Drq

I seem to have run into an all to common problem with hobbies like blacksmithing; All the old guys are gone. I've been asked on numerous occasions to sharpen plowshares for different folks and I've always had to say I haven't the faintest idea where to start, but if they knew someone who did I would would love to learn. The usual response includes "well there used to be a guy up in (insert small town name) that did them, but he passed away ten years back". So I thought (in my youthful ways) Google knows everything ! So I consulted the google. And it was useless. So my fellow ifi'ers. Anyone know how to sharpen plowshares ? Or know of a good tutorial ? Or have a shop somewhere up in western america that might be able to show someone how to carry on a seemingly lost art ? Thanks again for the help I always find here. Logan (Drq)

Sorry Steve, I was wondering why you would use stop blocks instead of the stop nut.

Why use the stop blocks ? Just curious, is it faster or more accurate or easier ? Thanks !

I use my number six from Kayne and son for welding, seems to work just fine. Need to work fast at first to get things set and then I like to used the depth nut to get a nice even thickness.

Try searching annealing, or normalizing, or how to make steel soft for that matter. The search function is a wonderful thing.

Thats kinda what I was getting at trying to bum old tooling off a shop, at least if you break them your not out much. A lot of repair shops use their end mills mainly for cutting keyways, if the corners are chipped they're no longer any good for key ways, but if your using it to cut a through groove you can drill first and then feed your endmill in till you get to decent flutes. As for machining being quicker and easier, and more accurate. Well yeah I guess lol. I've spend five days fixing one 8" bore, xxxx near had my arms fall off from drilling 700 1" hole in qt plate and you gotta remember that up to a few years ago the most accurate machines in the world had hand scraped ways. In material I had real trouble getting a nice looking groove in for something like a bolster for a blade, I've done pretty much what you describe, drill undersized holes in a line, but then go and use an endmill to drill out the remaining material (lock your machine up as good as you can), and then using again an under sized endmill true the whole thing up and bring it out to the width you want. What do you have for coolant ?

I'm planning on cutting the threads using a helical milling set up on a mill. The change gears go from a dividing head to lead screw on the machine. Rough em out square with an end mill and then just go back and throw the thread angle on after. Way easier than trying to cut a four start 2" lead thread on a lathe.

So I've been playing in my shop a little more these days and decided to try this idea out a little longer. I'm running a whisper daddy forge. It has what I think is Kaowool on the sides and a hard firebrick on the bottom. The flux hasn't been doing much to the floor, but as that I use the side ports a lot for forge welding the kaowool is getting destroyed by flux and the fact that I have bad aim and can't seem to get things through both ports all the time to heat the middle of stock. Today I ended up cutting out the kaowool out just under the ports as it was down to 0.5" thick. I replaced it with some kiln brick I had kicking round. I've used it before and I know it gets eroded really quickly by hot flux so I made little ramps out of ti that go through the port and clip on the outside and then go over the kiln brick down to the floor. I had the forge running at welding heat for about four hours today and it seems to be working just fine. It oxidizes like crazy and there is a fair bit of slag comming off it, but other than that it seems pretty stable with flux on it, and it protects the insulation under it from abrasion. We'll see how it works in the long run but it seems pretty promising. The fact that it oxidizes could lead to some fun too. I think I'll collect all the Tioxide, powder it in a ball mill, mix it with aluminium powder and make some titanium thermite Drq

Hey Steve, why go with the two different etchants ? You mention Ferric Chloride for colouring, could you explain that a bit ?

So I'm seriously considering trying this. I've dug out the change gears for the old mill at work and I think I can come up with something for a thread. Might not be too standard with the gears I found, but I'm not exactly worried about interchangeability. I've got a fair bit of Aluminium bronze kicking around, what do you think of using it as the nut material ? Also any ideas on making sure the bronze doesn't stick to the steel mold ? I was thinking smoke it like babitting but not sure this would work for such high heat. And now the real question. What the heck am I going to to with the thing when its built. I already have a fly press.....

I'm assuming your talking about an endmill (looks like a short stubby flatbottomed drill bit ?). Might work through mild steel. Keep your speed up and throw something for coolant on there, WD40 would work just fine. If you find that doesn't work a couple other ideas; Use your lathe as a mill. Throw your endmill in the chuck of the lathe and clamp your work piece to your tool holder, use shims to get it to the right height. Lock or clamp your carriage down and slowly feed with your cross slide, might have to clamp, cut, unclamp, move ahead, clamp a few times, but oughta work, use coolant again. Do you have a table saw ? If its just mild steel you could try using a carbide tipped saw blade and by taking really light cuts chew out the groove with that, no personal experience with it but I've heard of it working for guys before. If you can change the speed of the saw slow it down as much as possible and for goodness sake be careful...

Yikes ! As BGD said drills and even mill drills are not really meant for any kind of real milling. Solid Carbide is great but even for the smallest endmills you have to have the machine to run them. Without a decently rigid machine and a collet to hold them I would be very worried you will just chip/shatter anything made out of solid carbide, you just can't get away with holding them in a drill chuck. Proper annealing of the work piece, proper speeds and feeds, as much rigidity as you can get, and flood coolant will go a long way to letting you use HSS on previously hardened material. For you this might mean using a smaller endmill than the slot your trying to make and chewing both sides out, locking your machine up as much as possible, even clamping with c-clamps on those smaller machines will help, and having an old windex bottle filled with coolant and spraying coolant by hand, I'm guessing it doesn't have coolant on it, and using a brazing tip on a oxy torch to do a little local annealing on your work piece. All that said just give anything you can a try. If you can find solid carbide endmills that you can afford to break you might just pleasantly prove me wrong. Drq

To eat..... no. What exactly are you worried about ?

Go find a small machine shop that does repair work. Explain to them what your up to and that you where wondering if you could get them to order you some with their next order. If they go for it you will get decent quality tooling at better prices than you will get alone and if not then you haven't lost anything but your time. Or just ask if they had a few worn ones they could part with and then sharpen them or just use them, doing hobby stuff and knife making you can probably get away with a couple of chipped tool edges easier than a working shop can.

So I'm kinda half way through my first big blade build. (BBB ?) And here's what I've built so far to make it easier: 1. A 6"x48" wood sander modified for steel by mounting a bigger motor (1.5 HP) and new pulleys to crank the speed up. (and new bearing after a couple of hours hehehee, they were pretty beat up with the seals gone so I planned on it) 2. A new 2 x 72 sander with an extra long tooling arm to run longer 90" belts that I got for free from work. 3. A filing guide for tang shoulders I made by drilling holes in two pieces of HSS lathe tool blanks. Work great but good luck drilling if you don't have a solid carbide drill bit and a good rigid mill. 4. Deep quench tanks for water for grinding. Used pieces of abs pipe with end caps. (as a note make sure then end caps are on tight, it can be cold on your toes if you lift the tank full of water up and the end cap doesn't come with it. A 4" pipe 48" long holds a lot of water) 5. Deep oil quench tank. Used a caustic drum which is basically a small oil drum. 6. Deep etching tank again made from abs pipe. The blade isn't actually that long so I was able to use my forge for heat treating. Things I still want to build: A rolling mill for pattern welding. A vertical heat treat oven. An insulated shop. (It was -37 this week and my shop is a 102 year old log cabin) A better electrical system for my shop so my lights don't go out every time I start my sanders. This is the blade; 23 layers of L-6/1018 on the outsides sandwiching a layer of 1018 over a cutting edge of L-7. I was trying L-6 and 5160 before and was just having no luck what so ever getting it to stick. Using the 1018 makes a huge difference. The picture is just after tempering. I don't think it turned out that bad for my first blade over 6". Drq

I was wondering if anyone has any experience inlaying wire into a pattern welded blade. I am hoping to do some runes into a blade I'm working on, but am unsure about the etching process. I am wondering if the etchant will attack the inlay wire faster than the steel. I'm hoping to inlay copper and fine silver into an L-6, 1018 and 5160 blade. Any suggestions on etchants or methods ? Thanks again for the help ! Drq

To tell the truth I'm not heat treating anything at the moment, have plans in the works to do a blade with about a 30" section to be heat treated. I might have to play with both fuels. Yeah if anyone is ever in Northern Alberta and needs some coal tell them to come talk to me ! We've got to decent sized mines within a couple hours here and I've done a fair bit of work for one of them. Crap, even before I had done work for the mine they we're really good about looking the other way when a guy needed a truck box full of coal. Great coal too, burns crazy hot.

What temperature would you want the bronze blank to be ? I really don't have much tool and die experience which is kinda the territory we're getting into here. Casting is always another option. I've poured 70#s of bronze before at my shop, if you where to do the same, make a male up with the 0.010 clearance and then cast around that. I wonder if you would be able to get it out afterwards ? I'm wondering if some sort of release would work ? Maybe smoking the shaft like babbit ?

Forging a little hot.....

Thats a really interesting idea Grant. Never thought of that, but with set of dies in the 160 ton press I have at work that would be easy as pie ! I'm thinking maybe turn the thread, forge the nut, and then throw the male back in the lathe and cut a little clearance on it. Hmmmmmmm........ '

What do you think about using coal in a trench forge instead of charcoal ? I have about four tons of coal and a distinct lack of charcoal...(that being said I have a pretty big pile left over from a burn pile under the snow). Also thanks for all the ideas ! Its a pretty big step !

Thanks for the help, I understand now that faster doesn't equal better with what we are trying to accomplish. Any idea on buying bulk quantities of PCB etchant ? I'm hoping to etch a 24" blade and it seems kinda silly to purchase it in 6 oz bottles.

Just to throw a little more gas on the fire....lol I spent a bit of time burning brush for the Oilpatch in Northern Alberta. Its gets plenty cold up here to freeze tanks, not just frost them up but freeze them solid. (Three years ago we were working in -57c). Nobody was running a forge out there but we used a lot of tiger torches. The common thing to keep them from freezing was to make a circle of three or four tanks and then aim one of the tiger torches into them. Never saw any of them go off, but sure kept a wide berth from them and the guys who were working with them. It wasn't what you would call a very intellectual work place, but the storys I could tell... Drq

I would say a little heavier cut wouldn't any thing. We've got an ancient little vertical mill at work and I can comfortably cut a 5/8" keyway full depth in one pass. Couldn't tell you my speeds and feeds, they're based on how fast the handles are spinning and how many times the one remaining drive lugs hits my thumb in 10 seconds. As for coolant, I'm with Grant, either flood it or f*ck it. If you can't keep a heavy constant flow going that's guaranteed not to stop don't bother.

I just grabbed some off the shelf at work a while ago that the boss said where gather dust, if you want I'll take a look at the number, but you really should just be able to go to a bearing shop and tell them what you need. Either that or if your up to it Ebay is a good place to find cheap bearings.