ciladog

Neil, when it comes to woodworking you are not perching to the quire here. I have been a professional architectural woodworker for 40 years and I can assure you it is always the carpenter. Give me a sharp rock and I’ll cut you a square cut. :) While it may be true that we don’t always know what alloy we are working with, my point is that companies (reputable companies) would not be in business for very long if you order 4140 and they ship you something else.

So the carpenter marks out a piece of wood to cut and when the cut is not square he blames the saw or the piece of wood. Heat treating metal alloys and tool steels is a science and there is no mystery or secret to getting good results. It’s like following a recipe to bake a cake. But, if you don’t have the equipment like an oven, your cake will likely come out under cooked or burnt. It took years of development by steel and alloy manufacturers to develop what we have today and to think that someone on this forum knows better than they know how to heat treat these metals is laughable. It is one thing to make and heat treat a punch from a piece of spring (that has a small cross section) and completely another to heat treat a block of alloy (with a large cross section). You may get lucky and hit that decalescent point with a magnet or watching the color in a propane or coal forge. But you I know you can’t “soak” that piece of metal at a precise temperature over several hours. For that you need a controlled environment and a forge is not a controlled environment. The cake recipe for 4140 is a well-known standard with some slight variations. 1. Like with most alloys and tool steel there is a pre-heat stage to condition the metal for hardening. The metal is brought up to 1200 F slowly and held there for 10-15 minutes. 2. Then for 4140 the temperature is brought up to 1575 F, which is the austenizing temperature of 4140. When that temp is reached and the part is uniform in color, you start timing the soak time. 4140 unlike other alloys doesn’t need a long soak time. Some require hours of soak. But for 4140 it’s only 5 minutes per each inch of the smallest cross section. So in this case the smallest cross section is 2 inches so the soak time is 10 minutes at precisely 1575 F. 3. Quench in oil (not water) and enough oil to reduce the temperature to about 150 F quickly. That would be somewhere around 5 gallons of oil. If you don’t have enough oil you can’t get the core of the piece cooled and the residual heat will begin to anneal what you are trying to harden. Why oil and not water? Because water shocks the steel and cools it too quickly. There is a crystalline reaction going on and the carbon needs time to move through the structure as it cools. 4. When the piece reaches somewhere around 150 F (that is just about what you can hold in your hand) you should start the tempering cycle. Depending on how hard you want the piece (Rc 53-36) the temp is between 350-1000 F. Here again there is a soak time. 4140 needs to soak at your tempering temp for 2 hours per inch cross section. In this case for 4 hours. So how do you hold your die at say 350 F for 4 hours? Your toaster oven or your kitchen oven is not going to do it. It will vary a good 50-75 F which is as low as 225-400 F. Well that might be acceptable . So having said all this, you take a piece of 4140, heat in a forge to who knows what temp for who knows how long, cool it in water, temper for who knows how long at what temp and it cracks and you want to blame it on the supplier sent you the wrong material? How long would that supplier be in business if he sent the wrong material? You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a controlled heat treat environment. I bought a 14 amp pottery kiln at a flea market and hooked up a digital controller and power relay for under $100. But it is precise and accurate. It takes time; sometimes a lot of time to heat treat alloys. I just finished making and heat treating punches and dies for a Whitney 5 ton bench press out of A2 alloy. Started the heat treatment at 9:00 AM and finished at 3:30 PM. Pre-heat at 1200 F for 10 minutes. Then soak at 1750 F for 40 minutes. Air cool for an hour to 150 F. Then temper at 600 F for 2 hours. What a surprise it was when I followed the manufacturer’s specifications for heat treatment and the dies came out as they should. Maybe I should have tried quenching in cow manure. An after thought, you are a better man than me if you can tell the difference between alloys with a spark test!

I started using electrolysis to remove rust and scale from metal. It also removes paint, oil, and grease. I had read about it but always thought it wasn’t worth the trouble when the angle grinder with a wire wheel was always so handy. Well I finally tried it and it was so simple that even I could do it. :) And no more rust dust to breathe either. It is so effective that I’m thinking of getting rid of my sandblast cabinet. Here is a video link that explains it simply. This guy uses carbon anodes but iron or steel works just as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOx5URgjTiU&feature=plcp

Also called Anhydrous Sodium Borate(Na2B4O2). Five less oxygen atoms than anhydrus Borax. I can see how that may have an effect.

I surely don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade but there are no secret ingredients to these magic fluxes. EZ-weld does exactly what is being described by Brian and has been around for years. You can tack at dull red and go back for a good welding heat. My guess is that these ‘magic’ fluxes use fluorite or fluorspar which has traditionally been used as a flux to lower the melting point of steel and to aid in the removal of impurities. If the flux contains fluorite you had better have very good ventilation or be wearing a respirator because it can cause all sorts of health problems. I would be interested to know if this new flux does contain fluorite.

I believe what you have there is a rubber mold vulcanizing press.

A few weeks ago I bought a 5 ton Benhmaster punchpress for under $150. The press was in pretty good shape but there were parts missing. The part that holds the 1" punches was missing along with the die plate. I figured no big deal and for that price I couldn't pass it up. I took it all apart and did the electrolysis thing which I am hooked on now for cleaning up old machinery. It sure beats the old wire brush. Today I started making the parts that were missing. The first was the part that holds the punches. It started out as a piece of 1 ½ square that was forged to 1 X 1 ½ to make the blank. Then annealed and machined. The rest is history. Five hours of work on the forge, the mill, and the drill press.

I should have said some not most. H13 is what I make my dies from and it tempers at between 1100-1050. S7 has the same temper range. A2 and A6 in the 400 range. So I'm guessing that the welding pre-heat should be just below the last tempering temperature.

With most air hardened tool steels including S7, it is essential to pre-heat to about 1000 F before welding. Then let cool to room temp slowly.

That is not a vise. It is used to hold handsaws for sharpening.

Dave, the problem with using concrete pads in only parts of the shop is that things change over time. As your collection of equipment grows and you become more productive you will undoubtedly want to rearrange where things are located. Consider putting down concrete in the entire shop except around your forging area where you do most of your standing all day. Then fill that area with packed sand.

Mount it at a height where it is comfortable for you to crank all day long! Or you could mount it near the ceiling and stand on a ladder or maybe near the floor and crank on your knees. :D

Frosty, I have to disagree with you on setting the pressures. That 2X the acetylene pressure only holds up for certain conditions in welding (depending on the tip size) and is way off for cutting. Acetylene pressure is rarely set above 5 psi for both welding and cutting but oxygen can be set from under 10 psi to over 20 psi for welding. The oxygen pressure is a function of the welding tip size. The oxygen pressure for cutting can be from 20 psi to over 50 psi again depending on the cutting tip size. The reason for much higher pressures is that a cutting torch has two parts to it, the pre-heat orifice and the cutting orifice. The larger the torch and thickness of the material you are cutting is what determines the oxygen pressure. The cutting orifice blows oxygen (not flame) on the hot metal and causes it to oxidize and burn away. Here is a simple chart for setting the pressures. http://www.nhada.com...s Pressures.pdf

It seems that some of you are talking about Federal requirements and some are talking about States requirements. They are very different. A Federal tax ID number also know Employer Identification Number (EIN) identifies entities that are not individuals such as corporations, LLC’s, estates, trusts, partnerships, etc. If you run a business as a sole-proprietorship and have employees and you deduct withholding tax, SS tax, Medicare, tax, etc. then you are required to have an EIN. If you do not have employees your social security number identifies you as an individual and you do not need an EIN. You file for an EIN online at the IRS website. However, some states will require you to get a Federal EIN before they will issue you a Certificate of Authority that will allow you to do business in your state or other states. Some states will issue the Certificate without you first obtaining the EIN. You can check your state with the link. http://www.irs.gov/b...d=99021,00.html Technically you need a Certificate of Authority from each state that you do business in. It requires you to report your gross receipts and collect sales tax and pay use tax to the state. It allows you to be sales tax exempt when you buy material if you collect sales tax on the finished product. Use tax is another whole can of worms. With so many states in financial trouble more and more of them are requiring everyone that sells in their states to collect sales tax and that means at festivals and flea markets. Lots of flea markets now require that Certificate before you can rent a table.

Check into Variable Frequency Drives with single phase input and three phase output. It will cost less than a new motor and you will have speed control.

There is always one consideration that is missing form these discussions about hammer ability to forge when they come up. That is die size. If you put narrow fullering dies on a 50# LG it may very well be able to forge down 3” stock. Put on some flat 2-1/4 X 4” dies and you would be lucky to forge down 2” stock. It’s the force of the hammer divided by the points of contact that will increase or decrease the efficiency of the hammer.

Frosty, Actually, ”inert” has more to do with the availability of electrons in the outer electron shell than it does with whether the element will react with other elements in “normal” conditions. All of the inert gasses can be made to react with other elements under “extraordinary” conditions. There are many ways that compounds containing nitrogen are made but the conditions to cause the reaction are far from ‘normal’ Ammonia (NH3) is made by combining hydrogen and nitrogen 3H2 + N2 à 2NH3. To produce the ammonia, the hydrogen is then catalytically reacted with nitrogen to form anhydrous liquid ammonia. This reaction takes place at from 60 to 170 atmospheres (870 to 2,611 PSI). Without the catalytic reaction there would be no ammonia produced. The production of nitrous oxide (NO2) is also done with catalyzed reactions at very high temperatures but it starts out as ammonium nitrate. You can produce NO2 by the oxidation of ammonia but it starts as ammonia in the presence of manganese dioxide-bismuth oxide catalyst. And Frosty, nitrogen is not involved in the photosynthesis chemical process. The process converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into a carbohydrate. Plants absorb nitrogen from the soil. Soil nitrogen exists in three general forms - organic nitrogen compounds, ammonium (NH4+) ions, and nitrate (NO3-) ions. Nitrogen as a gas is of no use to plants.

Frosty, whiile nitrogen is not a nobel gas it is considered an inert gas and is classified as Non-flammable. I guess you could get a reaction at very high temperature and pressure. http://www.osha.gov/...ecognition.html And as far as not using nitrogen in TIG you will have to bring that up with author Todd Bridigum who wrote the book "How to Weld" wherein he writes that nitrogen is mixed with argon and is used in specialized TIG-welding applications and can be used as a purge gas. Like I said, "I'm no expert at TIG but I can read."

I'm no expert in TIG but I think any inert gas can be used. It will have an effect on the welds though. Usually argon but I have read that sometimes small amounts of nitrogen are sometimes mixed with argon. Argon is also mixed with helium for deeper penetrating welds and faster speeds especially for aluminum.

Nitrogen is an inert gas and is used a lot in TIG welding of high quality components. For example, if you were to weld an aircraft frame together out of tubing, the tubes would be filled with nitrogen to prevent oxidation on the inside of the tubes.

You asked the question and I told you what I thought.

If I understand, you intend to run a 9.5 inch long piece of 7 inch round through two bushings to make a hammer? Well if the bushings are each 1-1/2 " long that takes up 3 inches if they are touching which only leaves you a 6-1/2 inch stroke. And that is only the first problem I see. Is this 7" round hot or cold rolled or is it machined?

The last time this subject came up I thought to myself why does it matter what you call yourself? Isn’t it about personal achievement, knowledge, ability, and experience? Rather than get into a psycho or social analysis of why it may be important for oneself to be called a blacksmith, I offer the social norm that what someone calls themselves is usually associated with their vocation and not a hobby or other disciplines they may dabble in. So how long would the list be of all the things you are? In the last week I was a: Blacksmith, I forged in the shop A plumber because I fixed a leaky shower A landscape architect because I cut my lawn and planted some shrubs A surgeon because I had to lance my figure to remove a splinter A short order cook because I cooked dinner A mechanic because I changed the oil in my truck and fixed a chainsaw A driver because I took my neighbor’s kid to school An IT professional because I fixed a computer problem A pet groomer because I combed out my cats Need I go on to make the point?? And that doesn’t include what my real vocation is.

The hole size you drill for any given spiral fluted extractor is specific. If the hole is too large then the action of using the extractor will expand the bolt and tighten it in the threads. Straight fluted extractors have less wedging effect than sprial screw extractors, so have less tendency to lock the screws into place.

Is that delivered?