Crunch

Great video Brian, thank you for posting.

I'm a rank newbie, and your videos are hugely helpful to me.

That type of a hammer is that, that you use? I guess it has two different faces, one more for fullering and one more flat?

Edit: Never mind, Brian no need to explain again. I just found your video "Why Use a Rounding Hammer" on youtube.

OZ never did give nothing to the TIN MAN that he didn't allready have

LOL! Good one!

I predict this will not end well for BigRed.

Thank you Bigfootnampa, that's good to know about the "greasy stick" temperature gauging trick.

Rich, I had not looked at the stickies yet, but thanks for pointing me to it. I read the first linked thread; there's some good info there and I'll read the other two threads, too.

Hello, all,

The coil spring in the 300A work clamp for my welder recently broke, and since I have some 5/32" spring steel that's almost the exact same diameter as the wire used in the original spring, I figured I'd give it a try. (I just knew the springs from that old bed boxspring would be useful for SOMEthing!)

Anyway, I'm a complete novice at blacksmithing, and just wanted to check with you folks for any tips on making this spring.

In general, I plan to:

1. Heat the spring material to cherry red to shape it
2. Quench in oil
3. Temper to about 700°F

The main questions I have are:

1. Should I heat the spring material to critical temperature and allow it to slow-cool first to normalize it, before reheating it to shape it? Or will heating it to cherry red to shape it normalize it "along the way"? In other words, is normalizing a necessary preliminary step, or will the spring steel be normalized in the process, simply by virtue of being heated above critical temperature?

2. I'm not sure how to temper at this high temperature (assuming it's the correct temperature). The oven doesn't get this hot. Can I put the quenched spring back into the coal forge and keep checking it for color (or with an infrared thermometer) to pull it out when it reaches 700°F ? Also, does the spring need to soak at 700°F for a while, or will it be OK if it just reaches 700° and then comes out of the fire to air cool?

Are there any other big things that I need to do, or think about, that I don't even have the sense yet to ask about?

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Will A36 harden? I thought A36 was mild steel that wouldn't harden...

Thanks for the explanation, Tom.

Tom,

Thanks for posting your video. Making hinges interests me, as I would like to learn to make hardware for furniture.

I'm a complete novice so forgive me if this is a super basic question, but can you tell me what you're doing right around 7:00 to 7:15 into the video? It looks like you're trying to thin the metal right at the edges of the hinge...is that correct?

Thanks,

Jeff

David,

Thanks again, and thanks for the offer...I have friends in York, PA and maybe I can time a visit to coincide with one of your BGCM events. I should probably get involved with the Tidewater VA Blacksmiths Guild, but that is kind of out of the way from where we live, too.

It is called working on the edge of the anvil. Here is someone who posted an explanation.
- see figure 6 in http://www.oldworlda...proper_use.html
- and paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 in http://www.oldworlda...er_control.html
----
and on page 12, illustration 2b versus illustration 6b in the pdf http://www.abana.org...ging/CHF_24.pdf what happens with drawings.

Thank you, David. That makes sense. Sorry for the dummy question; I appreciate you taking the trouble to post those links.

Does anyone find it painful to watch him spending so much energy hitting the center of the anvil?

David and/or Other Forum Participants:

What do you mean by this? I am a rank newbie at blacksmithing, so I don't know. Would it be preferable to work the metal closer to the horn or heel of the anvil, and if so, why?

To this complete novice, it seems like the center of the anvil would have the most mass and thus the most inertia / resistance, allowing the smith to move more metal faster with less effort there -- but again, I'm completely new at this.

Thank you.

I have a 200 CFM electric blower (squirrel cage fan) that I use with a Harbor Freight foot-operated on-off switch. That part seems to work well.

I found that my blower blows too hard, at least with a new fire (it'll blow coal out of the firepot) so I rigged a pivoting "lollipop" of sheet metal that I can adjust to partially cover the air intake of the fan, to regulate the amount of air blowing.

Thanks, guys.

I guess I was overthinking it. I just thought that unless you doused the whole thing, it would continue to burn until all the fuel was gone, like the charcoal briquets in a barbeque,

Apparently that's not the case.

Hello, all,

I'm a new blacksmith, and since I'm probably wasting a lot of energy using poor form with the hammer, I get tired out quickly.

After 15 or 30 minutes of forging, I'm tired. As a result, I probably spend more time starting a fire than actually using the fire.

So my question is, what is the best way to put the coke/coal fire out, in order to save as much fuel as possible, and to be safest, etc.?

Should I dump a bunch of water on it?

Will it go out if I spread out the "duck's nest" center of the fire, so the coke is all spread apart and mixed in with the raw coal?

Should I try to smother it by covering it with something big and metallic that will deprive it of oxygen and chill the fire by soaking up/conducting away its heat?

If it matters, I'm using a tire/wheel forge that I made myself. And it's kind of tricky to separate the "firebox" part from the "pile of coal" that surrounds it, if that makes any sense (I'll try to take and post a pic later if that helps).

Thanks for any advice.

Neat video, thanks for posting.

I like the trick of twisting up the billet and then drawing it out again!

If there's enough vanadium in the alloy it could have become more hard, even brittle in the HAZ.

Interesting...I hadn't even considered the possibility of it getting harder, only softer. But I guess if the unheated parts of the wrench acted as a heat sink to "quench" the HAZ after welding, that makes sense.

Thanks again for the replies.

That's a helve a hammer! :blink:

Thanks, guys. I guess my question was more academic than practical...more "were they tempered originally" than "should I re-temper them after modifying them."

My Dad was a plant engineer in factories beginning in the late 1940s (before OSHA I guess) and he told me about a plant he worked in (paper mill?) that had overhead line shafts with quite a bit of water (or steam) power driving them. He said one of the grease monkeys was climbing around up there greasing the bearings on a line shaft once when something apparently went wrong. Dad said they didn't find the guy for some time, but when they did it weren't pretty...

Hello, all,

I was reading a post on a welding forum where a guy needed to make a custom wrench for a specific application, so he ended up welding a socket onto the end of a combination wrench.

In his photo, you could see the Heat Affected Zone near the weld (on the right-hand side of the wrench in the photo), which made me wonder whether the heat would have removed the hardening/tempering of the steel in the HAZ, and made the steel there weaker, by annealing or normalizing it. (I'm not sure you'll be able to view the photo without registering at the other forum, so I've attached it below in the belief that its creator would not mind me doing so.)

I have chrome-vanadium steel wrenches at home that feel like they've been heated/quenched/tempered, because they seem to have a "springy" quality, but it may be that they feel that way simply because of the characteristics of the alloy steel they were made from, rather than because they were hardened and tempered.

So: Does anyone know whether wrenches made of chrome-vanadium steel are typically hardened and tempered?
If so, does that mean welding on them would "weaken" the steel by normalizing/annealing it?
If so, should the welder have re-hardened and re-tempered the wrench after welding it?
If so, does anyone have any idea of what temperature would be appropriate to temper the steel after quenching it?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

P.S. For the purposes of this discussion, please ignore the issues of cracking caused by carbon migration in the weld puddle and finished weldment, preheat and postheat to avoid cracking, and the use of specialized fillers such as ER310 (25% Cr - 20% Ni) to improve ductility and reduce the chances of cracking in the weldment.

Oh - I get it now - since the tup is at the end of a lever arm, it swings through an arc rather than in a line, as it would in a LG or "normal" trip hammer.

Thank you for clarifying that for me, Dan.

the big disadvantage with a non guided helve would seem to be the limited range of material thickness where the dies are parallel.

Basher,

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here (sorry I'm a n00bie) ... do you mean that you can only work on material where the two sides are parallel? If you hammer on something irregularly shaped like, say, the head of a railroad spike to draw it down, is a non-guided helve hammer going to want to deflect, or glance off the side of the work?

OK, thank you for letting me know that.
It sure is a nice looking hammer, though! Real simple and solid looking.

Crunch
All of those questions are relevant
You are welcome to come visit and see it run if you would like.
I'm about 50 miles west of Richmond

YesteryearForge,
Thank you for the offer. I may take you up on it.
The kind of work I would probably be wanting to do would be making hardware (hasps and hinges for barns, as well as lighter stuff for furniture), woodworking tools (heavy chisels and slicks, carving tools, froes, maybe even some axe heads) and eventually I would like to try drawing out pattern welded steel for knives.
So 90% of the time I wouldn't be drawing out anything heavier than maybe 3/4" and occasionally I might want to draw down 1" or 1-1/4" material.
Would that hammer be appropriate for this kind of work?
Again, I'm really a rank amateur at all of this so I appreciate any and all advice you folks can offer.
Thank you again.

Thank you for your reply Yesteryearforge.

You say it's a heavy hitting hammer...if you had to compare it to a LG, as far as how fast it draws out metal, what size LG would you compare it to?

Sorry if these are really basic questions. I'm new to power hammers.

Thank you for your reply, Stewartthesmith.

Is that particular hammer called a "hawkeye"?

Also, in reading about helve hammers, I see many of them are "guided." Is there any advantage to having the hammer guided laterally, as opposed to this configuration? (I don't see how the hammer could move laterally, so long as the shaft bearings are OK.)

Thanks again.