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I Forge Iron

mike-hr

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Everything posted by mike-hr

  1. My opinion, a week long class might have diminishing returns. It's hard to come home after a 3 day class and put in hard time at the tool to burn in the knowledge. I have a tough time with data overload.
  2. I lost a fair amount of money on a job 5 yrs ago for 2 reasons. (1) I did a last minute quick fabricated railing for a new construction that had a loan deadline for certificate of occupancy. I worked 18 hours a day for 2 weeks, lots of lineal feet. It had square tubing framing members, and 1/2 sq pickets. Turns out the sq tubing was so slick from factory rolling, primer and paint peeled off in sheets. Now I rough up all sq tubing with 80g sandpaper. (2) I had a professional industrial paint guy match my railing paint to the house color. After 6 months, it all chalked up, and looked like a 20 year old job. Paint guy called corperate, and found out that my super industrial paint didn't like all that much tinting...they covered the new paint cost, but not the week of sanding the old stuff and re-spraying in place. In summary, ya just never can tell what's going to happen.....
  3. Ian, Good on ya! I think I can help a bit. I'll round up the usual suspects to help you unpack. We'll bring our own single malt, that should save you $200K on the move. P.S. One of my friends used to have a plane that slow... PPS. You have turned into a bi-annual mentor to me. I truly enjoy the stories of your traveling experiences. There's a room and a steak dinner waiting for you if you get around my neck of the woods. mike
  4. I'm an Oregon weirdo. I choose to live on the east side of the Cascades. There's dying logging towns every 100 miles, below zero temps in the winter, and mosquitos that will make you jump in the lake for relief. There's also more dirt biking than can be traveled in several lifetimes, great views of the milky way, and great community attitude. If I had to re-locate from K-falls, I would look at Baker City, or Lakeview. Open carry six-guns are the norm in the high desert. It's hard to sell stuff locally, but when you get good enough at your craft, folks find you wherever you are.
  5. Frosty, I used graphite as a 'negative' and welded around it, leaving a precise hole.
  6. A local office building upgraded the old human operated elevator to a new fangled push button operator. I got a bagful of these obsolete open faced graphite electrical contacts that were used to slap against a powersource and apparently, make the car go up and down. I put one in the gas forge one day to see what would happen. After 2 hours, it was happy as could be, with no degradation. I started researching a bit, and found the melting point of this stuff could be as high as 3850C.. Last week, a guy came into the shop with a cast iron wood stove door. Grandpa had stumbled while opening the door, and ripped the upper hinge pocket off the poorly designed door. It had a bunch of curves and radii and would have been problematic to locate the bore once I built up the broken piece. The door still had part of the hole remaining. I took one of these graphite contacts and lathed it down to what size the hole needed to be, and stuck it in the broken half a hole. I preheated the cast iron a bit, and TIG'ed around the graphite blank with 316SS rod. It was amazing to see the weld bead just lay there on top of the carbon negative. I filled a good lump of rod in the broken spot, post heated a while, and drilled out the graphite with a drill bit..The guy called back a couple days later, happy and warm.
  7. A wise man once told me," decide what's the biggest stuff you're going to work, and hold the line there". I have a forklift, a fairly large bandsaw, a couple power hammers, and a great big imagination. As I get older, and the chiropractor visits get more frequent when I try to burst out of my self imposed bubble, the more I try and hold true to the said advice. I've been following your work, and I'm very impressed. If you lived closer, I would be happy to donate time to help you get closer to your goal, if I could. Right now, I will postulate that you aren't looking at your existing tools, and using them for all they are worth. Make shorter top tools, finish on the hand anvil, dance with who brought you there. I consider myself a pro smith, even if I do a lot of machining and welding to keep my family fed. I make a lot of really nifty stuff, without a 24 inch throw on the power hammer.
  8. A moustache 'And' a smiley face.. best blade ever!
  9. On My kinyon, I increased travel by fabbing a thin lower die (1-1/2"). I use it to get enough room to use slot punches and other top hand held tooling. Currently employ 3 x 12 cylinder.
  10. I don't know the hours, or what months they work, but that cute little 5 block square section of oldtown has a working mission-era shop. I stumbled on it several years ago, apparently you can volunteer at the counter for a while, and work your way to the hot stuff. Vista has a good group, also.
  11. I'll throw out some observations. Feel free to discard them at will. I built a new style Kinyon last year and have been smitten with its performance. - The air cylinder looks too long, and too thin. -Having the air cylinder above the ram leads to self destruction, broken welds, etc. Recommend you buy the plans for the new Kinyon. 30% more investment on a shackle and leaf spring will pay off for years to come. - I feel you need a strongback on the backbone IBeam. something like 3/4 x4 flatbar on edge skip welded every 6 inches or so. As built, I feel your machine is going to be whippy where it shouldn't be. I'll stop there, keep going, but standing on the shoulders of success works better than spending several years making others mistakes... mike
  12. How do you 'know' that hilti jackhammer bits are S-2??
  13. Fe-Wood,, 350 BPM? You gotta lay off the energy drinks, man. A guy could get a stroke trying to think that fast. 200-220 is fine, and the day still passes in the same hours. mike
  14. In knife class #203, Rich says nickel don't like to weld to nickel. How much nickel is in 15n20?
  15. Yes on the norgren valve. I can't quantify my dribble rate, other than looking at the hammer base after a session. If there's a puddle, I turn it down. If there's no oil sign, I turned it up a little. This may be a good thread to add a troubleshooting tip I discovered after way too many hours of scratching my head...A friend has the same Kinyon leaf spring hammer that we made. It started to get 'lazy' after 2 yrs of service. Meaning, when she let off the treadle, the tup (upper ram) would stay on the bottomed out on the anvil position. She would have to bounce the treadle to get the ram to lift up for the next task. After a lot of thinking, we established that the coil spring in the master 5-way air valve had fatigued, and didn't have the schwiing to lift the spool valve to the point that air could rush into the bottom port of the ram, lifting it up. Now here's the gooey part-- we ordered a new master valve, the same part number as the one from 2 years ago. It fixed the problem. I took it apart, 'cause that's the kind of guy I am, and the two valves, with the same part number, had different length coil springs. The new one had a shorter length spring, and a nylon spacer to make it the same length as the old spring. I can't comment on whether this was a better idea, or a case of the supplier got a great deal on a bunch of springs that was the wrong length.
  16. Territorialmillworks posted a ditty about 3 pages back, talking about synthetic oil degrading the rubber parts. I've been using Stanley/bostich air tool oil for a year and a half with no troubles.
  17. I'm back home after the pre-formentioned conference, and I think I have most of my remaining brain cells corralled enough to make this post..I had a great time. They had avenues for the up and coming smith, hand coached by Gerald Boggs and Mark Aspery, who gave folks the straight scoop. The Blade smiths were discussing molecules and taking questions, my head is still spinning from that. The Blacksmith Wars were absolutely the pinnacle of the event. We got to watch 4 teams at the top of the game use wits and muscle to create four different masterpieces that were so different, yet staying in the rules, that calling any one of the finished products a winner was almost a travesty. When I first decided to approach open die hot work, information was hard to find. I drove 7 hrs one way several times just to see what was going on. It was worth it then, now 15 yrs later, this gig was worth every cent. Thanks to the NWBA folks for throwing a good foal.
  18. You have a plumb beauty anvil. I also share the Wile.E. Coyote obsession. I seem to emulate his lifestyle. We both come up with real smart ideas, but never hit the big paycheck. Luckily, we also share an almost fruitless lifelong sense of optimism. I hope your catapults never fling over and put you into the dirt.
  19. Tell her she's a bit skinny, and offer to buy her dinner..
  20. Yes, the Weaverville museum seems to be the unofficial hub for the Jefferson Smiths. The Redding guy, Walter Evans, passed away in March and is greatly missed. His buddy Danny teaches smithing and Ag welding at the community college. Go to a Weaverville class, you might meet somebody there that's close to you
  21. Weaverville has a real good edu program with great people and reasonable cost. go to www.calsmith.org click on upcoming classes, and go back a page or two for contact info.
  22. I'll throw in.. I have a cast iron Champion forge I take to demo's and hammer-ins. I put refractory cement in it for a couple years, it seemed to peel up and lift off all the time. I leave it raw now, I just don't use wet coal..
  23. This is all good stuff. My addition is a Neckerchief, or Bandana, or for folks out west, 'wild rag'. soak it in the beer cooler water and wrap around the neck. Cools the brain down right fast.
  24. Thanks, Dave. I'm printing that out to hang on my wall. I would like to state as an addendum, that an old drill press should reduce those speeds by 25% or so, because of babbit bearings chatter more than milling machine bearings. I've been machining with old equipment since 1985, what works for me, is, if the chips start turning blue right off the drill bit, slow it down until they turn brown, then turn blue when they hit the air.
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