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will52100

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Posts posted by will52100

  1. Pretty much.  The only other option would be to counter drill the pritchel hole from underneath, but good luck finding a reasonably priced cobalt 1 1/4" or so bit to drill the 60-61 rockwell anvil.  The 5" thickness is great support for punching, but makes it tough to fit a hold down.  My friend also has a London pattern and while the hold fast I'd made before wouldn't fit in the pritchel hole, they would lock up good in the hardy hole which was about 2 3/4" thick.

  2. About 3/32" slack or so.  The end of the hold fast is about 1/4" shorter than the end of the pritchel hole, so I've got 5" to play with, it'll hold down an inch or so, any thicker and I'd need to make a longer hold fast.  mainly what I need it for is 1/4" thick and 3/8" thick flat bar.   Now that I see what's going on, if I need to I can make another easily enough.

  3. I tend to agree with you, when I was first starting out I used salvaged materials for knives.  I learned a lot, but wasted a lot of time with poor steels and not knowing what to expect.  I always advocate learning on a known steel, then branching out to experiment.

    Anyway, I managed to get over to my friend's house and check his hold fast out.  Basically the end of the holder doesn't go all the way through the pritchel hole and has a flat with a bit of a kick to it.  I'd brought mine over, we cut the end off and put a little flat on it and a bit of a kick and it held great.  Got home and had to forge a bit of a nicer one than what I had.  Anyway, this is what I came up with, could have used a bit more planishing on the head, but I was burned out from the heat today.  It's forged from A36 1" square bar as that's all I had on hand big enough, I did use super quench on the end of the nub to maybe make it last longer, if it wears and starts slipping it's easy enough to fix though.

    Thanks for all the help

    IMG_0849.jpg

    IMG_0850.jpg

  4. I hit reply, but don't know what happened to my post.  Anyway, thanks for the help, it's appreciated. 

    A buddy of mine has basically the same anvil as me and he made a holdfast that works well, I'll head over in a couple days and see what the difference is and measure it.

    I've got the Backyard Blacksmith book and had forgotten a hold fast was in it.  I don't see anything in the book that I'm doing differently.  I did read in another book that a square shank works better in a round hole, might have to go that rout.

    Or maybe go the gravity or drill press vise grip method, we'll see.

    I didn't have time to mess with it today, but did clean the grease out of the hole thinking it was maybe lubing the shank up and preventing it from locking.  Long story short, I was woking overseas a month on and month off and my smithy is under an open air drop shed and condensation was rusting the face so I greased it up before leaving.  When I get back I'd wipe it off with a  diesel soaked rag.  Cleaned it out with diesel, then acetone, still not locking.

  5. So you've only got about 1/16" clearance, but with a 2" heel it lets you get more of an angle.  I'll try the 1/2" out and see how that goes, if not I'm afraid with the 5" heel I've got I'm going to probably have to go to the 3/8" spring stock.  Well, I wasn't using it for anything else, maybe it'll work for this.


    Thanks

  6. It's a 7/8" hole, 5" deep.  The hold fast I made was from 3/4" cold rolled, thinned out and curled on the holding end.  The second one I did was a bit cleaner but held no better, I then took it down in size, nearly to 5/8", still not holding.  Do I need to take it down to 1/2" or less?  I've got some 3/8" coil spring I haven't figured a use for yet that I've straightened out.  I'm thinking I may try it next, the 5" deep hole makes for less of an angle than a thinner heel, so if I'm not overthinking it too much I'll need to go a bit thinner than an anvil with a thinner heel section.

  7. I thinned it down some and still no joy.  Maybe I need to go thinner?  The pritchel is 5" thick on that part of the anvil.  Also, the pritchel hole is chamfered at the anvil face, no sharp corner to dig in.  I played with it some then got feed up and continued other projects chasing the bar across the anvil face.

  8. Thanks, I was thinking maybe it needed to be tighter, I'll try making it a bit smaller and see.  All the ones I've seen or used were on London pattern anvils with a fairly thin heel at the pritchel hole, the Refflinghaus is thick there and it's a drilled hole, so not a lot of offset available to lock.

  9. Tried making another hold fast today, and like the first one I did I can't get it to hold for anything.  Basic design made to knock and lock in the pritchel hole.  It's a Refflingfhaus anvil, so it's pretty thick under the hole.  Used cold rolled that would fit with very little wiggle.  So what's going on here?  I don't use one much, as yet, but was working on a set of hawks and it would have been nice not to have to chase the flat bar around while fullering the ends.

  10. I'm starting to learn you don't need that sophisticated a heat treat on punches and chisels and such.  I'm coming at it from from the cutlery side of things where I am chasing high performance and have to stop myself from getting overly complicated when doing a drift or such.  52100, 5160, CPM steels, multiple quenches and thermal cycles, multiple 90 deg. bend test, rope cutting and such don't really apply that much to 1045 and 4140 and making a top tool or center punch and I'm starting to get that through my head.  First hammer I made I was looking for a time/temperature chart to figure the expected rockwell at different tempering temps and couldn't find one, was having trouble wrapping my head around "just make it straw colored", but am getting there.

  11. No worries, it's hard to tell tone and pitch when reading typed responses, and I've been guilty of coming off as sharp when that's not my intention.

    I've got a Paragon oven and love it, but I primarily got it to do stainless.  But I've found a lot of uses for it when heat treating carbon steels as well, even 1084 gets a set of reducing normalizing heats for grain refinement.  I do normally use a slightly modified toaster oven for tempering, it's easier and cheaper to run than my oven.

    I'm coming at it from the opposite end, took a little getting used to mild steel and wrought iron after forging 52100, that stuff moves about as well as cold mild steel.  Luckily I had a little 4140 to play with, used it for some hammer dies I made, other wise I might not have tried it.  I'm slowly advancing, but I have to rethink a lot of ways of doing things after forging some of knife steels out there.  Took a while to understand I didn't need 3, two hour tempers on a 1045 hammer head.

  12. No problem, and I think were on the same page there abouts.

    The reason I used L6 at the time was it was what I had on hand.  I did anneal it in the oven to eliminate the air harding tendency after normalizing.  In effect that made it too soft, and if I was to do it again I'd do a quench from critical then a high temper to give it just a little hardness instead of being dead soft.  Likely somewhere around 800-1000 deg. to get a rockwell of about 45 or so.  Still not the ideal material for the application, but it would likely work with better heat treating.  The main issue is the two types of L6, one likes to air harden more so than the other, and that's what I had.

    I don't have a lot of hands on experience with the H or S steels, but the recipe for H13 calls for bringing up to 1600, equalizing, I assume the bigger the piece the longer soak, then quench.  No real info on soak times like I run into with stainless.  S7 on the other hand calls for a higher heat, 1700-1750 deg. F. and a 20 minute soak.  The proper annealing cycles for H13 and S7 are a nightmare, 20-50 deg an hour cooling from critical, not something I want to screw with even with an oven.

    I've done air harding steels by hand and eye, but it's a lot of trouble and experimentation to figure out what works to get close enough.  I really wouldn't want to be with out my oven for any of the L, H, or S steels now.  The biggest issue is grain size, smaller grain generally means stronger, but it's  tough to get small grain outside an oven with these steels.  You can get them "good enough" though.

    I'm starting to really like the 4140, just took a bit of playing with it to understand how to work it.  I've been making my hammers and top tools from 1045, now I'm thinking I will be making them from 4140.

  13. Well, seems multiple thermal cycles while forging did the trick.  I did a couple normalizations after forging the flat bar into square stock, then after initially punching the eye, and then after drifting, and again after forming the point.  Every thing worked well, no cracks.  I did quench it then bring it back to a sub critical heat and slow cooled.  Made for a very durable punch and drift and works well so far.

  14. No, because a red heat is below the critical temp.  And even if you get the very tip to critical, your main body behind the tip is well below and will act to slow cool the tip enough to get it below the nose.  Mainly though, a red heat is sufficiently below the critical temp to prevent hardening.  Also, it's what I had available at the time.  L6 is not designated as an air harding steel, but it sure does a good impression.  I've left forgings sit and air cool after normalizing and it read 61 rockwell.

    S7, for example, is also air harding, as is H13, both steels used in hot forming.  5160 will also air harden to a certain point, nowhere near as completely as higher chrome steels like L6 or D2 though.

    When you forge something, you heat treat it, whether you are just thermally cycling as you heat it up to beat on it, or if you full quench and temper it.  Seems I need to do a few more normalizing cycles on 4140 during forming.

  15. It was virgin bar stock, the other I forged from it did not crack.

    The reason I heat treated the L6 is that it's hard as glass when air cooled after heating to critical.  It is an air harding steel.  I did not do a full heat treat, just annealed it.  That in turn made the eye walls too soft for there thickness.  It probably would have worked OK if I'd used a spring heat treat on the whole thing.  Or had thicker stock to work with.  The tip has handled heat very well.

  16. Thanks, I figure your right about grain growth.  I haven't forged much 4140 and I did not normalize until after forging to shape, and that's when the crack appeared.  I'd already cleaned up the punch end on the grinder and there was no crack.  I'll try again with multiple normalizing steps in between forming.

    I didn't intend to heat treat the 4140, the reason I did the first was it was L6 and if allowed to air cool from critical it gets in the high 50's rockwell.  When heat treated right it's a super tough steel, but it's a pain to do since it really does need an oven for the best results.

  17. I've forged several, but keep having issues.  The first one I did from L6 and it worked great, except the eye folded over and collapsed when using the 5 pound hammer.  I had heat treated this in the oven as it's got enough chromium in it to air harden.  Also my stock was a little on the small side so I think I'd have been fine if I'd had thicker eye sides.  I did cut the punch part off and weld it too a handle and turned it into a power hammer punch and it seems to be holding up well.

    The next one was from 4140 and it's got a nice crack right through the middle.  It didn't show up until I was normalizing it in the forge.  I forged two, and one survived, so we'll see how it works.  All I had was 2"x1/2" stock, so I upset and flattened it into a 1" square, then punched and drifted the handle hole.  I have forged 4140 before and it's the only steel I've worked that cracked on me.  This time I made sure I was hot and didn't forge it at lower temps.

    What alloys would you suggest for a top tool like this?  I've got 1045, 52100, and 4140.  I may have some 5160 John Deere load shaft left, not sure.

    I've got a couple of punches I made that work well, but I'd like to have one with a handle for better control and to keep my hand away from the heat.

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