Quarry Dog

Does it turn a lot when you're using it? I know even when I'm using a poorly fitting hardie in the actual hardie hole, a little excessive movement can be a little nuisance for me. All in all though, pretty cool idea, would probably do good for all kinds of RR anvil tooling.

Has anyone ever heard of a slightly concave faced hammer made of mild steel? I have a stonecarver for a buddy that uses one, and only that one, on his carbide tipped tools, as advised and sold by the manufacturer. He says as long as he doesn't completely miss, it is basically impossible to strike a glancing blow. I honestly want to try something like it myself.

I have witnessed the aftermath of someone using teflon on a computerized/calibrated pneumatic function generator. Not pretty, the stuff totally clogged up both the pressure and vacuum plumbing. As a result, I only use teflon on water, and for compressed air I now use gasoila when I'm dealing with compressed air, unless the fittings are self-sealing/flare fittings. I've always used that yellow stuff on propane, since it's good enough for building code. As far as oxy/fuel torch rigs go, all of those fittings are precision brass flares and don't need sealant unless something is wrong. If you think it is leaking, spray with soapy water, look for bubbles, and tighten a little at a time. Don't crank too hard though or you will strip the threads. If it's really tight and still leaking' have the bottle/regulator/fittings checked at a weld supply shop. Hope this info helps someone.

I know that if you rub steel witha brass brush at a medium black heat the brass will rub off. I haven't the slightest idea what would cause this though.

I don't know about charcoal, but I've seen this happen a couple times with a coal fired forge using a hand cranked blower. Apparently it is most likely to happen when you're watering the edges of your fire and you aren't providing any blast. I hear it has something to do with steam forcing volatiles down the tuyere. The only things I know for sure are that I didn't do it, it shook all the dust loose in the shop, and the first time I heard it I had to recover from the crouching "grenade" position. I actually saw it happen a few months later and there was a little fireball that came out of the blower. Hopefully if you guys don't find this informative, you do find it entertaining.

I can't tell from the picture/paint if those are rolled from the bottom, or if they are rolled from the top and forge welded across the back. Either way, I would probably bend up 2 barrels and then hacksaw/slicewheel the knuckles out and dress with a file until they match up good, and there's no sharp edges. Also, from experience at work, whatever you do for a pin, make sure it is either welded on top, or has a good head to keep the weather/dust from getting in through the top of the hinge. A little oil hole drilled into the side of the top knuckle might not be a bad idea either.

Exactly!

I believe I have seen this covered in several old (late 1800s/early 1900s) blacksmithing books. What they would do is punch halfway through from one side, and then offset their punch on the other side so that the centers were at the appropriate angle. Only a portion of the offset wholes would produce a slug, so after that was knocked out, a drift would have to be driven through. I have never tried this technique, but I think it would have been perfect for this, if it worked as advertised.

There's an old wooden barn that was relocated to the park where my guild's shop is at. It has really wide doors hanging from a roller system, and they open very easilly. If you didn't want the rollers/rails in sight it probably wouldn't be hard to make a wooden cover over them. They would probably last a lot longer too.

Unless the welds are full penetration, there will always be a gap between the plates. This would make them one solid block anyway, although with messier grain and possible inclusions/porosity. If you did just weld around some plates, after the initial hit on your workpiece, the top plate would flex, dissipating energy, until it hit the next plate, and so on, until there was no more energy left to work with. This is much like why even a tighly packed deadblow hammer doesn't rebound hardly at all. I'm sure that what actually happens is way more complicated than that, but that's the basic Idea of it. The only exception I can think of would be if the plates were all precision ground and sweated together like gauge blocks before being welded all around while somehow preventing warpage, which would unsweat the blocks and cause air pockets. Even if you could manage that, a feat in itself, I believe that it would still find some way to dampen your blows more than a solid block, and probably cost 100 times as much. All of that being said, It would definitlely be better than banging on a single piece of 1" plate, unless the stack is made of cast iron, in which case you'll have a fun time not making it crack while welding, and then not cracking it when you hit it.

"It is easier to ask forgiveness, than permission." Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (USN) "You only have one chance to overdo something. After that you're just fixing it." -My Dad as told to him by my Grandpa "You CAN fix stupid if you break things down 'Barney Style'. You CAN turn clumsiness into perfection through perfect practice and perfect repetition. You CAN NOT fix willful ignorance or sheer laziness." -One of my old Marine Staff NCOs Yada, Yada, "Black, Hot, Hard, Heavy, Sharp, AND/OR Dangerous" etc., etc. -Most likely every person to ever teach blacksmithing.

The way I see it explained in a lot of old books is that a point is "one percent of one percent." Everyone's probably already got that by now, but I threw in my 2 points just in case.

I couldn't find one that was set up for center upsetting, but I'll keep an eye out.

Just seeing if I understood how it was set up. Somewhat off topic, but I always thought it would be cool to see a setup that would clamp either side of a section and upset toward the middle. I imagine it would function somewhat like a wagontyre upsetter that I read about in an old book/catalog that I can't remember the name of.

I think I get it, but I'm not sure. So the hot end goes above the clamping dies? So it acts like a giant rivet header?

Usually i've seen TLDR at the end of a post as a way to present a shorter version if you know you're being longwinded, as I felt I was. No disrespect meant there. I think I'll throw in the word "version" to prevent further misunderstandings. As far as the horses going to the stables, I must have misunderstood the tone of the conversation, or missed a post, as often happens on zee intarwebz, and was just trying to get past what seemed to be an impass at the intersection of hammer street and die road. PS: There are some really cool videos of open die forging on youtube.

Oh cool. I just had to replace a set of tie rods on a '64 CJ5 Jeep. Soundd like nice straight machining material for some large size transfer punches I've been wanting at work.

according to dictionary.reference.com "noun, plural dies for 1, 2, 4, dice for 3. 1. Machinery. a. any of various devices for cutting or forming material in a press or a stamping or forging machine." I don't know about y'all. But I kinda like the thought of myself as a forging machine, albeit very imperfect and fleshy. At the very least it's not a very far leap. I see the word "die" in the context of smithing to be quite simply an applicable and quite acceptable placeholder for when you find that you don't know what exactly to call a particular tool meant to cause a desired spreading of the metal. It fits the definition posted above. There are dies in sheetmetal stretchers/shrinkers. They even use the term in rock crushing plants, which barely fits with the dictionary, but that's what they call it. The term is very openly defined. I've been smithing for about 3 years now, and the only specific parts of a hammer that I use in daily speech are handle, head, face, and pein. I know a couple other bits of nomenclature, but I know there's a few I couldn't name if they were standing on my foot (at least not for polite conversation). I also know that when I started, It took me a few months to competently use more than basic terms (still debateable as to whether I'm past that), and that was watching lots of videos, and reading lots of old books that I got for free (google books and the local/guild library), and hanging around every saturday with people who had literally been bangin' around since the 50's. I didn't even know a hammer had a heel or a toe until 6 months in. I just never had to use the terms, and I only know now because I found it in some random book. TLDR: Cut people some slack. Sometimes things need to be broken down "Barney Style". PS: I think the horses on both sides of this fence are officially dead.

Ok, so flat jaw tongs wiggle too much for just about anything and are pretty much a last resort? That sounds reasonable enough, considering that there really isn't that much effort that goes into making the bit. So, what type of tongs one would hold flatbar, or a knife billet, perpendicular to tongs safely? Would one take a bolt-headed set of tongs with a channel-type bit, of about the right size for the work, and bend them 90° off to one side between the bit and boss? Or would that put too much stress on that bend?

Funny thing is I just finished this book last night. "Machine Blacksmithing", ©1909. It's available for free on Google books, although it's a little bit of a trick to get to the downloadable *.pdf file. James Cran poses some pretty cool ideas for tooling and seems to focus a lot on steam hammers. There's a promising steam hammer die holder (Pg. 20, Fig. 20) that seems like a heavier version of a smithin' magician crossed with a spring swage. I'm sure it could be adapted to air hammers without much trouble, and probably to power hammers with a little forethought. Another cool idea is a triple-combo powerhammer bottom die (Pg. 35, Fig. 41) that's set up on one end for drawing, flat-work in the middle, and an adjustable taper on the other end. If anyone has made this, I'd like to see detailed part's explosion pictures of the T-bolt/Wedge-bolt/Corrugation set-up on the taper end, if it's not too much trouble.

That's almost as bad as a safety poster of a guys hand they were passing around the military about 6 years back. Aparrently someone decided to use the primer end of a .50 caliber round as a hammer. It pretty much stripped the middle, ring, and index finger of flesh all the way back to the wrist.

Thomas, I'm not sure which way that one goes, but I wouldn't doubt if there was a plenty of carbon monoxide being produced when the blower is killed. That doesn't really account though for the fact that the blue flames are still visible when the blower is on, providing plenty of oxygen, or why oxy/acetylene, natural gas, and propane (I got to play with an oxy/propane set-up recently) all burn blue when they're running at perfect flame mixture. This especially makes sense to me when all of these reactions are based on carbon. I'd like to think though that the blue flame while the blower is off is more from very weak (compared to a blower) hot air currents pulling air slowly up through the fire pulling uncombusted hot carbon particles out of the firepot into good oxygen above the fire. When the blower is on though, you get bigger blue flames, although you might get a few streaks of odd colors from little bits of clinker,ash, non-combustibles, and that little bit of occasional phosphorus/sulfur from unburnt coal dust (you know, the bit hiding in the corner of the firepot on bad days) going through the fire and emitting their spectral colors. These spectral emissions are why I said kill the blast to get a good look at the blue flames. I'm thinking something like the reaction in oxy/acetylene flame. Acetylene is C2H2. Combustion with limited Oxygen results in a little bit of water (Hydrogen is very grabby), carbon monoxide(until all left over oxygen is used), and that feathery soot (once there's no oxygen left.) That's the yellow flame that is really only good for blackening things. If you add too much oxygen, you end up wasting alot of O2 and probably creating O3 (ozone) from the heat. It might even kill your flame if you really add too much oxygen to the mix, and take it down below a flammable concentration. If you add just the right amount of oxygen to the mix though, it is readily available to the acetylene, binds better with the carbon, and you get CO2 and H20. That's if you have it dialed in perfect, something like 2(C2H2)+5(O2)=4(CO2)+2(H2O). I did test one bag of coal from Utah that didn't burn so good though. Even after it coked (sort of) I was still getting a weak, yellow (sulfur?) flame, that was not the hottest, although I didn't get much clinker for some reason, even when I was wailing on it.

Well, since wikipedia is on the table, let's look at black-body radiation. Since there is no perfect black-body material, you must take into account the emissivity of the material being observed. This basically means that since coke is a good, but not perfect black-body, the color basically gets applied as a percentage of the black-body radiation chart. This chart is pretty much a continuation of the chart that you posted here, which accounts for the most efficient flames of oxy/acetylene, natural gas, and the biggest and hottest stars, glowing at various shades of blue. So in theory, if you could get coke to hold out long enough for the entire mass to go up at once, it would glow blue, but since it starts to break down, the little molecules that break off get burnt up very rapidly in the flame that radiates up from the firepot, producing a blue flame. If it wasn't for the fact that the actual coke was incandescing due to this effect, you would see that the flame in and amongst the fire was actually blue, which is what heats up the coke to the white hot that we see. Seriously, next time you have a nice clean fire, and a dark background behind your forge, get the coke a nice glowing white hot, kill the blast for a second (so you don't chance forcing forcing non-contributing particles through that will emit their spectral colors, such as phosporus, which emits a pale bluish green color during flame test) and look across the fire. You will see little blue flames about an inch or 2 tall. If that's not enough, I don't know what else to say, beyond "I respectfully agree to disagree. Good day, Sir/Mr." I wonder what it would take to make iron glow blue. I bet it would require a perfect non-reactive atmosphere, like argon, and and induction setup with a crucible capable of withstanding about 10000°-20000° F. Good luck with any of that, right? :P

I'm not really sure if it had any effect, but when we installed a LG 25 that we re-babbitted, we put 2 layers of some really wide mats made cut out of woven belting under it, almost like old line shaft belting. I think that may have been more to protect the concrete? It's not really all that loud though, so who knows.

We actually just received a very similar unit to this one at the shop I hammer at. The parts don't look like they'd be all that hard to make, besides the screw that they use, but you could probably do well with some 1/2"-13 NC (I think it's 13) allthread. I'll try and get pictures this weekend, if I can remember that far.