Gazz

I wouldn't sell the drill presses just yet. Either will drill a hole in steel but will probably have a tough time with 1/2" holes being under powered for the job. When drilling, keep pressure on the drill bit and do not let the bits spin in the hole as this can work harden steel. Remove the scale from your hole locations as this stuff is hard and will ruin the drill bits. It also helps to drill a small pilot hole first when drilling large holes. This relieves the web or point of the larger drill bit from having to do work and also keeps your hole locations more precise. I have an older 14" Delta and while I do not know the speed at the slowest setting, I have no problem drilling 1/2" and even larger holes with it.

One of the pet peeves I have is watching the various knifemaking and blacksmithing videos and seeing the folks take their fire scale covered hunk of steel to the belt grinder. That scale is hard and tough and will kill a belt in short order. Okay if you get your belts for free but I have to pay for mine so I remove scale first with an angle grinder and disc or flap wheel or a short soak in muriatic acid and water rinse, outside of course.

If you keep it, in ten years you will have moved that cobblers tool hundreds of times but never used it for anything save for a weight to hold something down during a glue up or maybe to fix a shoe. It's an interesting hunk of metal though.

Those headstones can be reshaped for other purposes. Sculpture bases, stepping stones/pavers, tractor weights etc. I recently attended an auction where they sold the headstone of a civil war veteran who had died in battle. Freaked a bunch of people out at first but the auctioneer explained that headstone had been replaced with an obelisk type monument by the descendants so the original was no longer needed and came with paperwork from both the family and the cemetery stating as such.

I think a hydraulically operated post vise would be a bad idea. We bent the very large one in the shop where I used to work just by tightening it with a pipe over the handle. There is little sensitivity with hydraulics. I modified a Craftsman wood band saw to cut metal by adding a jack shaft that reduced the saw speed. It worked somewhat with thin stock or aluminum or brass but not really very well. Also, wood cutting saws are not as rigid as metal cutting saws.

Your piece of hollow hex stock is most likely not a gun barrel. In all my years of messing with antique and modern guns, I have never seen a hex barrel, they are always octagon except for one that I saw that was 12 sided. Also, gun barrels are typically not high carbon. I vote for some kind of drive shaft for farm equipment or something similar where the shaft needed to change length during use as it slid in and out of a hex socket.

I have a half dozen or so 20lb propane bottles and the place with the lowest price that is near to me will not fill them if they have expired dates on them. That is because they also sell new bottles so many will pay for a new bottle when they can't get the expired one filled. The place also charges a disposal fee to get rid of your expired bottle. I take my expired bottles to Walmart and get a Blue Rhino exchange bottle. And so you know, the Blue Rhino bottles only have 15lbs of propane in them, that's why they run out quicker. When those are emptied I can then take them to the other place and get them filled with 20lbs. I am going to get one of the 100lb bottles I have recertified one of these days.

Nobody has asked if you are working with wrought iron which needs to be worked at high or yellow heat. It is different from readily available steel. Where did you get your metal from?

The file looks to be only slightly used so I'll keep it just for draw filing. I have plenty of leaf spring stock for a draw knife if I were ever inclined to make one.

The bar stock cutter will handle up to 3/8" round. I also snagged about 100 or more carbide burrs in both 1/8" and 1/4' shaft diameters, a tiny rosebud heating tip for jewelers oxy/acet torch, a small antique machinists chest, about 50 pounds of various size split roll pins (mostly stainless) and all kinds of other odd stuff. I forgot to mention this file - a Swiss made piece specifically for draw filing. In all my years of browsing tool catalogs I had never seen one before.

Went to an extremely interesting and mind boggling estate sale this past weekend. Went on the opening morning and then went back on the last day for the 50% pricing. I didn't buy this the first day and continued to kick myself for not getting it until I went back on the last day and it was still there! I actually got it for less than half price too. There was so much stuff still there on the last day you could fill a box and offer them $5 or $10 and they would say okay.

JHCC, The fuel gas regulator that I am using was just an extra acetylene unit I had. It has been working fine for over 30 years, probably close to 40 years. I also use an acetylene regulator for my propane gas forge. There may be an error in reading the pressures due to difference in gas density but that is not really an issue at the flame. When I put my rosebud Y fitting parts together, the local Jackson welding sales guy told me that is what to do and not spend the money for another regulator.

Be careful using that with acetylene. They need lots of fuel gas and can suck the acetone out of a bottle of acetylene. I bought a Y fitting for the oxygen and added a 20lb propane bottle with a regular fuel gas regulator so the rosebud is oxy/propane and the cutting torch oxy/acetylene. It works well.

If I ever did something like this, I would want to twist in either direction.

Yes, the untwisted end would need to secured - I think it could be done. A tail stock sort of thing that would allow for shortening of the bar and also allow free spinning or fixed, depending on your desired twist. I do have experience with large twists so I don't think I am to far out. Not a pipedream or anything, just a thought. If I had a job to do of 100's of tight twisted 1" square I'd think more

I had a thought about using my Kubota tractor for twisting. I could weld or bolt the chuck to the rear wheel. The stabilizers for the backhoe would lift the wheel off the ground and also clamp the bed or the rest of the machine to the ground. I think it would have a fair amount of torque but might require two people to operate. Just an outside the box thought.

I have friend who worked in the Kodak model shop who told me that he made parts in lucite or clear plastic that were vapor honed when done to make them crystal clear. The part was suspended over beaker of some kind of solvent and the fumes would polish the surface making clear as glass. I do not know what the solvent was and will ask next time I see or talk to him. Plexiglass or any of the similar plastics can be polished the old way as well by using abrasive papers with successively finer grits and the appropriate plastic polishing compound on a buffing wheel. Care is required to not overheat/melt the part from the friction of the wheel. I made a sword blade once from a die that was used to cut out shoe sole parts and left the identifying marks of the die in the blade. I forget what it said, something like OXFORD XXX123 or something. I just saw your post on the bladeforums and saw the pic of how you offset the blade which I somehow missed seeing here. A clever solution I think.

My Kubota is my favorite power tool. A friend had his radiator get trashed because mice were storing hickory nuts inside the fan shroud!

Almost look like an antique curling iron for the ladies hair.

The scrapyard is a funny place. One guy is always complaining about something I'm doing, parking my truck where it's in the way which is everywhere it seems or for making piles of stuff I want to pick up when I am done picking since I have to park the truck somewhere else. This guy would not care where you were when he was running the big magnet crane and would swing that thing feet from where you were even if you were trying to stay out of his way. Another guy there is very nice and points out good stuff that I might miss and even suggested that I bring a load of scrap, weigh in, dump it, fill up on pickings, weigh out and only pay for the difference in weight. It's a family owned and run business. I tried the donut thing and the beer thing but got a no thanks. There is another yard I can go to but it's a 45 minute drive and the place sells stuff considering what it might be worth as a useful thing and not by the pound.

They have shut me out before and have always have let me back in after some amount of time. They did close it up to pickers through 2020 because of covid as well. At .20 cents a pound, it is my favorite place to shop. Here is another new treasure that came from a Craig's list ad. It required a little work as the nut was loose and the jaws would move back and forth about an inch. Easy fix. It is a Parker and is about as heavy a thing that I would want to lift.

I made a stop at the local scrap yard a couple weeks and found this; It just hummed when I plugged it in but I found that end cover on the motor was dented preventing the motor fan from turning. I removed it and spent a little time with a hammer and fixed it. It now ran but the cylinder didn't move so I put a new charge of hydraulic oil in it. I was able to crush a 1.5"square .125" wall piece of tubing with no issue. I need to reconfigure it so that there is some pass through ability and make some dies. Sadly when I went to pay at the scale, I was told no more picking! They had a new insurance company or policy and no pickers allowed. I also snagged this large eye bolt on that last trip - hammer is for scale.

A bit of thread drift here....

I am not sure if we are talking about the same kind of tool holder/tool post. While the tool post is square they are typically used with just one tool at a time. The tool holder is set up with a particular cutting tool bit, left hand, right hand, threading, cut off, boring etc. to be at the right height and they are locked into place on the tool post by a lever and piston. Turn the lever and lift the tool holder out and replace with the tool for the next operation and lock it in place by turning the lever. It is that quick to change to tools. I have maybe ten holders set up with different bits and it. I made this video to convince a friend that is what he needed in place of the lantern type tool post. 100_9207.MOV

If you plan on using the lathe on a regular basis, consider getting yourself some quick change tool holders - Aloris is the big name but big dollars - there are many other makers as well and most interchange including some Chinese imports. You probably know about these already given your past experience. While the lantern type tool post and rocker type tool holders work, they are slow to change between specific cutting bits.