nonjic

Philip, can you not track down the "real" chinese anvils???? im just not having it that a country with a population of 1bn folks do not have a functional, cheap steel anvil sold in the tens of thousands of units per month for 'domestic' use. (not the C.I cr&p sold to the gullable west coz its perceived cheap)

The bulk of early industrial development starts with the blacksmith in one form or another, and the chinese are not all using cast iron wear out in 3 month tools. find the real anvils phil!!!!!!

in the UK were getting about

sounds like those valves are properly seized!!!

you do not, under any circustances want to loose the relative position of the valve sleeve (tube). knock it back in and stamp the end of the sleeve with a corresponding point on the frame casting.

you then have 2 main options.......

drift the whole lot out and soak it in parrafin or similar, then unseize it, then reassemble using your marks for alignment,

or I would get 4 really heavy washers and use the tapped holes for the valve cover, with the washers to prevent the tube walking out. then drift the valve out as previous.

edit.

I would guess the valve sleeve is 1 piece.

looks ok to me, scaling levels pretty normal.

It might be worth doing the basic 'excercises' a couple of times, forge a point on a piece of 1/2" round (similar techneque to forging the point on a knife), forging a piece of round into square etc.

Im pretty terrible at hand forging, I find it helps to mentally work through where im gonna hit it, and how hard when its still in the forge. I find I move most metal in the first 6 hits or so when its still very hot, and then use the rest of the heat refining it a bit.

it does get easier!!

Chuck Said" Annealing Was A Good Practise To Adopt"!
I Win !

I would get some advice from someone with experience of these helve hammers, dont just go on my gut feeling.!! Threre was a guy over on Forgemagic who fully rebuilt one of these. It would be worth asking over there!

remember the old adage 'penny wise, pound foolish' when it comes to spending that extra $100 :)

this is the 'w' blank I was happy with. took a lot of work to get it to this point. I was hand forging the bevels on and a lil crack appeared on the cutting edge (in line with the pattern). less than a 1/4" but enough to make me think the billets not 100%, so back to staring again.

theres 3 types of scrap in here, 'landrover' leaf spring, mild and bi-metal bandsaw blade.

After it went tink forging I gave it an 'angle grinder' grind, and an etch to see what could have been! Ill get it next time !!!!!!

looks like youve got to much air going into your burner. try choking it down a bit (it if doesnt have choke plates cover up a bit of the air inlet to the burner with some electrical insulation tape for a couple of heats, just to see if it makes a difference.)

the big dents look like you have hammered some scale / crud into the metal.

cant really see why annealing / normalising the spike would have the slightest differnece on its level of scaling in the forge (grain size etc after forging yes but no difference once the metal is above critical temp) - if anyone knows better please correct me.

sounds like a lot of horseys for a tiny helve hammer, think it would run on a lot less.

Thing is, a 3hp will cost (practically) no more than a 2 horse, so may as well errr on the heavy side.

cheers guys!!!

you can see the weld down the middle of the blade, where the pattern does not match up, it runs from the point (tip) of the knife to the guard.

Forged a wicked 'w's blank today (in a mr fisk style) so the next one should be intersting!!

or you could tie a piece of paracord to the lanyard, and jig it loose from the crevise and haul it up to you when you reached the next ledge

a strong knife is useable for things other than cutting if its the only strong metal object youve got to hand.

To cut with.

A knife is, and always has been, a cutting tool. Any deviation is, in one way or another, abuse.

Think about that climbing deal for just a minute.... you get one step out of your knife, then it is gone. If you've climbed above it, then you can't retrieve it (how does the guy in the picture get his knife back when he proceeds to the next ledge?). If it was some kinda one shot, life or death situation... sure, anybody would sacrafice a knife for their life, but stuff like this is not normal, or even common. I can guarentee that any self-respecting Apache could do all of the climbing he needed to do with his knife in his belt.

Yeah right. Who

doubt there would be much call for them in north yorkshire,..... one of the advantages of relocating!

on a side note.... the abuse of bears for chinese " medicines " is one of the few topics that makes me very, very angry. and IMHO anyone who traps large animals for fun using these barbaric devices is scum, & will get a glasgow kiss from me rather than a handshake.

(im not suggesting thats what you do / intend to do phil !)

i'ld 3rd a punch press for that one. looks like an aladins cave though whats the dooberry to the left of it??? I can see motor and pully...

Ive bought (well, scrounged) & used Thermal Ceramics wool blanket.

Thermal Ceramics - Our Global Network - Locations - shows the global distributors

Im sure you can only buy a full roll, so might be worth finding a few people to split it with! the price per sq foot will be very cheap though!


edit. hello JJH :)

the 'tyre' hammer design looks very good, and simple. A gentleman called Clay Spencer runs workshops building these for what looks to be a reasonable price. I am sure the plans are available for sale somewhere (I am sure it will 'google')

jk, unless you are an engineering god I would not try to design / make one of these yourself. you can buy a Beche clone (anyang / striker) for less than the materials will cost you to build one from scratch.

There are a lot of little subtlties to the design of this seemingly very simple hammer that makes them work. If you dont understand them the hammer will not work properly. ever.

If you are looking to make hammers as a commercial enterprise contact me by PM and I may sell you a design & manufacturing drawings for a hammer, depending what your plans are.

looking good donnie! - im with you, the forging is the fun bit, finishing is a chore but ultimatley satisfying...! - ive forged some hammer heads but never an axe / hatchet - might be next on my list (as soon as i get a decent billet of 'W'ues' !)

or..........you could be the only person in china to import a bigblu or an ironkiss :)

thanks dodge! I really cant remember what the metal is, possibly a bandsaw blade and some slices from a machine guard about 1mm thick (im working mostly with scrap whilst learning !) it wouldnt harden properly in oil so ended up dunking it in very cold water, so guess its a bit carbon lacking. it did harden though!

its quite a deep etch in ferric chloride, (5:1 solution) - it had about 3 dips of 15 mins, then when it was all finihsed a 2 min dip and rubbed lightly with wet'n'dry paper to take the black of the high layers so the contrast showed a bit better.

hope to be able to show somthing good soon, my welding has moved on leaps n bounds since this one was forged december last year, the novelty with this one is I actually finished it :)

ive been playing with patternwelding for a few months now, very on and off. the only knife I ever got round to finishing was a 1" blade for a giveaway competition..... untill now ....

I promised a knife to my best mate about a year ago, and eventually have been guilted into finishing it!

its a low layer damascus (poss 60 layers ish), with a final weld down the length of the blade. water hardened & tempered.

The handle is a hardwood called irroko (irroco?) stained dark, finished with wax - brass pin & guard, nitrile rubber in the spacer stack so its nice & grippy, blades 5" - just needs a final stone dress to sharpen it.

Overall im quite happy with it, so.. (drumroll.......) my first proper knife:)




in the hand (excuse the fingernails, I made meat from one of my fingers so couldnt clean em...... my excuse and im sticking to it!

I drill a lot without any coolant of any type, no problems (up to 3" dia) . on the radial arm drills we have a squeezy bottle with some soluable coolant in that we squirt at the bit every now and then to cool it off a touch.

With correct chuck speeds, and a good solid steady feed pressure you can drill all day without coolant.

I do like a proper cutting oil / grease when tapping holes though. 1 broken tap in an important job will cost more than a lifetimes supply of lube!

if your going to the effort of building a frame (and anvil) to hold a jack hammer youve done 95% of the work to make a kinion type hammer (which is almost infinatly more useable), and an air cylinder and some valves are cheaper than a jackhammer. its a no brainer really

hydraulic press from a log splitter on the other hand...........

glenn, the squirt of oil you place on the drill can not quench the metal (to do this would require taking the metal from above critical temp, to below in a very short space of time).

A cutting oils purpose is to prevent the swarf / cuttings sticking to the cutting tool .

This should not be confused with a flood coolant (water souluable oil) which main purpose is to keep the cutting tool cool. (you can use plain water, but everything rusts!)

The main problem when drilling carbon steels is running the tool too fast, bad quality tools and poor grind geometry (and insufficent feed pressure when drilling, so the tool rubs instread of cuts)

Stainless steels will work harden (one of the metalurgists will know why, I dont :)

crikey... so now the chinese arent just taking the us dollar through a massive trade surplus, their after the small change now for processing and selling it back .... :rolleyes:

ive been useing washing up detergent on a new (grease free!) pot cleaning sponge, rinse very thoroughly then dry it untill its squeaky dry with tissue.

Im sure the other ways are better, but sometimes you have to work with what ya got !