forgemaster

Matt you still have'nt told us where you are, you could be just down the road from me, or you could be in the top end of WA somewhere. Australia just doesnt narrow it down enough, we can fit more than a couple of whole european countries into some of our states. There are a lot of us here, sure one can help you. Phil

All loaded up for the run to Sydney for Sunday, looking forward to it, Moonie is coming, Will Maguire is coming. Roll on Sunday.

Yes. when you do know what you are going worn dies are really good for straightening that taper, just go over to the side a bit and pull that side longer, however not all of our work is tapering, when you have to forge a parrallel shaft then those tapered dies are gonna work against you. The nice machined face doesnt last very long any way in our shop. What is a real pain though is when one of the guys decides to use the welder to fill in some of the divits, but does'nt tell anyone, but I can normally find where that weld is when I go the machine them though. Normally find the weld in the first cut I take. Phil

When there is so much wear in the dies that you can pass your brass rule through from front to back including the joint. No really just when the wear starts to make it hard to keep strips straight, and jobs start to get hard to hold too size. Usually when there is about 3/16 wear between the blocks.

Too true John, sometimes newer is not better or quicker. I could not exist without my trusty old shaper, it's so easy to machine new dies, to fit. No expensive tooling just a single point tool, and a grinder and I can machine any profile I want (almost).

When I started my apprenticeship it was in a little 2 fire shop up the north coast of NSW Aust we used to HT and sett all manner of spring leaves for trucks up to Semi trailer prime movers, these leafs were up to 8'/9' long, all with a fire about 18" long, we would close all the windows and doors to cut down on any drafts or cross breezes, sit the leaf in the fire, turn it on and as Stewart says just start running the steel back and forth through the fire, gradually becoming quicker as it got hotter, if one part needed more heat we would concentrate on it, then run back to the rest of the leaf to keep it hot. In this way we could get an entire spring leaf up to temp to allow us to bend it and quench in oil to harden it, all in the same heat. Phil

Campbelltown, good, I can ask him if my forge is still out there. I'm going to bring my gas furnace, gas bottle anvil, stand, tools etc plus some stock. As far as I know Bill Mag is still going to come, Monster is not, he has been purloined by the government (I told him to put aluminium foil under his hat but he did'nt). I'll give Moonie the hurry up to see if he was still going to come too. Otherwise see you on sunday.

I just went and ran 4140 in Matweb and looked at 4140 100 dia oil quenched as per the book, and 4140 normalised in still air. Oil quenched and tempered to 580 deg C came out at 235Hb normalised came out to 241Hb, so giveing a higher hardness as normalised then as HT. How does the cake recipe hold for that one. Phil

This is info I have copied from one of our steel suppliers info sources (Interlloy) as to HT of 4140 (you can google interlloy 4140) You will notice that they recommend quenching in oil water or polymer as required. One thing that is stated by most other steel suppliers is to avoid where possible tempering 4140 in the regions between approx 200degC and 450/475degC (392F to 887F) as 4140 and also 4340 have a tendancy to lose ductility and become temper brittle in these ranges. Interlloy recomends 550degC to 700degC anyway, does not mention lower temps. Hardening Heat to 840 oC - 875 oC, hold until temperature is uniform throughout the section, soak for 10 - 15 minutes per 25 mm section, and quench in oil, water, or polymer as required. *Temper immediately while still hand warm. Nitriding 4140 hardened and tempered bar can also be successfully nitrided, giving a surface hardness of up to Rc 60. Nitriding is carried out at 490 oC - 530 oC, followed by slow cooling (no quench) reducing the problem of distortion. Parts can therefore be machined to near final size, leaving a grinding allowance only. The tensile strength of the core is usually not affected since the nitriding temperature range is generally below the original tempering temperature employed. Normalizing Heat to 870 oC - 900 oC, hold until temperature is uniform throughout the section, soak for 10 - 15 minutes and cool in still air. Stress Relieving Heat to 680 oC - 700 oC, hold until temperature is uniform throughout the section, soak for 1 hour per 25 mm section, and cool in still air. Tempering Re-heat to 550 oC - 700 oC as required, hold until temperature is uniform throughout the section, soak for 1 hour per 25 mm of section, and cool in still air.

Thanks for that John, its nice to get some credit for things now and again, The way I came to be using water for quenching 4140 and other steel rather than oil, was we always used oil as per the book, but I was always having problems getting required hardness in jobs over 15kgs in weight. One particular order was discs 52kg each 220dia x 125 thick we took them to 850/860C and quenched them in oil, and tempered them to 580 degC as per the book. (We always have a chemical cert supplied with the alloys we buy and we are diligent in recording and checking heat No's from the bars supplied against the material cert issused to avoid the types of problems being discussed here.) These discs we heat treated came out at varying hardness ranges for the same bar off steel and they even had varying hardnesses in the same disc depending on where we tested them. So I rang the supplier (who is also a heat treater, who HTs many 1000s of tonnes of steel evey year) and I asked them if they had had any probs with heat No, such and such. They get their metalurgist on the phone, he says "no problems from this end that heat No accounted for about 500 ton of bar and it all heat treated as per SOP" 302HB on the knocker. So I asked their procedure ,"we ran it up to 870deg C and quenched in water, then tempered to 610 deg C which gave 302HB exactly. "But but but isnt 4140 an oil hardening steel" says I. "Yes essentially but in larger sizes etc etc you will not get a quick enough quench to get the required hardness using oil". "Hence we quench in water, in fact our water has a small amount of polymer in it so it probably quenches a little bit quicker than straight water". Since then I have followed what that metalurgist told me to do and a couple of 100 tons of forging later we can still hit the required 302HB on the head every time. We do HT smaller solid forged rings of 8kg in oil, and they also turn out OK on hardness, but any thing over 2 inches thick 4140 now goes straight into the H2O. As to oil capacity we used to have about 2500 litres in our quench tank, that was circulated and ran through a heat exchanger to cool it. Its not what we had drilled into us at tech when I was an apprentice but it works and thats the main thing. We have even quench En26 (nickle moly carbon of about .5% that is used for shear blades etc hammer dies etc) in water and it has come out OK, and EN26 was definitely an oil quenched steel so we were told as apprentices, but our steel supplier has quenched it in there water quench tub no probs and so did we, the job by the way weighed about 175KG a disc with about a 120mm dia hole in it 130mm thick. I only do what the experts tell me to do. Phil

I knew once I saw G'day that it was another aussie coming on board, just mind the vernacular australian expressions though some of the furriners that run this place don't understand the aussie language, and get a bit narky with stuff that we would just let go. Phil

Cleaning, grinding, removing spatter, removing scale etc etc etc can often take as much time as the forge time, a fact that a lot of new blokes starting out fail to realise and charge accordingly for in their initiall quote. If you want the finished article to look proffesional then you have to put the time into cleaning it and preparing it. A sandblaster will remove scale etc but it will not remove sharp edges weld spatter etc that has to be done by hand most of the time, a tumbler will do it but you can't put a set of gates into a tumbler. Maybe use antispatter when you are welding, use a gas that is formulated to give minimal spatter, chip and scrape as you go, instead of chipping use a die grinder to clean each weld,etc as you are going, and the spatter around it. Other than that I can only say that if you want to make nice stuff you have to put the time into the cleanup. My old boss had a sign up in his office wall "Buying quality is like buying oats, if you want the good stuff you have to pay the money, if you are satisfied with the stuff that has already been through the horse, well then the price is going to be cheaper" Phil

Got some by the road hammers here in Aus, this one is under an overpass on the Great Western highway (I think) in Sydney. It originally came from Chollora Junction Railway workshops. Missing the bottom die and anvil though of course.

Andrew is there a limit on numbers, I have been directing a fair few people to this thread as a way of getting info for this day, on another note, it looks like Will Mag is going to attend, he was going to call you and the Moon is looking at coming too, it may be that we have more pro's than amateurs, thats good means I don't have to do anything. If you need another forge or a gas furnace or anvil to come I can help. Talk to the moon nice he might bring a hammer? Phil

We routinely quench 4140 from 870/860 deg C in water, and then temper back to 580 deg C and we will get pretty well spot on 302HB every time, having said that, we are quenching jobs in thickness over 60mm. I have some small rings to HT tonight that have a wall thickness of about 32mm and these I will oil quench, only cause water is too severe on the smaller sizes. It is hard to get 4140 up to hardness in oil most times, I would guess you did'nt get 4140. Hard to tell thought it may have cracked because of uneven cooling, having a largish body of steel behind it, and having the face water quenched. Phil

Hey Drewy Closer to the date we could arrange to meet somewhere along the way if you want, ie suttons forest. Then we could have a CONVOY, just like in the movies. That way you won't get lost, sweetie pie, in the big bad woods.

Anyone else notice that they have installed it with the dies 90deg out of place. Phil

Would'nt it be cool if we could find a town called Bertram and they have a hammer out side their museum only this time its a Massey. Phil

Yeh and don't turn off at the driveway before BurkesHill Rd thinking that that is Moonies, the bloke next door to glenn must be getting sick of every October all these cars driving up his driveway around to the back of his house into his back yard then down the other side and out onto the road again, I know of about 5 blokes that have done it me included.

Wow this looks like the very first job for a brand new forge shop, couple of questions I thought of, how did they recapture the upset forging after they rolled it over and it skewed sideways away from the manip, they don't show that, assuming that the manip has no sideway movement. Why did they gas axe the ends off the forgings rather than giullitine them with the press (maybe they have'nt made those dies yet). It seems that the budget did'nt run to getting a popup turntable in front of the manip, strange given the amount of money spent on the whole plant otherwise. Just a few things I noticed as strange, coming from someone with an interest in the bigger forgings. Did quenching the shaft on the horizontal have any negative bearings on the straightness of the shaft when finished, as normally I hve seen that kind of forging quenched in a deep pit end on, (vertical), the thing with quenching on the horiz is that you get a cooling on one side of the forging as it is lowered in to the quench medium, and not on the other, and you will get more vapour bubbles on the top of the forging as well lessening the quenching action. Open to discussion here guys. You don't ask, you don't learn. Phil

Yeh AoC is Andrew OConnor, he is a trade trained blacksmith who is working as a librarian, (go figure), (sorry Andrew, the irony is not lost my son). The tradition tools forging day is held at Sydney Maritime Museum whick is at Roselle which is basically under the ANZAC bridge, which is just west of Sydney city it's self. It is being held on the 24th of June which for all you aussies is also the Sunday before Ultimo TAFE blacksmiths block release week. so its possible some of you will be in Sydney any way and at a loose end on Sunday anyway. Phil

Just posting here to keep Moonies current in IFI forum, and also to remind the guys that are interested in AoCs trad tools forging day at Sydney Maritime Museum, to keep a look out for that.

A shut or better still a cold shut or gall, we termed, as when you managed to hit the edge of a shoulder you were forging up to and took a bit of a scollop from the edge of the corner and forged it down into the main part of the forging, it requires removal otherwise it will be classed as a defect in the finished article if it is not to be removed by machining after the forging is finished. I try to get my guys to always have an angle grinder close to hand so as to grind out any shuts and galls that may occur as they are working. The cracking up the end of a forging was normally called a pipe, where I served my time, however the guys that worked in Sydney were not as cultured as Newcastle guys and they used the term H,,,,,A,,,,, unfortunately it seems the equine term has stuck as far as Aussies are concerned. Phil

Hi guys These are photos of a horizontal press I built quite a few years ago now. We classed it as having a rated tonnage of 80 tons, biggest we have bent with it is about 8" dia bar

Drewy When posting on IFI it is well to remember something that a guy who comes to help in my shop once told me, "phil, americans look the same as us, but they're not" they don't get our slang, and they don't get our humour, they're generally nice guys but they have all kinds of hangups. Phil