Jump to content
I Forge Iron

elementFe

Members
  • Posts

    19
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Converted

  • Location
    North of Seattle
  • Biography
    Full time metal artist
  • Interests
    Music and my family
  • Occupation
    Designer, Artist, Blacksmith, Welder
  1. Thanks John- Like any good blacksmith, you just have to think backwards, turning a garden fork into a chunk of thick flat bar. I do have a small power hammer, and it wouldn't be terribly hard to do, but I think it (as you say) take most of a day for the first one and be a lot of pounding...I think I have better things to do just now! Makes perfect sense, though, I can see it now. The time consuming part for me is always the slitting/cutting, and then cleaning it up afterwards so it forges out clean. This would make a dandy demonstration, though, for a conference, wouldn't it? AG
  2. Four tined fork is what I'm looking for, the example he'd like to have is here: http://www.smithandspeed.com/catalog/item/4542400/6169485.htm It's not so much that I wouldn't like to do one just for fun, but if I have to break it out of bigger stock it's probably not worth the setup time to make the fixtures needed to do it efficiently. Thanks so much for the input! If you EVER find the step by step, would you share it? Andy G.
  3. I've been baffled for years on the subject of how the English garden forks are made. A neighbor with a small market garden has asked me to make a half dozen, and supplied 4340 (if I remember correctly) 1/2"x1/2" stock- I think it can be done, but I'd sure like to know how the big kids do it before I beat my head against the wall- they're advertised as "one piece" without welds, and I just don't get how to get that shape from one piece of anything. I showed Peter Ross an older example years ago, and he thought that it had been cut from sheet stock and then tines and socket forged piece by piece...this was a many-tined manure fork though... Help? Thanks! Andy G. Guemes Island, WA
  4. I kind of wish this was a forged joint, I know more or less how to do that- got a great lesson at the last NWBA conference from Mark Aspery. These are 1/2" round bars passing through 1/2 x 1" flat bar on a 34 deg. angle, everything on this railing system is tight and crisp, no forged work. The end mill really did do what it was supposed to but there was enough wobble in the drill press (Griz floor model, 12 speed) that the flat that it ground was oversized. If I ran it far enough down so that I could center punch the center of the flat, there was too much slop around the 1/2" drill hole- is that clear as mud?
  5. Lessons learned: *You can't necessarily get machine cutters in a small town, even a busy seaport town. Apparently those things come from jobbers, not stores. *When you DO finally find one, twenty miles away, you can't do accurate, nice looking work with machine tools on a cheapo Grizzly drill press. It's just not that steady or accurate: I'm tempted to post a youtube video of the wobble...it would be nice to dance to, but sucks for steel work. *There's no substitute for real (read, "expensive") metalworking tools. Options are to spend another day chasing around looking for a drill press to use, hiring a machine shop and waiting.... Considering that consistency can often hide inaccuracy (as long as the inaccuracy is consistent) perhaps I'll change the layout, punching straight through, and using a hand drill and lots of fluid, torque the hole sideways enough for the bar to pass through on the correct angle. Not what I'd wanted, but there's something to getting the job done. The big question is, how much slop is acceptable? *sigh* ...decisions like this are what make me, the C.E.O, worth the big bucks. Perhaps I'll vote myself a multimillion dollar bonus at the end of the quarter.
  6. OMW to the store to buy a 1/2" end mill. Any hints on how to center it on the punch mark? The outside edge of the cutting surface will kind of hit "out there somewhere" it seems
  7. Good solution, except these are 1x1.5 flat bar with 1/2" CR round passing through.
  8. Thanks for the ideas, since there are only a few pieces (four for one stairway and four for another, six holes on each) I was looking for a quick and dirty workaround- playing with test pieces showed me one thing for sure: can't have enough oil on it! Also, thanks for the end mill idea- having never used a milling machine or lathe, I'm a bit slow understanding, but that's a great idea.
  9. Still haven't given up on that idea, but at 34 deg, it's hard to drill a deep enough dip.
  10. Can anyone out there walk me through the basics of drilling steel on an angle? Making infill panels for a stairway- it seems no end of obstacles to drilling accurate, consistent holes on about a 34 deg. angle- wish I could just punch em! My drill press is set for the angle, but getting it to actually drill in the right place without wandering to the side is baffling... Thanks for any suggestions! Andy G.
  11. Great stuff, thanks for all the feedback. It's a bit scary to think of experimenting on a project of this size, but hey, you can always paint, but you only get one chance to try a wax type finish.... We'll see what they have in mind.
  12. Thanks for all the replies. Yes, I plan to use WROUGHT iron, as in salvaged triple refined wrought iron for this project. The customer (a fine old church) appreciates handmade work and isn't averse to yearly maintenance- what I'm trying to get a picture of is this: With Wrought iron (pure iron if I can't get enough wrought) can I get away with something that doesn't flake off after a few years? Better to reapply a wax type finish than to have to scrape and repaint every five years- the rest of the structure only needs maintenance in terms of decades, not years, I don't want this to be the weak link.
  13. Hi, everyone, first time poster here. This is a question that gets kicked around from time to time, but I'm very curious... I'm looking at a railing job, on an outdoor porch here in the Pacific Northwest, where the customer would like the ultimate in old fashioned work- using wrought iron (real WROUGHT iron) and no electric welds. There's a lot of very old iron in Europe- how was it coated way back in the Renaissance? Did they have an oil/beeswax treatment that helped it stand up to weather? I realize that the usual answer is, blast/galv/prime/paint, but that's not what this very choosy customer is after- some yearly maintenance would be much preferable to hiding the texture of the iron. Thanks for any thoughts! Andy Gladish Guemes Island WA USA
×
×
  • Create New...