype and fun work. I've realized once you're bit, the pesky rash never goes away.

Howdy JE, beauty work. What's liver of sulfur, and how many innocent sulfurs had to die to patina the screens?
mike

It's a fuzzy memory, but I sort of remember seeing a small coal forge a while back that was semi boxed in, with a stovepipe hole in the back. Apparantly it was a commercial soldering iron furnace. It had a small trough, looked like a helper could keep rolling them to and from the hot spot to be ready for the master-solder-er.

I've got this big Parker chipping vise from the early 1900's that I'm quite fond of. Last week the screw broke in half, it could have been partially fractured for decades, who knows? It's an old square cut thread, 7/8 inch diameter, 4-1/2 tpi. My lathe doesn't do 4-1/2 tpi, and it would be expensive and some work to convert to Acme threads. I've been pondering how to fix the screw for a few days, this afternoon I set to it. I ground off the broken ends to smooth, and then ground both ends to points, for a full penetration weld. I mounted both pieces in a vee block set, next the issue was getting the two pieces back timed back in with themselves, in a continuous thread kind of way. I used dial calipers to measure across 4 good threads. I clamped one of the pieces to the vee block, and rotated the other piece until the thread leads across both chunks came to my measurement. I clamped it down, and TIG welded up to the minor diameter of the screw. I tried to guess the lay of the missing thread and was able to TIG up a helix that came real close to matching the threads that were missing. I pondered welding a solid lump, but that would have added to the filework. After it cooled, I went to the lathe and took a cut across the weld area to true up the major diameter of the screw. The whole piece had surprisingly little runout, I think clamping solid in the vee block for each weld pass helped to minimize weld warping. After the major diameter was happy, I set to filing out the threads. I found a mill bastard file that fit loose in the threads, and tried to train my arm to hold the lead angle of the thread. 2 hours and a cramped hand later, It looked pretty close, but wouldn't spin into the nut at the repair. McraigL was over, he eyeballed my work, and found a little spot of minor diameter that looked a bit thick. I worked that piece down, and by gosh, the nut spun all the way to the end of the thread like nothing had ever happened. I greased and re-assembled the vise, and clamped onto a piece of 1 inch sq bar. I jumped down on the handle, lots harder than I usually would. The repair held fine. I'm feeling pretty good about the repair, and my guts don't sink when I look at the vise anymore.

I just ILL'ed that book last month. Cost a couple dollars. My opinion, the best part of the book is the section on rolling angle iron, and pre-rolling the off axis to have the whole piece come into true after the roll is completed. Sounds like pretty dry information, till you need to do it.

I'll second Southshore's recommendation for the South Bend book. I was borrowing a friends, I looked on amazon and found original copies are fetching upwards of US$80. There is a reprint available on the same page, which I ordered for $12. The reprint is indeed the same book, in case anybody's wondering.

I hate ball end mills.. Another approach would be, make some positive shapes of the dishes you want, heat the block, might take all morning, and press the positives into the block. Next thursday after it cools, square the block up on the mill, and do your edge vee's and half rounds.

I did the same process when I built my gas forge, if you drill the hole in the centerline of the pipe, it's going to be difficult with out a milling machine and end mill. The local pipe supply company will have these nifty doo-dads called Thread-o-let, or Weld-a-let, which is a lump of steel with a pipe thread running through. your hole in the pipe can be a bit rough, the thread-a-let will give you good threads to adapt to.

Sounds like you're frustrated. A 25# LG won't thunk steel like a Nazel 4B. All you can do is get good at running flat out. My opinion, use a long gas forge, get a 20 inch heat, and make a pull taper, start at the fat end of the bar, and pull it toward you, all the way to the end. Next heat, index 90 degrees, same thing. I learned a great trick from a friend a couple weeks ago. If the taper is 3/4 to 1/4 in 2 feet, for example, lay that taper out on some sheet metal, and band saw it out, for a comparison jig. It's real easy to cheat the taper and leave thick spots laying there. The sheet metal comparitor will show the thick spots. If you get 4 sides laying true to the sheet metal jig, then go to octagon, then round. Accuracy should come first, time and money come after that. You dance with who brung ya. If the LG is taking 10 minutes longer than you feelit should, it's nobody's fault. Eat the time, or gear up.

The watch word of all traditional smithing is S,O,R square, octagon, round. It's easy to juxtaposition hexa for octa in conversation. I love the work CRalph does, and modeled my PHammer tooling from his video. If you want to get to round, then SOR is your friend. If you want to generate Hex shapes, I'd reccomend a bottom swedge.

Lets back up. Are you talking Hexagon(6 sides) or Octagon(8 sides)? I do a lot of octagon forging on the hammer, go to square, and knock the diamonds down until the facets all match.

If you found a competent smith to start you out, blisters are better than books, any day.

There's some talent on that table, don't stop. The plant hangers got a good organic feel, which is good for hanging organic stuff from. I'm going to throw some judgements at you, feel free to ignore, but I feel you're just a tweak away from transitioning from nice, to beautiful. Your ball ends are great. That implies you can isolate material at will (Guillotine fuller?). The same technology would allow you to pull a tenon, on everything you have arc welded to a flange. If you punch a hole in the flange, you get a un-copy-able frog-eye look. if you use thick enough material for the flange, you can use an 82 degree countersink from the backside to create a relief, that you can rivet the tenon flush. Worried about the rivet rotating? You're a mason, right? Remember those aweful star drills, four sided chisels that can drill a hole in masonry with a hand hammer, in less than 6 hours? I find star drills on the 'please buy me' rack at the hardware store for a dollar or two. Get the countersunk mat'l hot, and give it a whack or two with an appropriate sized star drill. When you rivet the tenon in, the star drill divots act as detents, the rivet stays put. Your prices are low, because you're arc welding in sight. Don't like riveting? Dont't like punching? Drill the hole, do the same coutersink, and plug weld & blend from the backside. Your work just jumped a league. I like your leaves done over the bick, with the centerline raised. I started doing those a while back , and have no desire to go back to chiseling in veins. The chisel marks never look right anyway. Carry on. Your work is good. The reason I wrote this diatribe, is, my demo table looked just like yours for a couple years, until some old phart gave me the info I just layed down. We pass it along, that's what we do. I did a blues festival in my little town in September, a lot of product like you have. Something weird happened, maybe it was the beer booth down the way, but some folks came by, got to talking, 5 minutes later, they had bought out 2/3 of my stuff, I was low on widgets, but had plenty of money for the beer guy.

I noticed your pick-up has a plastic bed liner, what I like to call an inertial slide system. When I transport my big anvil to hammer-ins, a big chain goes around the anvil waist and gets rigged to the trailer reciever hitch frame. A sudden stop will launch that chunk into the engine, it doesn't care if you are between or not.
Beauty Anvil, didn't mean to step on your thread.

Those are real nice tent stakes. I know I'm in the minority, against the grain, etc., but that's sort of the definition of a blacksmith, right? I disagree with the 5 minute or less public demo paradigm. I know we live in a channel flipping, google your answer right now society. Folks ought to know, I've got a lot of labor in most of these pieces. If they want to watch for 5 minutes, great. Come back in an hour, I'll be farther along. There's customers out there that woudln't mind paying 20 bucks each for those stakes, be a great holiday present for their elk hunting cousin.

John at Gearhartiron turned us on to ribbon burners a few years back, there's a pocket of us in south Orygun and north Cali that are plumb sold on them.. Go ahead, stick a bunch of 1-1/4 inch stock in there, work it for 4 hrs, and tell me if you had time for lunch between heats...

Cliff, sending good thoughts to your brother. I got a new bottle of Scotch, sounds like you could use a dram. Stop by anytime.
mike h

My opinion, taking a length of 1 inch square, drawing a four side taper, then turning that to an eight sided taper with equal facets is a great exercise. I like to stand off to the side of the operator and yell 'Lower, Lower' so they don't generate a hockey stick. Also, if the heat leaves, it goes back in the furnace.

Just throwing this in to the pool, feel free to ignore it. Consider bolting your plate to the table frame, instead of welding it. Countersink the holes w/82degree countersink, and allen headed flathead machine screws will set flush with the surface. The first by-gosh real welding table I made used 1/2 inch plate with the frame set inbound 4 inches per side so I could clamp stuff with visegrips. I skip welded the top to the frame, 1-1/2 inches of weld every 8 inches. The whole tabletop warped toward the weld about 2 degrees, so I had to shim everything I needed straight, until I gave the table away.

Thanks for this thread, I just got a call last week to come up with some forged curtain rods and was meaning to research them a bit. The customer was wondering how to hang the curtains in a pre-1900 fashion. Tireif, what are those grommets? We were thinking about some kind of loop with a hook, but then wondering how to fix the fabric to them.

Hi Kenny, I like the shapes that keep you awake at night. South Oregon? I'm in KFalls, get in touch with me if you're cruising through.

In the winter, I spend my first cup of coffee heating scrap blocks in the forge, laying on the anvil face, clamp one in the vise, put one on the Power hammer die. I feel it's time well spent, a person can get more hammer time with a warm anvil up front. I have a propane reddi-blaster space heater, I've found it to be more effective to aim it just under the surface of the big welding table. When I turn the heater off, the table will still radiate for several hours. It's a big cast iron platten table, but the theory holds for any mass heated up, rather than just the air.