Mike BR

It just occurred to me that jewelers use gold solders that are deliberately formulated for a color match. Looking up the composition of those might give you some ideas.

Around 10 years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Kelham Island museum in Sheffield. I walked if into one of the rooms and a curator rather assertively asked me if I had any questions. I said no, and walked over to look a display on forging pitchforks with a steam hammer. The blank (one of which was on display) was around 1/2" thick and had three stubby projections on one side and two on the other. There was a film clip that showed drawing the tines, spreading and forming the socket, and (of course) twisting the horizontal bar so everything pointed the right way. The curator approached me again and said "Are you sure you don't have any questions? You can ask me anything." So I asked how the blank was formed. He said "they heated the steel so it got soft and put it under the hammer . . ." (I belatedly realized that the three-stub of one blank would interlock with the two-stub side of the other and guessed they might have been sheared out of something like 1/2 X 4 bar.) More amusing was the man in the shopping mall in Nottingham who kept insisting he could save me money on my electric bill, but that's another story.

My guess is that there just isn't much magnetic gradient across an individual fiber, which means there isn't much eddy current generated. Of course, if the forge will heat up a single fiber by itself, I'm wrong.

Maybe bubble steel is something like blister steel?

A probe for the forge may not be the right answer. Heat transfer is generally proportional to temperature difference, which means it takes a long time for your work to reach the same temperature as the inside of the forge. My guess is that you want the forge to be at least a couple hundred degrees hotter than you want your work, if you're looking for reasonable heat times (and amounts of oxidation/scale). Worse, if you can't tell how hot the stock is, you won't know whether you need to leave it in the forge for 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or 45 minutes. I'd look at an IR thermometer so you can directly check your stock temperature -- Amazon has ones that read up to 1500C for less than 100 USD. There are also iPhone apps that are supposed to read heat color. One of those might be worth a try, since you're only looking for an artificial eyeball, so to speak, and not necessarily a precise temperature measurement.

The clutches I've fooled with (granted only a couple, and not recently) had a pilot bearing in the flywheel where the (smooth) tip of the splined input shaft rode i. I recall a lightly lubricated needle bearing, but that might vary even if my memory's accurate. And the bearing only supports the weight of the clutch disk, which isn't particularly heavy. I don't recall the splined part of the shaft that the clutch disk floats on being lubricated, but of course there's no spinning contact there.

Worst case, you could fabricate a new steel hub with a flange to bolt to one side of the wheel.

Good point — I missed that.

I found a thread on welding web with discussion of a similar problem and links to service manuals. It comes if you google ESAB PCM 875. Also, it looks like some parts of the machine are powered from two of the three input legs, so if you had the wrong leads connected to the single phase, it wouldn’t work (though I don’t know exactly what would go wrong).

I'm probably hijacking the thread (and the wrong one at that) but I've visited both Soderfors and Kohlswa (now spelled Kolsva), and am pretty sure Kohlswa anvils were cast where the name implies. While I'm at it, Soderfors originally produced wrought iron though the Walloon process, and shifted largely to specialty steels around the beginning of the 20th Century. (Kolsva also started of an iron works of some sort, and started specializing is steel castings during the 19th Century). Soderfors is interesting to visit, with rows of workers' housing built from slag and still occupied (this is not exactly unique in Sweden, though). Kolsva today is not much more than a wide spot in the road with some industrial buildings behind a high fence.

The VFDs I've looked at (not that many, I admit), take the input power directly through a diode bridge to rectify it into DC. If you connect use single phase input power rather than three-phase, four of the six diodes will have to do all of the work, and the rectified output will be "lumpier" than rectified three-phase. But it might work even if the VFD isn't rated for single-phase input, particularly if you don't run it at full load. Of course, you also might damage the VFD (but three-phase power can drop a leg and "single phase" so hopefully the VFD either can take it, or has a circuit to shut itself down on single phase input.)

I know this is a machinists' thread, but having seen some of the engraving work out there, I'm sure there are folks who could do this with hand chisels. Not being one of those folks, I'd probably try profiling cheek plates with files, and soldering them to a central core. Perhaps you could even take a bondo impression of the groove and use that as a master to cut cheek plates on an ordinary key machine. None of that, of course, will help you with the chip. I've heard that dealers can cut keys from a VIN number -- you might be able to order one without having to make the trip to LA.

I read somewhere that the upper hole is primarily so you can make sure the tennon isn't bottoming out and mushrooming inside the monkey tool. Can't vouch for the truth of that myself, but it does seem like a pretty good thing to prevent. :)

Cold rolled steel is stronger than hot rolled because it's work hardened. If you try to heat treat it, the first thing that will happen is that it will anneal, and you'll lose that extra strength. As others have pointed out, 1018 doesn't really have enough carbon to heat treat. It probably will harden a little if you quench it from above critical, but I doubt it would gain back as much strength as you'd lose just by heating it up that first time.

My understanding is that an individual's name usually can't be registered as a trademark. I'm not saying it's morally correct for someone to use Uri's name. It might even be illegal for some other reason. But it probably isn't trademark infringement.

If Rich is right and the piece work hardened (and from what I've heard about titanium, he probably is), don't try to restart the cut in the same place. After you check your blade and replace it if it's dull (which I'd bet it is), flip the piece over in the vise and restart the cut from the back. Make sure you've got plenty of feed pressure at all times. You may want to consider placing the blade against the block before starting the saw, or even adding weights to increase the pressure. Once you reach the work-hardened area at the bottom of the original cut, it won't be supported by anything and hopefuly will rip out.

Abrasive chop saws are simple enough that even the cheap ones seem to work okay. You could get one on sale for around $50 at Harbor Freight, and use it for mystery metal or anything else you don't want to risk your dry cut blade on. Or you could just get the $50 saw and use it while you decide if you want a dry cut.

I made a set of wooden louvers to mount a fan in the gable end of my garage (shop). I looked at the studs in the gable end, and decided they were a mile apart (the garage was built before WWII), so I should just make the louvers big enough for the fan. I did that (not skimping on the width), and once I had them all dadoed and glued together, carried the louvers out to frame in and install. One glance, and I realized that studs weren't quite as far apart as I remembered, so things were going to be close. I climbed my ladder, lined the louvers up between the studs, gave them a couple of taps with a hammer, and they snugged right into place. I guess fortune sometimes favors the dumb.

You could also look at the Millermatic Passport. It'll give you 140 amps at a slightly better duty cycle than the Millermatic 140. Or you can connect it to 220 and get 180 amps. Of course, it lists for $2000.

When I forge pipe, I normally stuff a rag in the end to stop the chimney effect. But when the piece is short, I'll sometimes weld on a piece of bar as a handle. The first time I did that, I let my hand get below the pipe, and all the scale that had been collecting inside poured out at once. Now I flare the end of the bar and bend it 90 degrees, so it covers the end of the pipe when I weld it on.

Thomas's last sentence isn't up to his usual standard of clarity. Cast iron can't be forge welded to steel (or to itself), but it can be brazed to either. It can also be arc welded, either with nickel rod or with much luck.

I have a Lincoln 100 amp. It's held up well, but the I don't use it much. I keep it set up for MIG (.023 wire) and I just doesn't have the power for anything over thin sheet -- 14ga is pushing it. (That's okay, because I can stick weld anything thicker). I've seen some pretty impressive welds on thicker stock made with a Millermatic 135 (predecessor to the 140). So it's probably worth the extra expense for one of the 140 amp units Jose listed.

A bigger forge will (of course) use more gas even when you're not welding. If you can get away with a one-burner for for most of the stuff you do, I'd go that way. I can weld in my home-made forge with one Reil-style burner, but if I had a coal forge handy, I'd likely use that for welding to save my gas forge lining.

I don't live in New England, but I've heard that Aubuchon Hardware stores carry usable coal or can get it. It looks like they've got New Hampshire pretty well covered.

To me, there's a certain range where cheap power tools make sense. A $700 Harbor Freight plamsa cutter might work just as well as a $1400 Thermal Dynamics. And then, it might not. I figure that if I can afford to gamble $700 on the HF, I can afford to invest $1400 in a Thermal Dynamics. Someday. I can buy a $1 HF screwdriver and not cry if it strips on the third screw. But why bother when I can buy a Stanley for $4 or a Klien for $8. On the other hand, I bought a $30 "heavy duty" 1/2" drill from HF for those few times I need a 1/2" hole in a piece of steel I can't get in my drill press. It'll spin the bit, and it's hard to justify spending $150 for a name brand drill that will mostly sit in a drawer. If the drill breaks next month I won't be happy about it, but losing $30 won't kill me either.