brianc

So I have made a couple knives by stock removal, tried a little bit of cable and patterned welded stuff. My next attempt was going to be trying some can welding. My question was regarding the powdered steel used to fill in all the nooks and cranny's. At work the other day I has walking by the shot blast as they were adding new shot and happened to read the label on the drum. Its a hyper-eutectic steel shot which as I recall essentially means somewhere above .7% carbon. Its a pretty fine mesh size, and we have literally tons of the stuff around. Does this sound worthwhile, or will I be wasting my efforts? I'm tempted to try dropping a piece of mast lift chain into a tube, adding as much of this as I can while compacting it with a needle scaler, and welding it out this weekend. Might make a big mess, or wind up with something interesting, never know unless I try. Thoughts or comments? Brian

It's 4" thick, so deflection shouldn't be too bad. Can always add a rib to the bottom.

I am sure hoping they make a good striking anvil because I literally just finished welding one up out of forklift shanks. Its cooling as I type this. I'm fortunate to work for the largest manufacturer of forklift forks in the world so have plenty of drops around for projects such as this. Material is typically 4140 or 15B30 depending on cross-section (at least for our products). This one is about 200#, have a 1" square hardy hole cut with a wire EDM in the top piece with a drilled clearance hole underneath. Legs are 2x2 square tube, filled with worn out shot from the blaster and vibrated with a needle scaler until no more fit. I'm getting about 40% rebound by my ball bearing test, it may get a little better as the two pieces draw tighter when the welds cool down. Now I just need to wait until some of my free labor come home from college for the summer to strike for me... I'd attach a photo if I knew how, off to research that. Hopefully this works

I'm working on a floor lamp and have a piece that tapers from 2" wide to about 10" wide over about 6'. It is 5/16" material. Id like to get it hot so I can hammer texture it and then form it into a curved shape. Most of it won't fit in my round gas forge so am looking for creative alternatives. I do have a bunch of the hard fire brick, was considering piling some to make a hearth and rough enclosure and then using a propane weed burner to get sections hot for texturing via hand hammer (no power yet...). As far as the final shaping, hot would be better but I can bump form it with a press and then probably a little tweaking with a big rosebud to fair out the curves. Will those weed burners get hot enough? I know my efficiency is going to suck, but that's OK for a limited project like this. I don't have a coal setup either. Thoughts or suggestions? Brian

I use those same guns at work and have wondered about checking steel temps as well. I know ours have to be adjusted for a certain emmisivity depending on the surface you are measuring. They will give a different reading if you shoot a black paint spot on an aluminum valve body vs the unpainted silver body right next to the spot. Maybe the newer temp guns dont have this error, ours are several years old. Be curious to hear others comments Brian

Im from that area, and we had a Vancouver Iron and Steel foundry for a number of years. They are now doing business as Varicast, and have combined a number of foundries. I looked at the photo and that does seem to be a number one rather than an I. I've never heard of them making anvils, seems like there would be more around locally if so. My guess is this was someones personal project or built for their own use.

I'm trying to form a rectangular tenon to join two pieces of 5/16". The tenon is 3" long. I'm not sure how much to leave beyond the mating surface to form the tenon. My initial guess was 5/16" or one material thickness, but I dont know if there is any rule of thumb. I am going for a finished pyramidal shape once it is formed over. I am going to try a sample piece this weekend but thought I would see if anyone had any tips to pass along. Thanks Brian

I still struggle with leaves on occasion, do I usually do a couple as a warm-up before I work on more advanced projects. There are a lot of basic skills that go into making a good leaf and I can always use the refresher .

I would say crappy burner in one case, since I built the first one. The second is one of Rex Price's T-Rex burners with the correct flare as he supplies them. These are reckend by some folks to be the cadillac of aspirated burners so I purchased it to use as a baseline of what I could expect. It is set up using his recommendations as far as tip and flare placement in the burner. I need to calulated the volume of my forge still, I have read on here that around 350 cu in is max for a 3/4 inch burner.

I have tried two different burners in my forge with the same end result. The first burner was one I built following a friends design, pipe with #70 hole in it mounted across the mouth of a 1.5" to 3/4" reducer. I aligned the jet by hooking it up to a hose and used a 1" to 3/4" reduccer on the forge end for a flare after machining the threads out. It seemed to work fine on about 7 psi initally, got things good and hot but after a half hour started huffing with the flame burning back down the burner tube. I tried cranking the pressure up, and that would work for a little while and then the same results. I decided to step up and get a T-rex burner after reading good things about it, set things up per the instructions and it gets good and hot for a while, then starts huffing and sputtering as well. I am running the large 100# tank so am reasonably sure its not freezing up, have a Victor regulator so think my fuel delivery system is pretty squared away. I'm not exactly sure how much pressure these venturi type burners should run on, I havent cranked them much about 15 psi to try and stop the sputter, wasnt sure what the upper limit was. Thanks Brian

I've got a lathe big enough to turn it off, I doubt anyone would be too interested in dipping the relativly small amount I would need. I may still try a chunk from a distance

Throwing this out for the body to comment... I was looking around for some stock to forge some hammers and tooling out of based on some of the stuff Brian Brazeal has so generously shared. I have a lot of hydraulic cylinder rod around, since that is part of the business I’m in. Its 1045 IHCP material or less frequently 4140, with the outer .060-.080 induction hardened, ground and chromed. I’m assuming if I cut some appropriate blanks off with my hot saw, throw them in my gas forge , get them up to orange and then shut the forge off, I should wind up with normalized stock with the chrome burnt off. Obviously I’d do this outside in fresh air, not hanging my schnozz over the forge and breathing in the vapors. Are there any holes in my logic? I realize this is an extra step, but I have lots of this material available for free, versus purchasing or scrounging more suitable stock. Anyone have any comments? Thanks Brian

Yup, that's what the google told me as well. I was hoping some of the metallurgical folks might weigh in with any additional thoughts. I'm guessing if I use a similar procedure to 4140 I shouldn't be too far off.

I have a good selection of ETD 150 in 5/8 round that I am hoping to make eye punches and other struck tooling with. It's a 150,000 yield material, so should be pretty tough in this application. It takes a little work to forge out but I am managing. My question is the best way to quench and temper this material. Its a medium carbon steel, but a somewhat proprietary alloy is what my Google searches have been coming back with. Anyone have any thoughts or comments? Thanks in advance Brian

Typically cylinder rod is 1045, with the first .060-.080 induction hardened. You will need a decent lathe to machine it off since your first pass needs to be deep enough to get under that hard layer

That is a double acting solenoid, coils on each end. Power one for extend, and the other for retract. I can see two sets of tabs in your picture, you may have trouble straightening those up.

Pretend the coils are light bulbs (A light bulb is just a really hot glowing coil) and you want each push button to turn on its own light bulb. So coming from the 120 VAC hot side, wire to the switch and then to one side of the coil. The other terminal is connected to neutral, completing the circuit. Repeat for the other side. This is about as simple as I can describe it, assuming it is a 120 VAC coil. If you wouldn’t be comfortable wiring up a switched light bulb in your home, you might want some help with this as well. There are additional things you could do with your switch terminals to interlock them, preventing both switches from being pressed at the same time and turning on both coils, but that would require much more detail on the switch. I’ll just leave it by saying “only press one button at a time!!!” It more than likely wouldn’t do anything if you pushed both anyway. Hope this helps

You have 2 different coils, one on each end of the valve. They shift the spool to get your travel direction.The first thing you want to know is the coil voltage and make sure your supply matches, coils can be AC or DC, with a variety of voltages. You have what is known as a DIN style connector on each coil. The coil is across two of the tabs and the third is a ground. The two coil tabs can easily be identified with a meter measureing the resistance between them, you should read somewhere between 20 and 50 ohms depending on what voltage they are would for. Typically the coil tabs are in the 3 and 9 o clock positions, with the ground at 12:00 and nothing at 6:00. This would be for the coil closest to the motor in your photo and be mirrored for the lower coil. Hope this helps