youngdylan

On of my favourite emergency uses was when my gear lever shook off my Triumph sickle, those 6" moles I carried sure came in handy then. I do get annoyed with those "mechanics" that just repeat the old platitude, usually in a very po faced voice ..... "there's no place in my toolkit for mole grips". How wrong they are.

on a pitched slate roof?:)

.Good grief Sam, you must be one tall fellow! There's no way I could put one hand under a vise leg and hit the top with a hammer in the other. Sure, I'm not holding myself up as some kind of "standard of human male" but I THINK I'm not completely out of spec. Oh alright, let's not factor what's left of my skull in the equation. Frosty the Lucky.

I think you might be kinda missing the point about them. I've a reasonable collection of G, bar and carver clamps but I wouldn't be without my mole grips. Amongst the many jobs they are very good for is holding small bolts/ items when trimming them on the bandsaw or belt grinder. What do you suggest would do the job better? First photo shows some specialized mole grips that almost no other tools can do the job of, access being a big plus

that dog is just unfeasably cute

1500 sq ft ish maybe down to 1000, concrete floor, high eves (v. important), good sized acess door, neighbours that can tolerate the hammers (this seems to be the limiting factor in my search), preferably max 1/2 hour travelling from home (Chorlton), not near a housing estate full of hoodies and scroats .......

....but the compressor footprint is? .......

I'm still in that shoebox John .... but thinking ahead. I did actually look at a "usefull" workshop on Brighton Rd Ind.Est. (near the pyramid roundabout) but turned out there was no 3 phase (was told there was). Looks like I'm gonna be booked with work (some not very interesting, more or less cut and weld) till Xmass so it'll be next year before I move. If the clearspace is still ther I'd be very interested

.

Thanks for that big foot. Yeah it's 3 heats and 1100mm but remember I can heat 600mm of parent stock upto bright yellow all over if needed. Vast bulk of the work is done in the first heat. Because the parent stock starts as 28mm there's alot of heat there and thick sections hold their heat for a long time. There's lots and lots of 1/4 strenght ( ish) blows working the bar back and forwards .... this is the mind numbing bit I hate doing, gives me leg ache working this lenghth for the length of time of this first heat (with my treadle arrangement). As the heat goes I beast the thick end were its red and use strong blow to "reheat" the cooling thin end back to yellow. Next 2 heats are much less work and time. As you say there are problems with droop working long heats, Grain growth doesn't concern me much; my work is all ornamental. Kinda wondering if a lighter faster hammer might be the thing for this scale of taper; I kinda like long elegant tapers with organic work

I take it that is when they are burning in free air, it it the same when you have them running in the forge? Mine run lovely at almost zero psi in air but splutter and f**t when used in the forge. It's none to small a chamber .... 200 by 200mm by 600 long; 3 off 3/4" burners, usually runing 2 occasionally 1 or 3 burners at once.

Recently had to do a batch of long tapers; 28mm down to 5mm over 1100m length. Easliy done in one main and two quick reheats using my Anyang 40kg and a 600mm long gas forge. Thing is, as I was doing them I realised I was hardly using any of the hammers full power. There was a lot of tippy tippy tap tipping going one as I moved the bar back and forth. Me? I always like to beast things, push machines to their limit ......thats what industrial machines are designed to do all day long. My time is much more precious than treating the machine like an old woman. Works great on lathes and mills, max cutter speed, max cut depth, plenty of coolant, just ease up for the final finishing cuts. Kinda wondering if there's an equivalent for doing long tapers, or indeed how others do them. I do the "leave a little bit at the end and come back to it" method. Forge out the bulk of the taper but leave about a 20/25mm long bit untouched on the end (in the case above taper), as the bar goes to red I can beast away around the transition from stock bar to taper, other than that its a lot of mind numbing tip tapping. Quick reheat to forge out the untoched bit, quick reheat to blend in the two stages. Suggestions?

That's quite scary to know ......... they were built for PROFIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

....or very long crow bars ;)

wee doesn't even begin to describe my workshop:)

Hey Grant don't joke now, thats the only way I can get my mill and lathe in my matchbox workshop Think I might write an article on surviving in the small workshop for that Baptists website of yours

Dream On I occassionally get enquiries like this, customers telling me the price they want to pay, usually its way below cost. I kinda find it a bit insulting really. Might be ok when haggling when buying from a market stall or even a car show room but .... It's kinda a filter really, triggers a little flag that tells you not to waste anymore time, same as people that want to haggle over the initial payment.

I'm never quite sure about this. For a given volume of gas there is an optimum volume of air needed and a set amount of heat energy is released. Does it matter how this air is got, forced in or drawn in by the venturi? Equal amounts of gas in either burner need the same amount of air, if they're not running weak or rich they should release the same amount of energy ............. I think! Perhaps the advantage of a blower is that that you can force in a lot more air, this means you can squirt in a lot more gas and so get the forge a lot hotter .... but you're using much more gas ....... I think

Platen tables seem to one of those tools that are much more available your side of the ditch, along with hossfeld benders, beverley shears, induction heaters. Guess are abundance of cheap flypresses doen't quite make up for it. Soon as I get a bigger worshop I'll fab up a table with a 30mm maybe 50mm plate top and drill round holes for dogs ..... not quite as useful a square ones though.

I'll contact you again about importing that tower computer I desperately need Grant ;)

Time to get geeky: induction heating doesn't transfer energy as heat, it transfer energy via electromagnetism and induces eddy currents (big short circuits) in the bar. It is this massive local flow of current that heats the bar (not hystresis) ..... I think. Grant will be able to explain it better/ correct me. Heat only goes where it's neede with a small radiant loss... Gotta get one!

This photo from one of Peter Parkinson's books makes it clearer. Sorry about the size, I usually size photos before posting but the computer is playing silly b***ers

Bob, sorry the pictures not the most informative but if you look t top left you'll see the jaws of the vice where its grips the bar with tenon. The whole work is too large to use the vice when it is fixed vertical, hence used "loose" and used "free"and led on the work on the bench. Makes a big difference cos there aint much mass in the bar.

I'll give it a go Bob when I finally manage to get on holiday ... hopefully this year. It's just about the only time I get to read in depth. What's it about then? "If this is man" is about his time and near death in Auswich and simple observations of the nazis. "The Truce" is about his release and repatration back to Italy (a wonderful country by the way). It takes you the absolute depths of hell and then little by little without hardly noticing it you find your spirts lifted by the common humanity of his encounters on his way home. The scarey thing about nazism is that .... in broad brush strokes ....they were elected by the middle classes not that long ago by a supossed civilized country and were passionately adulated by many at the time..... could it happen again? ..... something similar to the concentration camps went on in Bosnia Sorry to do politics everyone.

There should really be a section on the home pages for Safety stuff. I never really noticed there wasn't one but now, it stands out like a sore thumb. Most books on smithing these days seem to have a section near the front. Me? I always like hearing about others near ....or other ....misses, not in a ghoulish way but the more I get shocked into safe practicesthe happier I am. It's kinda relevant to me cos I'm self taught about just about everything metalwise and rarely go to forge-ins. I'm only too aware I will have taught myself many bad habits. I never really want to feel "safe" cos it's that complacency that will get me.