Ken Kelley

Finn,

Thanks for the kind words. However, it didn't always look so nice. I started with new steel but it was kind of scuzzy. I used hot-rolled 1018 for the uprights and bearing supports and it was scaled badly. I spent several hours sandblasting all the metal in my home made sand blasting cabinet and it cleaned up nicely. I had intended to paint the thing but the sandblasted finish was so attractive I left it plain. I smeared some RIG grease on everything so it hasn't shown any signs of rusting. If I had it to do over again I would spend a few more bucks and use cold-rolled steel for all the parts.

K

Made my own idler wheels for my KMG lookalike. My little Taig lathe couldn't handle anything bigger or I would have made the drive and tension wheels too. If you need some tips on truing the Sunray polyurethane covered wheel I'll tell you how I did it.

K

Sunray has wheels for just about any purpose Urethane, Polyurethane, Custom Urethane Products, Urethane Products Manufacturer
I bought one of their 70 durometer polyurethane covered aluminum wheels and made it into a contact wheel for the KMG lookalike I built last winter. Had to true the wheel but that wasn't too much trouble.

Mine is Indian Creek Forge...since I live on Indian Creek. Not terribly original but I like the sound of it.

K

On the first run of this new forge I didn't have a small blower handy so I hooked up an old shop vac. Put out WAY too much air so I had the gate valve closed down to a crack. I've since replaced the shop vac with a small Dayton blower and that provides a more reasonable air flow. Any fan providing at least 25 cfm will work. The challenge comes in building a mount to hook it to your burner.

Here's my Miller Trailblazer 301G. It's my shop and ranch welder. Before I wired my shop I ran all my power tools off its 10,000 watt generator. Really came in handy too when we were building our new house out here in the woods.

This is my first attempt at attaching pictures to a post in this forum. Hope it works. This is my Taig Microlathe II and a sample of the work it is capable of. I love this machine and the companion Taig 2019S mini-mill I bought at the same time.

What's the purpose of the borax powder? Doesn't it tend to melt under high heat?