Joel OF

Cheers for all the advice/feedback folks. Ian, it didn't sound like you were telling me how to run my life, unfortunately. You can have a go if you'd like but it's a headache probably best avoided :-P

I've given up trying to find a small power hacksaw, I've had my eye out for one for ages but not had any joy fidning one within a sensible driving distance. John, sounds like you're saying you can't walk away from a bandsaw even if it's got an auto-stop? The other thing I'm keen on is the swivel arm rather than a swivel vice, I think that'll be handy for mitreing the ends of long stock.

Hi folks, After much deliberation over saw types I'm in the market for a new 6x4 band saw. I've read a good few reviews and forum threads to have an idea what their drawbacks are (mainly mitreing back towards the vice) but all in all I still think they're the best saws for me. The consensus seems to be that they're all made in China then repainted and rebadged, castings are good but assembly is poor. Basically all I'm after is some reassurance that I'm not going to be banging my head against a brick wall all day every day trying to get the thing to cut straight. If I can spend a little time setting it up when I first get it and reduce the cut drift to 1.5mm across 100mm I'll be happy. I appreciate that they take some setting up to get them to work well but I don't want to be fiddling with it every time I need a decent cut. Am I asking for a headache? These machines are type I'm checking out, I'd appreciate and words of wisdom. http://www.axminster.co.uk/axminster-mcb1155hd-swivel-head-metal-cutting-bandsaw http://www.sipuk.co.uk/sip-07288-6-swivel-metal-cutting-bandsaw-230v.html

In a past life I was a drummer & now I'm selling all of my music gear to buy workshop tools. Over the years I adapted cymbal stands/raided them for parts so now I'm left with the bases of 2 cymbal stands that don't have the top parts. I was going to cobble some bits together to be able to sell them but I've decided to hang onto the bases & fabricate some rollers or something for the top & use them in my workshop. A lot of drum gear is really well engineered and definitely has multiple uses as it's designed to be adjustable.

Cheers. Well these were my first gates and the first time making/using scroll jigs so the novelty of it all just about got me through. Just.

​I'm shaking my head in slow motion whilst tutting at you. Seriously though, cheers for all your help folks! Much appreciated!

Some better pics of what the stuff actually looks like when it's first on. I'm kind of amazed how little info there is out there on the net about hot zinc spray considering it's advantages over galv, even the companies that offer flame spraying have rubbish pics and info on their websites. Uploading these for the sake of folks in the same boat as me who want to know more about the stuff.

I fired it up today and it seems to be running well, I'm pretty sure I noticed those vertical slots in the shaft you mention. What's their function? The table can rotate to 45 degrees & be raised/lowered with one hand & from the column to the chuck centre is 7" versus the tiny 4" on my current drill. There was also a small 6" bench grinder next to it that works despite the inch thick layer of dust of dust on it.

I think you've summed up most of the things that go through my mind when deciding to buy anything new or 2nd hand. The added frustration for me is that as I'm so naive about machinery I could easily miss a fault on a 2nd hand machine, (which is why I generally fabour buying new), though I'd feel comfortable buying this one off the fabricator as he is the most honest and helpful guy in the world. My current drill is so small I think anything would be an upgrade t.b.h, the tiny throat capacity on the Naerok is what really gets on my nerve & it has a tantrum with hole saws too. I'll probably fire up this Spaldings one and test it out but if it's not to be for whatever reason I'll keep my eyes open for a kosher 2nd hand machine as advised.

Cheers folks. At the minute I rent a bit of workshop space off a farmer turned fabricator & I remembered this morning that he's got an old bench drill collecting dust out in one of his barns. Could this be more in the league of the drills you guys are suggesting? I'm slightly reluctant to bring up the topic with him unless I've got cash in my hand ready to tempt him, getting a farmer to part with anything aint easy.

Cheers for the advice Alan. I'm a late starter with metalworking and being clueless about machinery and electricals are my real Achilles Heel(s)! Having read a bit of advice about 3 phase to single phase inverters on another thread I understand you loose a bit of oomph from the motor when you go down that route - so presumably the type of drills your talking about have enough grunt to start with that even when you add the phase inverter they've still got more beans than the £300 Draper/SIP/Axminsters of this world?

Cheers for those pics John. I referred back to this thread the other day and only just saw them for the first time, doh. I'm going to take my first gate (2 gates in fact) for blasting and zinc spraying next week. Having heard about alkyd based paints blistering on top of zinc coatings I was a bit nervous about which types of paint to use for the top coat so I got the guys to do me a little test patch sample of zinc spray as I wanted to try out the acrylic paints I plan on using to check their compatibility. I also wanted to see what the zinc looked like on it's own. I cut up the sample they gave me into 3 pieces, one bit to leave outside to see how it fairs over time, one bit to leave indoors as to show what it's like when it's new, (having seen some of the work at the Fire and Iron gallery which looks great with just a zinc finish on it I may well suggest to clients that a zinc finish alone can look the nuts), and the other piece I sprayed with etch primer and then also satin black. The pic that shows all 3 stages together is probably the truest to real life in terms of colour, but even then it's not great. I purposely haven't taken out any of the lumps and bumps and have tried to show the natural surface texture as best as possible...uploading these in case they're of use to anyone else. The gate's I've made a full of scrolls so there's no way on earth I'm painting them by brush, but I don't yet have a compressor so I'm limited to rattle cans. Of the variety of rattle cans I've experimented with I prefer the acrylics as IMO they sit nicest on the surface - they're not like a glossy oil slick that's be dolloped on.

Cheers for those pics John. I referred back to this thread the other day and only just saw them for the first time, doh. I'm going to take my first gate (2 gates in fact) for blasting and zinc spraying next week. Having heard about alkyd based paints blistering on top of zinc coatings I was a bit nervous about which types of paint to use for the top coat so I got the guys to do me a little test patch sample of zinc spray as I wanted to try out the acrylic paints I plan on using to check their compatibility. I also wanted to see what the zinc looked like on it's own. I cut up the sample they gave me into 3 pieces, one bit to leave outside to see how it fairs over time, one bit to leave indoors as to show what it's like when it's new, (having seen some of the work at the Fire and Iron gallery which looks great with just a zinc finish on it I may well suggest to clients that a zinc finish alone can look the nuts), and the other piece I sprayed with etch primer and then also satin black. The pic that shows all 3 stages together is probably the truest to real life in terms of colour, but even then it's not great. I purposely haven't taken out any of the lumps and bumps and have tried to show the natural surface texture as best as possible...uploading these in case they're of use to anyone else. The gate's I've made a full of scrolls so there's no way on earth I'm painting them by brush, but I don't yet have a compressor so I'm limited to rattle cans. Of the variety of rattle cans I've experimented with I prefer the acrylics as IMO they sit nicest on the surface - they're not like a glossy oil slick that's be dolloped on.

Hi folks, I'm long overdue a drill upgrade from the small hand-me-down Naerok bench drill I've been making do with for the last couple years. I'm looking for a new single phase floor standing pillar drill and I noticed a solid looking Draper £300 machine in my local tool shop the other day. Can anyone offer me a second opinion on this and whether it's sounds any good? It will be in regular use for small/medium sized blacksmithing and fabrication work. Here's some spec highlights: Model No.: 42639 16 speed belt driven, 210-3340 r/min 16mm chuck capacity 550W motor 160mm throat Tiltling table, 260mm x 260mm Height 1620mm Weight 98kg Any general buying advice would also be appreciated or if you know any other machines that are worth a look in. Cheers

Got it in one.

Reading that back I might have described my "planes" back to front. Maybe describing them as side to side VS top and bottom may have made more sense.

For the sake of practicing my scarf forge welds I do mine that way. One thing that I think is kinda critical is that I don't forge weld the reins on in the vertical plane the reins are being stressed, I make the scarf weld at 90 degrees to the direction of stress in the horizontal plane. Because of the slightly rectangular shape of reins the scarves have more surface area if they're done in the horizontal plane rather than vertical plane. I used to make the scarf weld in the vertical plane and think nothing of it but one day in a hurry I needed to close up the jaws of some tongs (bought at a boot fair) so I opened up the reins and stuck a bit of wood inbetween them then gave the jaws a couple hits. Nothing happened to the jaws because the scarf toes had started to lift/peel/fail because the piece of wood was almost exactly where the weld was & the weld had been made in a vertical plane.

Cheers for the replies. I'll tell the fabricator I work next to about the liquid tipex idea for plasma cutting, I've not seen him use it before. Those Nissen pencils sound great, but £70 incl shipping for a pack of 12 on Amazon...ouch.

Other than French chalk, what pens and pencils do you use in yout workshop and for what application? I.e hot work, cold work, precise marking out, colour coding...

Cheers. There will be 3 phase elsewhere on the estate but not nearby unfortunately. When I used to work out of a shack in my parents' garden I used to run my welder off one of these sockets we had an electrician fit to the exterior of an office that was nextdoor. Can these sockets be fit anywhere with single phase or do the planets need to align in a certain way to allow it?

Hi folks, please excuse my ignorance and diverting the thread but this is a very relevant topic to my situation, so if I ask my question here it will save me clogging up the forums with a very similar thread... I've got my foot in the door at a new workshop but it's only single phase, I don't have a power hammer or compressor at the minute so am just running grinders, small inverter arc welder, drill press, forge blower, radio, lights...but can foresee myself wanting some a small power hammer and compressor at some point. What's actually involved in going from single phase to 3 phase? Is 3 phase actually needed for those things? I'm aware of single phase power hammers. I'm ashamed to say my knowledge of electrics is next to nothing. The workshop location will be fantastic for my business (in the grounds of a stately home that's open to the public, my workshop would be next to a successful green wood craftsman who regularly has visitors and the rent is cheap) so I'm really hoping the electrics situation isn't going to be a problem. The workshop is in poor repair at the minute and needs a few months of work to make it ready so the estate manager has asked me for a wish list to bring the spec of the workshop up to scratch for what I need (door sizes/floor/position of windows etc) but this won't include putting in a 3 phase supply so that cost would fall to me. Apologies blackleafforge.

I'm not surprised a bracelet is taking a long time, that's finer work and must be pretty fiddly!

I normally favour symmetrical but I just quickly squiggled a heart shape on the bench and it came out a bit wonky but I thought it looked kinda fun so I made this to match. I had a good bit of advice a while ago from a master blacksmith regarding my infactuation with symmetry - they pointed out that a lot of things look symmetrical even though they're not e.g trees, and you can keep the appearence of symmetry by mainting an overall balanced shape but vary the smaller details to keep things interesting.

It dawned on me late yesterday afternoon that I hadn't got anything for my girlfriend for Valentine's Day so I quickly knocked this up. I made it in a hurry and made up the design as I went along which are the two things I hate doing so there's room for design improvement but all in all I think it was a success, it does it's job anyway. This sorta cutesy thing really isn't my cuppa tea and free hand scrolling is one of my weaker points so I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out in that respect. (It's purposefully unsymmetrical). Not knowing the dimensions of her hair dryer or straightening tongs didn't help much either...scurrying around the workshop looking for some pipe to use as a jig was a bit stressful! The coils are stick welded onto the heart, I would have forge welded them if I had the time/pre planned it all.

The best and worst advice I've had about forge welding was from a no nonsense Yorkshire-man master blacksmith who said "forge welding is a piece of xxxx, you've just got to do it right". Didn't exactly tell me how to do it but it's true that if you're not patient and don't do it right, it won't work. (Piece of xxxx is a British colloquialism for easy).