Crunch

I just want to make short wood dowels, maybe 2" long max, for pegging woodworking joints. Anyone besides Stefflus have experience making short dowels with one of these for that? Thanks again, everyone.

Thanks for all the replies. Doc, if I got an old file and annealed/normalized it, I assume I could drill it OK? Then after grinding the teeth off and drilling the holes, I could just harden and temper it by heating, quenching in water and watching the colors to temper to the right hardness...? I've never really messed with hardening/tempering so this stuff is fairly new to me (I do have several good books on it, though). I had the impression air-hardening was no big deal, but Steve Sells, it sounds like you're saying it ain't easy...I just thought I could heat it to critical and let it cool in the air...

Hello, all, I need a dowel plate (for making dowels by driving wood through holes bored in the plate) and saw one made from A2 tool steel here for $55: http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/lie-nielsendowelplate.aspx but I don't want to pay $55 for it so I was thinking of trying to make one myself. I have a drill press and drill bits (but no milling machine or anything like that) and I see I can get a piece of A2 for maybe $15 on ebay, but my questions are: 1. How hard would this stuff be to drill holes in it up to 5/8" diameter if the steel was not yet hardened? Could a decent drill press handle it? 2. What about hardening after the holes are drilled? Could I do it myself with a propane or O/A torch and a Tempilstick? Air-hardening doesn't sound too hard to me, but then again I've never done it. 3. What if I buy the steel and try to drill it and find it's already hardened? Can I soften it by normalizing it, so that I can machine it? How? Would it need to soak? Does A2 steel degrade if it has been hardened once, then normalized (to machine) and then hardened a second time? Thanks in advance for any info.

I like the idea. Since E = MV² (energy = mass x velocity squared) if you double the velocity you get 4X (2²) as much energy, and if you triple the velocity, you get 9X (3²) as much energy where the rubber meets the road. Not only does the whippy handle serve as a shock absorber (like a spring); it also accelerates the axe head at the end of the swing, resulting in more energy going into the work. The only major downsides I see are that you lose some steering/control, especially in the case of glancing blows, which could be dangerous; and the fact that the handle is likely to fatigue and eventually fail a lot faster than a stouter, stiffer handle.

Nice score. I remember as a kid (1960s and 1970s) finding wrought iron spikes etc. (fasteners for old ships?) when digging for sandworms and bloodworms in the sand on the beach in Atlantic Highlands, NJ (just south of NYC). I imagine if you looked in the right place, you could still find it up there. I remember you could bend it like soft wire and it would fracture like wood or laminated fiberglass, exposing fresh metal. I wonder whether wrought iron exposed to saltwater for years like that would be usable for blacksmithing...anybody know?

That looks terrific!

Thanks guys. Makes sense. I guess I was having a duh moment.

I bought an old steel cowbell in a junk shop that I planned to rig with a stainless steel cable and hinge and spring arrangement to use as a doorbell, where you would yank on the cable outside and the bell would pivot on a shaft to make it ring inside. I TIG welded a piece of mild steel to the part of the bell where the cow's collar would go through, and immediately afterward, I noticed that the bell didn't ring with a sustained sound like it did before. So I was wondering: Are bells typically made of high- or medium-carbon steel and hardened to make them ring? And if so, does anyone know how I can get it to ring nicely again? Heat to orange and quench? Am I likely to harden it TOO much? Thanks for any advice.

Well, darn. Now I get it. I wonder whether crushing it in a vise over the Acme rod would give the same results...sounds like it would. That's a disappointment. Maybe, instead of a "doughnut" of hot steel, I'll try using a "C" shaped piece of hot steel that's not quite long enough to wind all the way around the threaded rod...maybe by beating on it, that'll lengthen it enough to span the full circumference, and then I could weld the two ends together. There's gotta be a way... Thank you all, again, for your replies.

Thank you for your reply... Maybe I wasn't clear. The Acme screw is actually more like a machine screw than a wood screw in the sense that there is no tapered end on it. It is square on the end. There is no point or cone at the tip like there is on the tip of the anvil's horn. So I wouldn't be beating the "doughnut of steel" to make it larger...I would be beating it down to make it smaller, after it already had the Acme-threaded rod going all the way through it. In other words, I would in effect be swaging (with a hammer rather than a press) the "doughnut of hot steel" down around the threaded part, and using Acme-threaded rod as a "mandrel," so to speak. My theory is that the plasticity of the hot steel, when it is beaten over the mandrel of the Acme-threaded rod, would allow threads to be "molded" in the interior of the "doughnut of hot steel." I believe forged Weatherby rifle barrels are made this way: A hollow tube of hot chrome-moly steel is swaged, or forged, around a mandrel rod which has a "positive" of the rifling in it. Do you still think it won't work?

I bet that smarts when it (invariably, inevitably) topples over and smashes your big toe into hamburger meat!

I need to make a nut to fit an odd sized Acme screw (if it wasn't an odd size, I'd simply buy a nut). What I was planning to do was: 1. chill the Acme-threaded screw 2. coat its threads with nickel-based high-temperature anti-seize 3. heat a doughnut-shaped piece of steel to forging temperature 4. slide it onto the Acme screw, and 5. beat on it on my anvil to shape threads on the interior of the donut-shaped piece of steel. (The nut doesn't really need to be square or hex-shaped for my purposes, and the nut will not need to be strong enough to take much of a load when in service; it will simply be used for positioning.) Does this sound like a decent plan of attack? Anything I should watch out for? Thanks in advance for any tips.

I wouldn't have the guts to swing a hammer at it...and that's a good thing!

Is it still carnauba? At one point my Dad was researching waxes for use in a factory's material handling equipment, and he said that carnauba was the hardest wax out there...

What happens if you have an MRI with microscopic pieces of metal in your eyes?

I forget which of my guns it is, but at least one of them says it's made from chrome molybdenum steel.

While I agree on the DC side, I think you're going to have a long row to hoe if you want to TIG weld on AC without a HF unit.

Holy cow...a POUND of black powder! I always wanted to see how deep they sunk when they landed and that video didn't disappoint.

Thank you for the replies. What's neat about them (and about this site and about blacksmithing in general) is that in a way, they constitute a history lesson. It seems the more you learn about blacksmithing, the more you learn about steel, and the more you learn about history, and so on. It's like they all go hand-in-hand. Anyway, not to ramble. Thanks again.

Somewhere I seem to recall reading that anvil horns are not hardened. Is that true? If so, do we need to be extra careful about working metal on the horn? I sometimes use the horn for fulllering/drawing out metal, and as a total amateur 'smith, my hammer swings are not the most accurate in the world. If the horn of my SWEET Peter Wright anvil is not hardened, should I restrict my fullering to the face of the anvil, where it's hardened tool steel, in case I accidentally "miss" with the hammer ... at least until I'm a little more experienced? This anvil is in really nice shape, and I'd hate to mess it up. Thanks for any advice.

I bet that like me, you just LOVE it when pet owners "rehome" their pets. Does it somehow make people feel better about themselves to say "I rehomed my dog" rather than "I gave away my dog"?

LOL twice! Thank you David for the great "how to" ... that doesn't sound bad at all. Hammers are en route on the Brown Truck...will report back. Thanks again, everyone. This site is great.

Thank you all for all the good replies. Maybe you're right...maybe I'm overcomplicating things. Just seems like I always ending up grinding/sanding too much off. ("You can cut more OFF, but you can't cut morON!" ... "I cut it three times and it's STILL too short!") Macbruce, thanks for the tip on China Freight case hardened hammers. Does anyone know whether it will be obvious to me when grinding if I cut through the case hardened layer and get into the mild steel (if it is in fact case hardened)? Thomas, yes, I briefly considered forging the hammer to shape and heat treating, etc., but my since my last (and only) foray into that ended up with half the hammer DISAPPEARING into thin air ("Maybe I stirred it TOO much..."), I thought better of it. Now I know why the work should be in the neutral or reducing part of the fire, not the oxidizing part...expensive lesson. Again, thank you for all the replies. I'm learning a lot from you folks, and enjoying this new hobby.

I've been intrigued by Brian Brazeal's use of his rounding hammers, and although I'm a rank amateur metal banger, I've got it in my head that I want to make a hammer with a similar "squashed ball" die on one side of the hammer head and a fairly square, flat surface on the other side. Since I'm such a noobie, I was planning to get a 3# drilling hammer or engineer's hammer from Harbor Freight, and then grind it myself. As a woodworker, I'm a big fan of jigs for doing tricky machining jobs right the first time, so I'm trying to figure out a simple jig to make grinding the "squashed ball" side of the hammer easier. I was thinking of temporarily epoxying an inch or two of dowel to one end of the hammer, and then pivoting the hammer head on the dowel to approximate the (4¾") "basketball" radius for the crown of the hammer, and then removing the dowel to get smaller radii as I grind out toward the edges of the hammer head... Another idea was to tack-weld a piece of ½" drill rod to the center of the hammer head and (with the handle removed), chuck it in a drill press and run the drill press while grinding the radii with an angle grinder. Wish I had a lathe... Has anyone here already "invented this wheel" and/or have any tips on how to do it? I'm hoping to not ruin too many hammers in the process... Thanks in advance for any suggestions. And Brian, if you read this, thank you for the inspiration, instruction and great videos. They're real helpful. Jeff

Seems to this rank newbie that being comfortable with the anvil pointing in either direction is akin to being comfortable with the TIG torch in either hand: A necessary skill. Am I wrong? Great video in the OP, by the way.