RainsFire

I've got a 1in x 24 or something like that delta belt/face wheel grinder and am getting tired of burning up wheels with less than satisfactory results.. (really hard to set bevels)

and anyway, I was wondering if I could swap out the wheels and axels with something salvaged and make it a 2in grinder.. Its strong enough to where I cannot stop it easily pressing something on the belt.. (the belt slides first) and it looks possible..
anyone forsee problems? and where can I get 2in wheels? I might just turn a few on the lathe..

-Thanks

cool, you've got some juevos to work with wenge.. one of the hardest materials to deal with I think..

very hard, and super porus.

where does a person find woolly mammoth? and whats it feel like to work with?
I'm sure its not cheap.. but just wondering.

beautiful knife as always!

WOW what a fine blade, I absolutely love the handle and woods. beautiful!

ha, what are you planning Hwooldridge?

cute! give it a wild hamon ;)

cool, you've got a lot of control.

do you finish alot of your work? you've seem to got the same problem as me.. I never get any blades done to the point of I would be proud to post some images of it.

lookin good, i'm kinda curious can you get a hamon on 5160? I've heard you cant but I've seen it done..
-Kenon

I dont want this to end up in an eco debate.. but I dont see how coal has less an impact than charcoal.. it has to be escavated (deforestation) burnt (major sulfur and co/other toxins) plus its non renewable..

but ya, charcoal is has its flaw's.. I personally am working on an oil furnace right now, because of this. the whole things like trying to find the lesser of two evils.. its all evil but whatever..

I like the line about gore's jet hadn't thought about that.

yeah, I've met quite a few. the guy I went to' had his shop in a tiny garage behind his house.. crowded in the best possible way.
anyway, nice meeting you.

wow regional your in eugene? thats really close you wouldn't happen to sell knife supplies would you, because I may have visited your shop!

Well the biggest difference is localized heating you can do with coke or coal. Coke is also much hotter burning than gas. Also you have a better atmosphere nuetral to carborizing with coke/coal so you have almost no scale.

Gas you will find easier to tend but will have more scale and will not be able to do localized heats.

Just my 2 cents

really, coke has very few advantages over gas.. so it really becomes a bit of personal preference, and the point has been argued for a while and by many.

anyway, with coke, its more traditional and you can get spot heating, and welding is fairly easy..(not coal.. coke)

and gas you can heat up alot of metal, no-low maitenance, easy, can weld, ect...
oh, and both fuels cost alot and polute more carbon than was put into them, or something like that..

charcoal on the other hand has a neutral or positive carbon emmision (which is good) if your eco minded, but more fuel is consumed, and its harder to get a hot hot heat compared to coke.

heh, congratulations! its a good feeling.

heh mark, where abouts in oregon are you from? I'm near corvallis

I meant melt the furnace, I'll be smelting the ore.

I was trying really hard to distinguish that throughout the rest of the thread but you caught me..

cool, good luck on your experiments It may be a while before I get to mess with mine, so I think I'll further my research in the meantime.
thanks again for the help.
veggie should be fun, and I just scored about 1,000+ soft fire brick so I think I can afford to melt a furnace or two in testing.

Spring fuller's.. make life alot easier, especially without help.

I've been wondering this too, and I think it's possible but difficult.. like making steel I guess..

from what I understand (which is very little) all you would have to do would dramatically decrease the carbon content, and somehow "wrought" it with a flux?
I think you would end up with a mild steel though..

erm, I guess that wasn't helpful lol.. but you would definately need a high temp refractory setup, which is hard in a simple shop.. but do-able.

cool, I love the etched pic.

cant wait to see what it looks like mounted ;)

ya, I've been thinking of doing some alum castings.. and my parents used to do lost wax bronze castings, so they are fairly knowledgeable in that area.

also, today during our oil collection trip we got permission from a hotel owner who is removing an incinerator from the basement to pick up the firebrick they had removed.. Is about 3pickup truck loads of soft white non asbestos firebrick, most of it in good shape, and another load of broken brick for grog..

so I'm going to see just how much heat that stuff can stand, and maybe form the basis of my smelting furnace out of it..
we could have a fireproof yellow brick road.. or a shop made entirely out of firebrick..
well anyway, let me know how it goes this is something I am really interested in and you seem pretty knowledgeable about it.

hmn, very cool design. I had never thought of pumping heat from a solid fuel source into a seperate melting furnace, that could make things even more controllable as far as the enviorment being absorbed go..

what I'm shooting for is to eliminate the need for refractory around the bloom, because it seems to always corrupt the steel unless you use really expensive refined crucibles..

I'm thinking of starting the melt with a thermite reaction, which would knock out alot of the time consumption for the initial heat, not to mention it can yield really controllable alloy's. but ya..

I'm thinking a charcoal "crucible" or bed for the ingot to land on.. so instead of consuming refractory components, all it will consume would be carbon..

but I dont know, I'm still toying with design and like the idea of taking something like a bloomery, and combining it with a crucible melt with wvo as its heat source, best of both worlds so to speak..

anyway, maybe we should collaborate, all I'm really doing is messing around with hotter fire and trying to figure out something cool for my senior project for highschool..
making steel would definately be a first for my crummy school..

I've dropped and seen people shatter tungsten electrodes in their hands.. and how would you bend the ceramic sheild? a little bend would be possible, but not easy.. and there wouldnt be much gain..

but, Ive seen some cool torch bodies, including some small straight ones that use half an electrode.. which would be alot easier to use than a bent one..

yup.. gluck!

I have alot of those, and I cant remember quite right but I think they had casting seams to em.. could be wrong though, and if the track is 1050, I would wager that the plate is too..
either that or its railroad tie metal.

oh, so cast iron would melt at a lower temp right? because of its high carbon temp.. so hmn... this is very interesting, I have a plan for a furnace small runs, totally controlable, high temp, and no molten refractory waste.. Should work, and I think it'll be one of the first wvo powered steel smelters.

thanks guys!

IT seems to be a craze lately to make your own steel, and its something I really want to try at least once. but I guess something I don't get is what is the difference between cast iron and steel? is it just part of the process where you don't let it oxidize? or is it a heat thing, anyway.. any help would be lovely.

Thanks guys, Kenon.