mike-hr

Very nice tooling! Thank you for sharing the process. The sconce is awesome too!

Glenn, You're gonna love that table! I rigged two chains through the holes and had a tractor set it onto the base i made, at the doorway of the shop. Then I borrowed a pallet jack from a friends store, did some constructive pallet jack expanding with 6x6 timbers, and rolled it right into place.. does it have 1-1/2 inch holes? If the holes are rough cast with dingleberries, I can show you a nifty broach i made to clean them to size...

Ed, I think the guy with the suit jacket over the bibbers has the look I've been searching for! Thanks, man!

Throwing lots of positive waves your way! Keep us informed....

Richard, Make your own! I use 4 punches. (1) A slot punch made from sucker rod with a 3/16" x 1" end, tapering to 1/2" x 1" in 3 inches, 8" long overall. (2) Small eye drift, used for small hammers and tommahawks. Start with 8 inches of 3/4" round mild steel. Forge the whole piece to 1/2" x 7/8", with soft radiused edges. Leave 3" in the middle, and taper both ends. One end starts in the hole made by the slot punch, the other end is tapered so when it mushrooms from you hitting it, the head doesn't bulge bigger than the drift size. (3) Large eye drift. Start with 8 inches of 7/8" round mild steel. Forge to 5/8" x 1" and taper ends as above. (4) Hourglass drift. Start with 8 inches of 1" round. Forge the middle to 3/4 x 1-1/8", and taper one end. When using the small drift, drive all the way thru, then use the large drift to hourglass the hole. When using the large drift, drive the small drift thru, then drive the large drift thru, then drive the hourglass drift part way, untill you get some spread. A jug of high temp never seize helps..

My shop got a lot nicer when I found an old 4.5 by 6 foot platen table. 2300 pound cast iron, with 1.5inch square holes all over it. It had a slight hump in the middle from the casting process. I looked around and found a factory with a big CNC milling center close by, and had the top machined flat. All that mass makes a great base for bending forks, beverly shear, etc. and the square holes make fixturing convienient. It's probably the only tool in the shop that I just can't live without.

I used a Lincoln 150 AC portable welder for a long time, it was difficult getting a good out of position weld out of it, but the controls went from 90 to 115 amps, with no fine tune. I would add an extra 50 foot lead cord into the system sometimes, banking on a voltage drop to get the heat range closer. I recently bought a new Miller Bobcat 225 portable rig, and have been trying to use up all my extra AC rod on farm and equipment repairs, etc. I can fine tune the miller and run AC rod quite well in all positions. Some folks like to start off welding with 6013 or 6011, but you can get away with lots of bad habits that are hard to unlearn. Yes, DC rod seems to run better. If you have trouble with the arc wandering to one side, re-arrange the ground cable, seems to help sometimes. I keep my rod in a big ammo can with a O-ring lid, don't have much trouble with it.

You can buy 7018 AC rod, in 3/32 or 1/8 at most any welding store. buy a name brand rod, Hobart, Lincoln, etc. I would recommend starting out stick welding with 7018, as it will let you know if you have a bad angle, weave, heat, etc.

I Just got home from a great hammer-in in south Oregon. 33 folks signed up, we had meals and coal provided, and Uncle Roy was able to give $400 from the fees back to the historical society. We got invited back for next year. Friday night was almost magical. We made a hammer out of a splined Peterbuilt transmission input shaft. Five smiths worked on it. Two strikers, a top tool man, a firetender, and a 'put the drift in the vise,quick, and beat the hammer blank off it before it melts into the hammer blank' tech man. Each smith had a job, the whole crowd was in on it, all on the same page, and everybody had good ideas to help it get done. Saturday I got 'bumped off' my forge and worked at another station for a while. I didn't like his cobbled up cut-off hardy, so we ganged up at night after he left and made him a new one out of some splined PTO shaft I had. It was great seeing Scotty's face as he fired up Sunday morning. He yelled out 'Someone left this shiny tool at my station', and one of the guys told him it was last nights project, and now his! Small gatherings like this are a great 'creative bump'. I came home with a lot of satisfaction from helping others, and even more in new ideas. Ron from Susanville was there. He has 12 foot eagle sculptures popping up all over the world, that take 8 months to make and sell for a gazillion dollars. He's an amazingly down to earth guy. I had a great chat with him about my 'sine waves of creativity'. (up, down, up down) He said he has a weird state of mind he gets into where time loses value, and one hour turns into eighteen hours in just a few minutes. I gotta work on that. Anyway, I would like to encourage folks to attend small hammer-ins. Asking silly questions is free, and it's amazing what 33 minds can gestate when they're not afraid to speak up!

The sash weights I've snagged are cast iron. They work good for grommet weights for the tarp on the firewood pile.

Sorry Kowalsky, I guess i was posting the same time you were moderating... feel free to burn my post if you wish!

I hate to use the 'F'-word on this forum, but i must propose that any full time smith that doesn't 'F'-abricate, or use the best technology available, must have a wealthy spouse. I know smiths who do work in the traditional style. They get a thousand dollars a foot for railings, have three phase power, lathes, mills, air hammers, etc. They are clustered around big metro areas, and live with heavy traffic, crime etc. so they can do their thing. I live in a community with a population of around 40,000 in a 50 mile circle. In the last 6 years, I've landed 'one' riveted interior railing, and 'one' upset square corner yard gate. I have to live with welding frames together and schmucking in forged pickets with a squirt gun. I don't feel like I'm any less of a smith than anyone else. I just don't have as many $2 million homes in my area as the folks i truly respect, and have to use electricity in accordance with the budget of the customer. I fabricated a very nice estate driveway gate about 10 years ago, before I found blacksmithing. The top was a double french curve out of 1/2 x 2 flatbar. I did it by marking off 2 inch increments, using the H-press in a 3 point set-up, and a dial indicator so each push was the same. It took all day for two pieces, I wish i could have had it rolled....

PPW's in my thoughts. A mailing address is a great idea.

How about laying plywood sheets, or a track of 2 x 6 boards into the shop. Lever the hammer onto sections of pipe, and roll it along. I moved my hammer all over the shop like this. The key is forcing yourself to move slow enough to be safe. When the hammer was where i wanted it, I levered it up onto shims a little at a time, removed the pipes, and removed shims, 1/4" at a time, until it was on the floor.

Same Subject- Different pearl of Wisdom If you buy a nifty set of tree climbing spikes for five dollars at a yard sale, don't tell anyone... I did, and stopped by a friends shop to show him my new goodies. His dad happened to be there, and said, "Hey, great! Be at my house with your chainsaw and new spikes 7:00 Saturday, I'll buy you lunch." He had a fifty foot Ponderosa pine that got beetle-killed a few years back. Problem was, it was surrounded by outbuildings, and couldn't be felled without killing one or more sheds. What he had was, another live tree about 50 feet away, a Jeep winch snatch block pulley, and a 200 foot coil of rope. I climbed up the live tree until I was as high up as the dead one, chained on the snatch block, and threaded the rope through. (actually took two trips). Next I started to climb the dead tree, with chainsaw and rope tied to my trousers. The theory was, I tie the rope on as high up the tree as I could, climb down a bit, and take the top 6 feet out of the tree. As it fell, Larry's dad could control the trajectory of the falling chunk by pulling on, or, letting slack on the rope, rigged thru the pulley of the live tree. The log chunks should pick up some speed as they fall down the arc of the rope, and when it looks like it will miss all the important architecture, let slack and it should sail off into the woods. Mature Ponderosa pines have a pretty thick bark rind. Dead Ponderosa's have a really loosely attached pretty thick bark rind, so I spent over an hour digging in, and stripping the bark off for my next step, etc.. The process actually worked well. Except for the fourth piece, when the rope broke at the apex of the swing, and the chunk missed his satellite dish by at least 3/8". It was a pretty gut-wrenching morning, but we got the job done, and ate lunch. Down the road about two cold ones from his house is a pretty nifty set of tree-climbing spikes, laying about a spikes-throw from the road, in the woods.

Strange chain of events today led to an adrenalin packed morning. A guy saw the headache/carry stuff rack on my pickup, and wanted one like it for his rig, '76 Ford F250. The bed was dinged up a bit, so I decided to fit the angle iron bed rails on the rig, so i would be sure they fit. Once I got the relief cuts made in the shop, we pushed the angle irons into place, and shimmed and clamped them into plane. I spent about 15 minutes shielding the cab, windows, and bed sides from errant welding sparks using masking tape, cardboard, and welding leathers held on with magnets. On the second tack weld, I heard a slight 'pheww', and stopped to investigate. The behind the seat gas tank was burp-burp-burping flames from the filler cap. Apparently the morning sun had came out from behind the clouds, and warmed the interior of the cab enough to where the full tank had decided to vent off some fumes, underneath my up-to-then ingeniously placed leather shields. I deployed the fire extinguisher, and was about to tell the customer to back away, when I spied his hat brim peeking out from behind an out building, 20 yards away...After everything settled down, we both had a giggle. I told him that in a week or so, this would somehow seem funny. Luckily, gas fires are somewhat honest, and don't behave like in action movies.... :oops:

Tyler, I would love to see some pics of your glass blowing projects. I think steel and glass compliment each other quite well. I predict you'll grow up to be one of those artists that can make a living doing what he loves..

I melted off part of an ear, and some of my shoulder trying to start an old ford pickup with a beer can of gas down the carb... didn't even know i was on fire till my buddy jumped out of the rig and tackled me in the snowy gravel. The worst part happened at the doctor, the nurse had to take a scratcy scotchbrite-like pad to clean the gravel out of the burn... Redneck last words-- "hey bubba, watch this!"

IForgeIron Blueprints Copyright 2002 - 2007 IFORGEIRON, All rights reserved. BP0228 Tong Master 2000 by Mike-Hr Greg, Darryl and I ganged up and made this for the auction at the Weaverville hammer-in next month. It holds lots of tongs, hammers, and some hardy tools in a pretty small footprint. The base is an ag disc, the upright is one inch pipe, and the hubs are 1 1/4 inch pipe. The tong racks are 1/4 inch x 1 inch rings, a 13 inch ring inside a 16 inch ring, connected by spokes and mig welded together. This is my store bought ring roller, I found it's a lot faster to take off the factory hand crank and use a power drill to feed the stock. Here's one of the racks finished, we cut some sq. tubing to hold a few hardy tools. This is the disc we wanted to use for the base, it has a 1 3/16" sq. hole. We wanted to make a pin, riveted to the disc, that would accept the pipe upright, so the unit would break down for easy transport. Greg had a 1 1/8" bolt, that we upset to 1 3/4" at the end. We pulled a tenon from the end that matched the disc hole, and then cut the bolt off leaving 8 inches total length. Next step was to refine the pin end until it fit inside the pipe upright. Riveting the pin to the disc. We cleverly engineered the project so the pin fits in the hardy hole for this step. Here's what it looks like after painting. At the top of the upright pipe, we made a slip-on wall bracket for stability. Greg's wife Bev did some nice lettering, so folks at the auction could figure out what in the heck this is. View full article

IForgeIron Blueprints Copyright 2002 - 2007 IFORGEIRON, All rights reserved. BP0220 Bevel Square by Mike-Hr We're using 1/4" x 3/4" flat bar, 3 pieces, 16" long. On each piece, round one end, and make a 45 degree cut in the middle piece, as shown. Stick the little wedge piece in place, clamp, and weld together. The extra scrap in the previous picture was used to hold the open space while welding. Put the middle piece in place, clamp solid, and drill 1/4" hole as shown. Regrind the radius on the middle piece a little smaller, so it won't break plane while opening. Finished piece. I had to polish a little to get the tool to open and close easy. I like the nut and bolt idea more than a rivet, I can set an angle, then tighten up the square and not worry about it shifting. An alternative is to put 4 center punch marks on each side of the scrap wedge piece. This will act as a spacer for the weld. Put the wedge AND the mobile arm in place, clamp, and weld together. The extra scrap in the previous picture was used to fill the open space for welding. View full article

IForgeIron Blueprints Copyright 2002 - 2007 IFORGEIRON, All rights reserved BP0286 Mini Anvil by Mike-hr Cutting a slice of RR track 1 inch thick. I use light feed on the saw, takes about 15 minutes. Cut the rail section from the bottom plate (see mark above the 3" measurement on the ruler). Cut 5 inches of 1" square or what ever size stock fits your hardie hole. Split the square stock about 2 1/2" deep, and use a rounded punch to radius the bottom. Cut the track to match the height of the 'Y'. I marked the radius of the punch on the track with a felt pen, and ground to shape. Hot seating the track into the 'Y' Getting ready to cleft weld the two pieces. A little MIG weld at the bottom helps keep the two pieces from squirting apart during the forge weld. Finishing the cleft weld . Sticking the piece in the hardy hole helps contain it. After it cooled, I migged around the cleft weld for added security. Forming the bicks using Dick Sargent's taper refining attachment on the power hammer. (see Blueprint BP0081 Tapers Refined) After forging, I heated to bright red, and annealed in vermiculite over night. The next morning I ground the tool to shape, and hardened it in oil. After hardening I finished polished and used hot blocks on the body to temper until the bicks turned brown/purple. The finished mini Anvil. View full article