T-Gold

Nice work! I love the bookends -- great idea there, wish I'd thought of it. I'll have to make some. :)

Turn down the blast... glove on tong hand... can't imagine why this is happening... :| Hope you're back at it soon, Archie.

Nice! I have one of those blowers too -- they put out about 1000CFM at a relatively low pressure. It is a Dayton or a very, very good clone, and if you keep it oiled it will outlast your kids. You can buy replacement parts for it from Grainger if necessary, and a new motor can be fitted pretty readily. I got mine from a scrapped fume hood, and used it to dry our carpets when we had them cleaned recently... worked a treat! :)

You may also want to look into forklift wear strips... cannot remember the name of the alloy at the moment. Chopper (Dale) hooked me up with a good-size piece when I was in Oz, and it looks like real good stuff -- tougher than woodpecker lips.

One_rod, thanks for the idea about splitting the bearing shells -- I'd never have thought of that! :)

Could be flash rust. Happens when your surface is too clean. You can put a few drops of oil on top of your water bath, or add some baking soda, and see if this helps.

Thanks for the tip Thomas -- I'll keep it outta the forge. Wonder what causes that... any metallurgist care to chime in?

Thomas, I might be able to hook you up with a block of 6AL4V if you can forge it to size... in exchange for telling me how to cut it and stuff like that... it's part of a helicopter rotor hub assembly. :)

Er. I beg to differ with Frog -- and I in fact have welded in forges without flares -- they are not that important, and simply provide flame stability when the forge is below cracking temps (red heat). Once the forge is up to temperature, the "burner" is just a mechanism for injecting a certain amount of gas with an appropriate amount of air accompanying it. Ron Reil is a very smart guy who provided a great resource for us all, but his focus on using burner flares to slow flame front velocity to the exclusion of just getting a dang burner working is a bit counterproductive.

Anyway, to shorten my yakking. If that were my burner, it would be drilled to #70, and the choke would be opened a bit. #60 would be the max for the jet size. Pressure at forging temp would be 6-10 PSI, initial heat would be 15-20PSI. Also, I can't quite tell how deep your forge is -- so the issue with forge size may be relevant as well. Since you built with Kaowool I would assume you have some left -- maybe stuff it into the back of the forge and see how it works. Also if possible you may want to neck down the front opening a bit -- stacked firebrick works well for this. Good luck!

It looks like a real USING knife -- and it is -- and it's also beautiful. Great work, Garey. :)

You can also heat to nonmagnetic. :)

So I am aware. :)

Hair sticks. Again. The girlfriend lost one and wants a new pair.

Also finishing up some old gifts that have been in the pipe for a looooong time. Hey, I'm a busy guy. :)

A few suggestions for your new junque

The carriage bolts make good mushroom stakes.
The bridge plates make excellent hardy tool plates (bolt to a stump).
If you cut off the part that the train rode on you can make a good very small bickern out of those short sections of rail (use the web as the shank, draw one side of the flange to a point).

I'm sure you'll come up with some creative uses of your own, too -- please post 'em! :)

Goldangit, I said it here and I said it on the machinist board, and in both places, y'all seem to have missed it...

(For the curious, it's for some sort of laser interferometer.)

Beche are supposed to have been some of the best hammers made. You a lucky guy Ian :)

I'll bug them too. :)

Wanted one since not long after I started pounding iron. Playing with an Anyang 33# just inflamed the need. (Haha, inflamed.) Finally starting to work on getting a pneumatic together. Several pneumatics. :)

Precise, but not enough depth, at least not the folks I've found who do it... they could do a 60mm deep hole of that precision. I will search further.

A friend of mine has a job to do... not due any time remotely soon, thank goodness. The piece is, if memory serves (I will correct later if need be), a large piece of 304 stainless. It needs to have a 1" square hole bored in it, 10" deep, not blind, parallel and true to +/- 0.0001". Yes, one ten-thousandth. Precision shaper is what I was thinking... or pre-drilling to 15/16" and pressing a multi-stage carbide broach through. I'm looking for out-of-the-box solutions to this, because frankly, I'm pretty well stumped. (For the curious, it's for some sort of laser interferometer.)

Things which I've thought of and discarded:
Cutting the part apart and machining the hole, then bolting it back together (Not allowed)
Waterjet (Inadequate precision, esp. at depth)
Laser (Inadequate depth)

Possible stuff:
Electron beam cutting??
Magic
Voodoo


Just something to strain y'all's brains over. :)

Ralph, no argument here. This is a post about curiosity -- not about using them industrially.

Y'all are simply not understanding... I _know_ that Miller, Esab, Lincoln, etc. are good quality machines and are backed up by their manufacturers, etc, etc. I've used 'em for years. What I'm curious about is _people's experiences with cheap welders_.

Poor low-end torque on the hamsters, I've heard...

Except I was serious. :)

You could always run it off a treadle with a flywheel... ;)

Boy, they sure do look good. I'd like to hear about 'em too.