DSW

Doesn't surprise me at all. We use a fairly coarse grit alum oxide media ( 3/16" chip roughly) when we tumble steel dive cylinders to clean out rust after hydros before O2 cleaning them. I used to have a "bucket" similar to that I could put on my cylinder roller to clean misc parts. About 6-8 hours will get rid of light rust, and 24 hours will typically make even heavily rusted cylinders look like new. My buddy used to use an old concrete mixer and some sand and 3/8" screenings to clean and debur a lot of CNC plasma cut parts he used in production.

Might be an interesting add on to the end of a grilling fork thinking about it. Cold beer and steaks on the grill go well together.

Das went I 1st looked at your 1st pict the bottom 1/2 was still covered. All I could see was the opener where a pommel should be, what looked like a hilt and cross guard and the start of what looked like a straight bladed dagger. Just the thing you need to open a cold one after defending your honor in a duel, or fighting off the enemy with dagger and rapier.

Hard to say without seeing all of it, but my 1st thought is it might be a tractor counter weight.

Pyromaniacs?

Clocks came to mind last night. You could do some really neat art work on those if you had a CNC plasma cutter. I've seen some really nice looking work where they pretty much made the base stock a "lace" with all the fine detailed cutouts.

Turn your tooth upside down in the vise and heat and upset your shank into the back of the tooth to fill it as much as possible. The welds won't crack if they aren't taking any force. It's pretty much the same idea that keep teeth on a bucket. The ones on our old bucket were only held in by simple roll pins. It was the formed shank that took all the load. I'd forge it close, then heat it good and hot and drive it in to form to the pocket. Then shape your hardy shank if needed and tack the two together.

Lot of big sunflowers there.

20 lb cylinders will work. They just can be a bit finicky at times. Nice thing about 20lb ones is you can find them almost anywhere dirt cheap to free. In the spring I can usually spot on out on trash day when people get a new gas grill and dump the old one. My township also will take old cylinders, and there's usually one in the bin up by the public works building. Bigger ones are a bit harder to locate and aren't cheap new.

Yes I'm a teaching assistant at the local votech school at night.

I have a great many cordless power tools that I use almost every day to make a living, but a cordless grinder isn't one of them. That said I have at least 8 4 1/2" grinders, 2 7" grinders and 2 die grinders. The only reason I don't have a 5-6" grinder yet is the easy availability of disks in my area. There's always at least 2 4 1/2" grinders and a 7" grinder on the work truck at any time along with a decent selection of wheels/disks.

I know a couple people who have use teeth as hot cuts. I have one myself that I have used before I made my hot cut. As mentioned they are cast steel and very tough. Mine is from an excavator and the machine would easily leave tooth marks in solid concrete or stone without any damage to the bucket teeth other than possibly slight wear. Esco makes decent teeth from what I remember.

People who have propane "explosions" usually do something stupid. You hear about one just about every summer. They go out and decide to light the grill to burn it off so they can cook, so they turn on the cylinder, then the burners, then either get distracted or go look for something to light it with. Mean while the grill fills with gas because the lid is down and when they finally go to light it, they get a big bang. All of which could have easily been avoided. That or they store the grill in the garage and don't shut off the cylinder when done so the garage fills with gas. I've seen it with gas forges as well at the college on occasion. There really isn't enough volume in the forge for a real "explosion" if they can't get it lit in the first 30 seconds or so. Up side of the forges is that usually they have the door open so they can light it with a piece of burning paper and they just get a big WUFF that startles a few people, though I've seen the doors get blown open a few times with a good solid bang that will have some needing to clean their shorts if they aren't expecting it. Common sense says have everything ready when you go to light the forge. If it won't light for some reason, or if you get called away for a minute, shut it down, let it air out, then try again in a few minutes. A 100 lb cylinder might be a bit heavy for you to work with easily. 40 lb ones might be easier to handle. You can occasionally find 2 40 lb cylinders manifolded together for RV trailers to run a fridge or hot water heater. You can also manifold 2 20lb grill cylinders together if need be. Down side of the 20 lb ones is most have the stupid OPV valves in them and won't flow at high volumes, especially if used by themselves. The bigger cylinders don't usually use an OPV valve since they are often used for high volume use like big space heaters etc. If you opt for large cylinders, think about how you plan to get them filled or move them if you need to store the gear other than where it's used.

These are the two pages from My Miller Syncrowave 200 manual that show grounding to prevent HF interference. Pretty much it's telling you to use an additional ground on all metal items as well as the unit to prevent Hf issues.

In a pinch I've used "dead" extension cords for power tools. A lot of times it's the female end that gets messed up, but the male end is still perfectly good. I'll often save cords off electrical appliances if the cord is decent but the item is dead. I find the molded plugs a bit better than the replacement plugs many times. Last one I used came off a dead AC unit IIRC. I used it to wire up a new overhead fluorescent shop light in the garage. Home Depot/Lowes sell "power tool cords". Basically a 14 ga cord with a male plug on the end. I can't remember if they come with the ring terminals attached or not. Most times I never bother with ring terminals, though I have a mess of them at the house. I just wrap the bare wires around the screw after stripping the wires. Some tools don't use rings anyways, they tin the ends of the wire with solder and wrap. I don't remember particularly liking the last "power tool cord" I bought at one of the box stores. The cord is stiffer than what I'd prefer typically on my tools. I needed the tool fixed right then though ( helper put the tool down on the cord with the bit still turning and it cut thru the cord) It's on my small router that I don't use that often, so it will probably stay. Electrical supply houses may have cords with molded plugs already attached as well.

Bolt looks thin. Did you just punch and drift, or did you slit 1st? I've had better luck with thin stuff if I slit and upset 1st, then drift. That way I'm not stretching the hole too large. You might be able to salvage that one possibly if you turn the top into a "loop" like coldironkilz showed just recently in the bottle opener thread.

Shoot me a PM if you are thinking of working Wed or Thursday in the shop. I'm busy with work Sat thru Tuesday at the moment, but if I'm not working, maybe I'll take a drive and give you a hand in the shop. Don't hold off waiting for me though, if it doesn't work this time, we can get together again some other time when our schedules match up.

Painters company was Crown Cork and Seal in Baltimore Md. My Grandfather worked in the research division of Crown during and after the 2nd World War ( not sure when exactly he started). Some where around here we have a rubber mat that was used as part of the printing process for making bottle caps he got from work when it was discarded some time back in the late 50's early 60's. We used it as a mat for working on the ground under the car since you could simply wipe off stuff like oil and grease.

Click on "unread content" at the top right corner just below the search block. It will pull up any posts you haven't read yet. Another option is to go to the upper left and find the button that says "Activity. You can go to unread content there, or pull down a menu listed My activity streams and select several areas, again unread content as well as "Content I started", "Content I follow" or "Content I posted in".

Hey, here's the picts I promised you. 1st is the set of nippers you sent me. I managed to make them work well on both 1/2" and 3/8" square and round bar. You can trim the ends as needed. 2nd is a set of tongs I'm working on for you for spikes. The blanks still need some work. I'll temporarily bolt them together and fit and size them for the spikes this weekend if I get time. I'd hoped to get out to forge tomorrow while the weather was warmer, but work today ended up running into tomorrow. I figured I'd leave the reigns for you to draw out and taper unless you want me to do it. That way you can do some work on your tongs and they will fit easier in the box when I ship them back. I have some other things I want to toss in the box if I can find them, so it may be a bit before I send this all out depending when I get the chance to get out in the shop based on work.

Maybe I'm a bit different. I see way too many today that think modern tools are the answer to everything. I doubt 1/2 the guys I know have even ever used a cold chisel, hand hacksaw or hand file. They must have a power grinder, power saw or whatever. If they don't, or can't afford it, it can't be done. One of my favorite stories is about the saving of the crew of the US submarine S5 that sank off the coast of Delaware/New Jersey. The crew managed to blow enough ballast to get the stern of the sub just above water. Then they managed to drill and cut a small triangular hole thru the hull, enough to wave a small flag on a broom handle to attract attention of a passing ship. The crew was rescued from certain death when the chief engineer of a 2nd ship and his helper hand drilled a series of holes with a breast drill and chiseled out the 3/4" thick steel in between the holes creating roughly a 2 foot hole for the men to squirm thru. How many today would have the patience let alone the know how to do something like this. "Old school" tools and techniques taught patience and craftsmanship, something I think many today have lost. It's not that you can't have craftsmanship with modern tools, it's just that so many people equate skills simply with expensive tools. They fail to see that skill comes from long hours of tedious practice. Few today have the patience to learn real skill. They want to watch Youtube, buy some tools and be an expert after an hour or so. If not, obviously there's something wrong, and they need to spend more money to buy better, fancier tools to solve this problem.

There have been more than a few bugs with the site that the provider IPS doesn't seem interested in resolving. Your issues getting online might be connected to that. I had some issues getting back on here for a while as did several other long time members so your issue might be connected to the issues we had for a bit. Glen is pretty good about resolving those issues once he is made aware of them. If it happens again, let me or Shortfuse over on WW know and chances are we can PM Glen to help solve the issue.

Hey Jerry. You'll recognize quite a few guys here from over there. Glad to see you joined and am looking forward to what you make once you get all set up. Take a minute and add your location to your profile so we always know where you are at. You'll find the guys here very helpful and many will go out of their way to help a new guy if they know you are in the area.

I see a number of reasons for this. Part of the reason is the "modern" movement in architecture where they rejected ornamentation in favor of "clean" lines in glass and concrete. People like Mies, Le Corbusier and Gropius led that movement. Also around the same time labor started to become more costly. Before, decorations in castings could save materials which were expensive at the cost of additional labor which was cheap, As material costs dropped and labor became more expensive, that combined with decoration going out of style changed the way we made things.

Hence why you need 2 of many things. I wouldn't have forged directly in my room. I'd have done it out on the balcony of the apartment, or maybe some where else on campus, say the architecture studio.... They did get a bit cranky about the foot of wood shavings in the hallway of the design studio when we were running my 12" planer there ( We did clean up when finished), but then don't tell me I have to work in the studio in class. Same applied when I was welding and brazing stuff for one of my models. If you are not going to give me any option but to work in the studio space during class, then you need to deal with the stuff I bring in to work with.