yahoo2

I buy earplugs in dispenser boxes of 1000 and hand them out at any opportunity. Offcuts of flat and round bar to play with and make some punches, drifts and chisels are very handy for a beginner.

You are right about some of the screw broken out. that is one of the problems with this design, if the thread is fully wound out and then the vice is pushed closed so the spring is fully compressed it comes up tight in only half a turn. That's just not enough to handle the pressure. the shaft will need to be shined up with emery cloth and any high spots removed with a file. rusted shafts have a habit of starting to move then they grab and come up tight on all the crud. the ideal way to move the shaft is to wire the ratchet dog open and jig the vice up square and solid in a hydraulic press, get some pressure on the shaft then use an oxy torch to warm and thermally expand the hole (while watching the pressure gauge). the shaft could come out from the front or the back depending on how it is made. If there is a removable pin or circlip through the shaft down in the hole that the handle boss came out of then the shaft can be pushed out the back. Unfortunately the vice is closed so the shaft needs to be moved a few inches forward to get at the pin (if there is one in there) if it is a solid one piece unit then the shaft has to come right out the front, if the back end of the shaft has ever been smacked hard with a hammer and damaged that is going to make things difficult (more file-ing).

I like spiders. This is a giant Golden orb close to my front door. Not quite fully grown but the leg span is still bigger than a baseball cap. Not poisonous, prefers to suffocate sleeping victims with a large fluffy pillow.

metal fatigue and cracking from vibration and flexing plays a huge part in the work I do. I have to up-set or draw down a long way to get the uniform strength I need. The average flower stem scroll work weld would just fall to pieces under load. Even simple things like bolt heads need to be bulletproof or a machine could be damaged beyond economic repair if they fail catastrophically.

Lemon Row _ tractors that never made it Hanomag a cantankerous beast with a reputation of the ability to break down while parked in the shed. The SIFT, never marketed well by the distributors, rarely seen or heard of today. hope you enjoy the small glimpse into the hundreds of machines that were sold today. cheers Yahoo

the young and the old M series Nuffield from the 1950's and the Hart-Parr "Australian Special" from 1920 The Action is happening! Last bids on the pair of Molines.... and a Chamberlain "SUPER DIESEL" goes to a new home.

caterpillar ten, almost small enough to smuggle out under your jacket! very tidy international TD9 McCormick-Deering 35 one of the few completed restorations offered for sale

David Brown 30C and an Oliver crawler these machines are very popular with the second generation modern era collectors, starting to get a cult following. field marshall VF fowler. these two are old school land clearing machines single cylinder oil burners, they are primed and started with a special shotgun cartridge. Bruce is checking the track bushes, we declared this one the "buy of the day" almost no wear and tear and apart from the broken crossmember and a seized RH turning clutch close to paddock ready as a machine this age could be. A snip at $4500

the mighty Minneapolis Moline. A machine ahead of its time, the working implement attached directly under the machine like a modern ride on mower articulated steering, front wheel drive and cement counterweight in one wheel to balance the load of the offset engine and drivetrain. OH... and the original paint work....atomic orange!

a little pocket rocket.....the boys carefully inspecting the assessment sheet.....a rare and unusual cross engine 1920's case tractor

I would like to see photos of some of the things other smiths see when they travel to events. In the spirit of leading from the front, this is today's trip. A friend has dispersed his extensive tractor collection and had a clearing sale today for all the parts, un-started projects and odd and ends that were not purchased by the collector market. These are the machines I custom built replacement parts for. radiators and wrecks ratted for parts, missing pistons, bullet holes, fire damaged, vandalised or just buried in the sand for 50 years bucket loaders and an old salvaged cletrac K international macormack deering TD9 and scrapped series 2 field marshall

from left 4LB club hammer, shaped 4LB sledge (not shortened) ballpien hammer, homemade blacksmith (rounding hammer) style These are all hammers I have purchased from sales and had in a box on the shelf. the club hammer is a nice shape, it would clean up well with a flap disc, the handle is far to long and skinny for smithing, sp tools do a 2,3 and 4 pound version with a good hickory handle, every now and again they are discounted and on sale for $24 - $29. One of these and a 3LB crosspien hammer would do most things. the sledge has been worked over with a flap disc just to try a few curves and shapes for a test run for a rounding hammer shape, my opinion is it has not got enough diameter to use the edge easily, the curve changes too quickly. It is not hard to see why a ballpien hammer leaves marks, that is a seriously flat face and square edge. If you need a hammer as a flatter, then a square club hammer would work. Lastly the homemade one, it is a bit lightweight and both faces are shaped the same, I will probably tack weld some steel plates over the cheeks of the hammer, put a new handle on it and give it a test run with the extra weight on it. PS seeing as you are looking for a hammer, it may be worth keeping the eyes peeled for a few other things if you see them marked down. the gloves are heavy duty, double stitched very comfy and $7 from a welding supplies shop (I think) 5 inch grinder with a flap disc, thin (1mm) abrasive cutting disc and a 45o bevel twisted knot wire wheel. there is a topic somewhere on the correct lenses to stop your eyeballs getting sunburned from excessive forge radiation. the phone camera seems to be an essential item these days, even just for troubleshooting problems with technique on the 4m. Pic = 1000 words and all that! cheers Yahoo

I have only ever used burners like this on a pottery kiln with a secondary air gap around the burner tube tip to induct more air and a top opening on the kiln chamber itself that could adjust the flow through the chamber by tweaking the gaps in the bricks. I always assumed (obviously wrongly) it would run very rich without it. The kiln and burner are long gone, I dont recall ever changing the nozzle tip or what size it was, I dusted off some old notes and there is no mention of it, so it probably was a case of "it works!, dont mess with it". Nice write up, thanks

I have been thinking about this for a few days. What hammers would be a good starting point for trimming into hammers suitable for blacksmithing? I would cross off the list all the one piece steel handle and head versions for a start. The largest ball pein hammer is 1.15 Kg with a 410 mm handle, a good quality one would do at a pinch. (handy to have one in the shop anyway) A 1.35 kg club hammer could be cleaned up and shaped with a grinder without removing much material and would be right in the zone for weight for a nice light hammer. However almost all of the ones I see have a 250 - 300 mm handle, in my opinion that is a little short, so there is a few extra bucks and a bit of mucking around to re-handle it. The next step up weight wise is the 4 pounder, club or sledge hammer. Quite a few of these come with the 400 mm+ handle, but at 1.8 kg maybe a little heavy. I am thinking some material could be sliced from the faces with a bandsaw and then dressed to shape to leave around 1.3 - 1.6 Kg. This would also shorten the head making it a lot easier to strike an off blow without the hammer twisting in the hand. It could have one end shaped as a flattening face and the other curved as a rounding hammer. I dont think there is any benefit in finding an alloy steel hammer as it will mark the anvil with a wayward hit, not something you want when you are just getting your eye in, something that is a high carbon steel that has been hardened and tempered ( called normalized in some of the catalogs) should be fine. $18 - $35 at the shops or $1 - $10 at a garage sale.

hi nicole, sorry for the delay, my power has been off and on for the last few weeks from lightning strikes, taking my home network down with it. What I was going to say originally is that it is worth looking at this from the perspective of a bearing manufacturer and not a blacksmith. Those guys dont care what is technically possible in regards to choice of metals they are all about practical and cost effective solutions. Most of them tool up to use a very small selection of metals. By far the largest majority of taper bearings are 52100, they run in oil or grease behind seals (no exposure to water, acids or grit means the wear very slowly, keeping there tolerances) once the bearing becomes loose the shaft it holds starts to move about, this wears the seals and lets in contamination and the bearing rapidly fails. 52100 has about 1.5% chromium this contributes to the hard wearing abilities but it is not nearly enough to stop surface rust forming given the chance. Of the four choices that rust I listed in my previous post only chrome steel (52100 or similar) is a candidate for typical taper bearing rollers. When a manufacturer makes a taper bearing for a environment where the seals are exposed to high levels of acids or bases, steam, high pressure water, organic compounds etc they accept that there will be a higher wear rate and quicker seal failure so to counter this, some of the load rating of the bearing is sacrificed to provide about 15% chromium rust resistant surface, most commonly 440C stainless. Is it possible to find a taper bearing made from something else? yes but it is very rare. Is it likely that this large roller is an exotic material? No In my mind this narrows your testing to a choice of three, 52100 or similar, 440C or similar , something else. If the blackening is just a light sooty film that can be rubbed off with the finger and there is a clean bright surface underneath it is not rust. My guess is that it is rust, but it has been slowed by some anti rust oil additive that is still clinging to the roller, the stuff I use is almost impossible to remove completely. Just as with the spark test, it helps to directly compare with a known sample. there are ball bearing manufacturers that produce balls for other uses that are made from all sorts of materials and grades of steel but it is the same thing, if you have some Idea what it was used for, that narrows the options to just a few choices.

Looks like a locking pin or a hinge pin, the rust is from years of wet dirt trapped around the ends. something like a fixed drawbar will have a pin like this driven up from underneath and fixed in place with a plate. There is not much wear on the lubricated surface so the joint hasn't moved much in its lifetime.. Is the thread supposed to be there or is it a stud that has rusted in and the head has sheared off trying to undo it? If it was out of the arms on a loader bucket or a rear mounted tine ripper there would be a lot of metal missing around that shiny central band where the arm rotates.

So if I were to pick and chose the bits that I like from all the previous posts, I come up with this 1. drawing down square gives me a easy and predictable reference (gauge) for the amount of taper I am achieving as I work. 2. I am moving the mass mostly in only one direction perpendicular to the hammer (as opposed to spreading it like a pancake) avoiding the shearing effect. 3. the square shape lets me deform the whole profile of the metal not just smear the top and leave the centre relatively untouched. 4. the total number of hammer blows is reduced as the fuller then flatten technique of drawing keeps the square shape without (too many) extra correction hammer blows. Is that a fair summary or have I missed the mark completely?

very poor wording in my post, I will have another attempt at it tomorrow morning and fill the gaps I missed.

18 inches dia is a fairly mild bend for 1 1/2" , I dont think it will challenge you much. Leave a few inches on the end with the difficult curl and cut it off after so you have some meat for a bending jig to purchase on. I make a thing called a stripper plate that fits inside a rotary combine harvester that is a very similar shape to the centre section you are proposing. I have made them freehand at just over a black heat in a few minutes in an emergency. Do you need the profile to be perfectly rectangular along the whole length? If that is the case it will need to be preformed with a slight wedge at one end running into a slight concave shape, that could be tricky.

there is a drafting tool called a french curve. that is the forged shape you are looking for when the piece is lying flat. from there on the twist and roll is up to you, I would stick a piece of pipe the size of the finished ring in the vice then heat the remaining straight-ish 3/4 of the metal, cool the just the tip of the end that is going to be rolled (so it doesnt crush) and clamp it to the pipe hard, you should be able to hold the other end and twist then slowly roll over the pipe as it cools almost in one motion. I have trouble describing the shape its sort of like the outside compounding curl of this tool but maybe a fraction shallower.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/4344/DIY-Oxy-Acetylene-Profile-Cutter the profile bolts onto the arm that sticks out from the pole, bout the only thing that you need to spend on is high flow hoses and fittings and decent cutting nozzles. I love em!

No boy scout badges for me, handful of coarse wood-chips and the biggest propane torch I own.

Ok I'm wrong, I looked it up the standard non lab rust test is, wash in detergent then clean with alcohol, boil a cup of water then stir in as much salt as the water will hold, stand the bearing in the water for 24 hours. if its brown with rust its soft steel, chrome steel, high speed steel or hard carbon steel. that narrows it down to 52100. why dont you do as I-dwarf suggests and spark test it, if you have some other bearing material around you can do direct comparison, you wont get a long tail with something that hard but you should see a red fringe with 440 and not a lot of side sparks, a lot like grinding high speed steel. chrome steel I think of as a fluffy orange spark.

clean it in dish-washing detergent or vinegar and leave it outside in the dirt for a week or two if it rusts its 52100, if it doesn't its high chrome. it looks like a standard well used roller. most bearings are through hardened unless there is a reason not to. case hardened bearings will handle heavy shock loading without cracking right through.

Congrats! Now that it has a home, we probably need some juicy titbits to finish the story. Whats the lettering on the front? Is it a william foster? How wide is the plate? Stamped weight vs actual weight? Are you thinking about a stand? Is there a crack on the tail or is it a trick of the light in the photo? why are my dogs happy this morning? Is there really a man on the moon? ;) Is denim retro or strictly workwear? :blink: should I drink less coffee? :P