Mike BR

I remember reading about a recall to replace rotors with stainless steel due to excessive corrosion (Jeep Cherokee, maybe?). Probably wouldn’t make much difference to your neighbor, though.

I've often wondered the same thing. Even a warmed-up anvil on a hot day is looks really, really cold to a piece of steel at welding heat. On the other hand, prewarming an anvil could help keep the edges from chipping, and make you more comfortable -- low temperature embrittlement and radiant cooling are both things. If you got an extra blow on each heat, that would be a bonus.

I’d correct the metaphor, but that’s not the hill I want to fall on.

Thanks! I’m really out of ideas now.

Though just to throw it out there, connecting a motor wired for 220 to a 110 source would result in no lyrics. A previous owner could even have wired a 110-type outlet for 220, so the plug on the motor isn't necessarily conclusive.

Sure sounds like you need a new motor then. (The only other thing I can think of would be a centrifugal switch controlling a start cap, but those aren’t too common in the U.S.)

If you haven’t, it’s probably worth checking the pressure switch and any thermal cut-off on the motor (and any other switch or contractor). Motor windings can go bad, but if there’s not even a hum, something like a switch seems more likely.

You should get the upsetting “loss” back when you forge the welded section back to dimension. There is some degree of actual volume loss due to scale, though. If the 12” diameter is important, you can always draw the whole ring out a little. (And punching itself will add a little length/diameter.)

Any luck with the Mill, Jim? That was a good tip on capacitors from Florida Metals Man. It just happened to me on an ultrasound cleaner. Of course, it didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to diagnose it -- the thing threw its jacket entirely. When I first pulled the cover, I thought there was a capacitor lying loose in the case.

The tip did come from someone on a tropical island. (Rich Waugh, if anyone remembers him.) Apart from any overheating, I always say one grinder is plenty, but any more than that isn't enough. . . .

One tip that's stuck with me (though I haven't had much occasion to apply it) it to put the same wheel/disc on two cheap angle grinders and keep switching them out so neither gets overheated. If doing a lot of grinding on something, of course.

I think of a set hammer as a tool for making clean shoulders. For that, you need a (fairly) sharp corner that would be subject to wear and deformation. But I can’t express an opinion on how mild would hold up, and obviously it would depend on how you used it.

Thanks! I guess you put a bar in the loop to tighten when necessary?

What is the piece that looks like a chain link and an L-shaped round bar on the front of the ram? (At first, it looked like was connected to the punch, and I was more confused than usual.)

You'd need to work out some kind of structure/brace so you could spread the loads out on the pallet. But with that, your idea should work great. As long as you stand on the pallet while you're working something in the vise, you can pull as hard as you want without budging it.

The specs are in the general neighborhood of D2, so forging advice for that might be a good starting point (if you decide not to play it safe and stick with stock removal.) Of course, analogies like that don’t always work, so there could still be surprises.

If the analysis on the ZKnives site is correct, there isn't nearly enough tungsten or molybdenum for it to be HSS. A whole lot of carbon and chromium, though.

My wife one day said foreign (for her, third) language expressions were her Archimedes’ ankle. (Can’t blame her too much — how many Ancient Greeks are famous for being submerged in water?)

The older bed frames are true angle iron. I've read in several places that they were rerolled from worn rail road rail. In any event, the ones I've fooled with were hardenable -- I even made a small slitting chisel from a piece of one. The newer ones seem to be made from flat stock and bent into an angle -- no sharp corner and no upset. You could always turn those back into flat stock. I've been avoiding them, but wouldn't be surprised if they're something like A-36.

And if you did start with a two-headed spike (and cut in from the side below each head, rather than straight in from the ends), you'd end up with heads on two adjacent arms of the cross. I think . . .

I see. I’ve made crosses before, but just assumed I was looking at two complete spike heads.

I was waiting for someone else to ask, but here goes: Did you forge weld the spikes together and then make the cuts for the cross? (I always wondered why they came with a scarf on the end )

If you want try the math, it's fairly simple for a closed scroll from non-tapered stock. Say you want to make a 2" diameter scroll from 1/4" stock (round or square). Figure the area of the circle formed by the scroll (pi*R^2). In this case, that gives you 3.14 square inches. Then calculate the area of your stock, viewed from the side. 1" of 1/4" stock has a area (viewed from the side) of 1/4 square inch. Divide the first number by the second, and you get almost 13" of stock. The math gets much harder if you taper the stock. But you can still get a decent estimate. If you will taper the stock to 1/8", that means the finished scroll will have a thickness 1/2 the stock width at the center, and the full stock width at the outside. If you figure that's 3/4 the original thickness on average, you need about 3/4 the length of stock. So if you start with 9-10 inches of stock (before you taper), you should be reasonably close.

My wife smells things I don't, for sure. She may not always be right, but I've never managed to prove her wrong. So I generally just go with it. No great feat of olfactory acuity, but one of my favorites was the time I came up from a session of struggling with my little lathe, and she said "you smell like S." (She knows her periodic table, but not always the English names of the elements.)

A blacksmithing friend of mine, now departed, was an old hippy (and, as he was the first to admit, a stubborn b-----d). His advice for resisting arrest at a demonstration was "When the pigs break the first collarbone, stop."