fciron

I use my lathe several times a week, Just a little less than the drill press. It is very handy to have around the shop and you will find numerous uses for it; bushings and pins for other machinery, punches and bolsters, little ornamental knobs or positives to make swages for knobs. It opens up the door to making much more accurate and reliable tooling (for instance, pivoting parts of bending jigs that turn smooth and square instead of wobbling around in a pipe). I have a big piece of 6" angle iron that I bolt to the cross-slide and then I can use the lathe for drilling big holes. I also really like my cheap import quick change tool post. It allows me to have a variety of tools ready to go, so I can do a three minute job on the lathe without spending five minutes on set-up. Knob turned on the lathe, die produced with the knob, finished forging Master, die, and proofs by fciron, on Flickr

Cool! Happy to help. On Little Giant the spec is for the dies to be about one inch apart for working down to a point. So you may not need too much whip. (all that weight flying around scares me.) I know there are some other folks around who've built these hammers. Maybe one will weigh in soon with some informed advice ;)

Thanks for weighing in Brian. Taking little bites every sixty degrees is my approach too. I do like the finished look of the hex tapers. What happened with the power hammer was that it was too easy to 'overpower' the small section of the bar and instead of drawing my second side the bar would twist over and the first side would get flattened some more. This made it impractical to use for a piece that I wanted to finish round. (If I wanted hex as a finished piece it would have been worth the effort to slow down and make a nice hexagon, but I was having to do finishing work in what should have been an intermediate step.)

The forge doesn't have to be strong. It just holds a fire. You could break it in half and then fasten it back together with straps and bolts and it would probably be as good as any other rivet forge. If you want it to be worthless that's your choice. You're doing the right thing to get the best blower you can on your forge. Somewhere down the line you might want to try and copy the missing blade or make a new set. On my rivet forge the blades in the blower were cut out of a single sheet and then twisted.

As much as I enjoy the imagery I certainly hope you mean "naval". :lol:

I am shocked, shocked to discover there is a reasonable explanation for this. Is nothing sacred?

Hofi was quoted in post #5. There's not really anything to argue about. I have a hammer with his touch mark on it and the head is slightly loose. Any method of fixing a hammer head can come loose, I still use that hammer a lot. I am just saying that glued or wedged should not be the only only considerations in a hammer purchase and that absolute statements xxxx me off. Every single absolute statement ever made in the history of time is a personal affront.

Hey Mark, Score a line down the center of all four sides, twist, flatten back to the original dimension, score down all four new sides, untwist and Bob's yer uncle.

Nice old wood turning lathe. Maybe take up metal spinning?

1 inch cable is fine. You want to make sure that your cable is uncoated and doesn't have a plastic or other non-steel core. A lot depends on what type of knife you want to make and what your equipment and experience are.

I have done some milling on my lathe with an angle plate. Since almost all of my machine work is one-off, repair or tooling for the shop I don't get too upset about having to take light cuts or complex set-ups. A shaper is actually ahead of a mill on my wish-list, almost all of my best/worst ideas can be done on a shaper faster and cheaper than on a mill: Cutting dovetails for hammer dies, making trough-type profiling dies for the hammer, dove-tail slides for all kinds of fabulous tools that don't work like I imagine. That kind of stuff. :D

Shapers do seem like the thing for the blacksmith shop. I need to do a lot of cleaning and organizing before I consider bringing more stuff into the shop. Bought a new (to me) lathe six months ago and I'm still using the old one. There's a spike driving hammer in the sample bin in my shop, which is quite impressive when you consider the biggest hammer is a 50 lb. Little Giant. Now I wouldn't mind getting some of the other old jobs back, but that one looks like a lot of work under the little hammer.

Looks good. My chisel for this sort of thing is about an inch wide with a curved edge (the ends curve up, it's still makes a straight line.) so it can be walked along the groove. Not only is it easier to drive the small area, but if your line gets a little off you can correct it.

I'm in agreement with Mssrs. Woolridge and B, you need to be able to draw scrolls. Sometimes they need to fit in different spaces, sometimes you need to tighten them up to meet code. Different periods and countries have different approaches to scrolls. If you can't see what it looks like when your working with a pencil how are you going to be able to make one with hot iron? Imma still gonna make me one of them nifty dividers. :P

I knew it! There is a conspiracy to keep this secret smithing knowledge from me. Don't try to backtrack now, Mr. Monster, you've let the cat out of the bag. Can't loose them with that blue color. Back to the shop to draw more tapers, lunch is over.

If I had a mill, Phil K. I'll probably make a block, grind on it a little to refine the angle and sink it into a big hot hunk of steel. I asked if that one was cast because it has a weird looking bit on the end that could be a sprue mark. It could also be where a porter bar was welded on, now that I think a little harder.

Immediately after which he declares that none of his hammers have ever gotten loose heads. Thus my objecting to Mr. Hofi's use of the absolute.

I was replying to Mainly Bob's remark about people being contracted to make cheap crap, not specifically the products in the video. We're starting to get cross currents in our off topic conversation. A lot of jewelry tools are made in India and Pakistan too and some are very nice.

Oooh, pretty. Un joli marteau orange?

They were contracted to make it that way so that it is priced low enough to sell at WalMart. Most westerners will buy the cheapest version of something and treat it as disposable. If it breaks, buy a new one. Bam! Welcome back to the USA. (I know, apologies to the non-'mercans reading. daggum sensitive furriners!)

I can Moxon from Google? I'll see you all in a month.

I see, it's just a better finishing tool. I still like it better than the half a hexagon version. See what you've done. I had talked myself out of worrying about hex and now I'm gonna be looking for an excuse to make one of those cool tools. Is that one cast? Thanks. Lewis

So, um, Phil, what is the best fuel for my spaceship? We can't really tell you how to sharpen your hardie until we know more about your anvil, hammer, preferred working material, handedness, and marital status.

Lillico "Blacksmith Manual Illustrated" on google books, Plate 32 is a simple crane arrangement. You may not want to copy it exactly, but it's always good to have something to check your ideas against. http://books.google.com/books?id=HvhslCiR-b4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=lillico+blacksmith&hl=en&ei=wP3hTOveLsH68AbUrqHjDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=lillico%20blacksmith&f=false The one shop I worked in with a crane for handling forgings used a differential chain-fall on the crane instead of Lillico's turnbuckle. Overhead door track works well if your work is within its capacity; it's much lighter to lift overhead and you can get nice ball bearing trolleys.

You know, after I got divorced I was gonna make sure my next gal had her own money. Now I'm shacked up with the girl from the art supply store and she got laid off. Plan B time. Plan B? Guess who gets to do the wire brushing? :P