forgemaster

Rog

All I can say is it took you a while to find IFI, Drewy, welcome aboard. May the cruise be enjoyable. Phil

He normally doesnt run it for hammered as it makes a lot of noise, and moonie worries about that. On a different subject, we are looking at having a day or to at my workshop in August sometime Corin, would you be interested in coming to that, I have a working lathe, for you to show guys how to make burners etc. Dont have a concrete date yet just the general feel is sometime in August. Will keep people in the picture as it gets closer. Phil

The days just race away John, I just realised its almost the end of the month, will get some photos up this weekend. (Thats if the photo section of ifi is working, without me having to decifer anti spam stuff that is so small that I can hardly read it)

Photos, Yeh Ok just have to make them smaller otherwise guys complain about the size. In a day or so. Phil

Saturday is now done and dusted, about 17 smiths for this year so far may have more tomorrow. Absolutely stacks of people through the gate. Sunday can only be better.

We would normally (depending on the size of the tool), heat the stuck end of the tool with the oxy torch till a dull red, then place it hot end downwards into a bucket of sand to cool out slowly, or we make a mound of dirt and shove the hot end into the dirt to cool slowly. This method depends on the size and lenght of the tool, if it is too short yes the heat can run back and pull the temper out of the business end of the tool. Covering the heated end just help to slow the cooling rate, some steels can air harden fairly easily, especially if the heat gets sucked up by the body of the tool. Phil

Choice we are back on the air. Iron John, Moonies oiler is just a Major burner, and he runs it on chip oil, cause he gets it free. Phil

Will be there, with bells on, bring a rain coat too.

If you have enough of it you could sell it to a paint manufacturer to use in metalic finish auto paint. One of the steel mills here in Newcastle has a fair sort of forge plant, they have a bobcat to clean up scale on the back shift, and they tell me it goes to paint manufacture.

Swedge blocksswage blocks we always have this arguement with guys that went to Sydney TAFE as opposed to Newcastle Tafe, they also call a Beche a beashee, I always thought that it was because the main employer of blacksmiths here in Newcastle was BHP whose 1st manager was a man by the name of Delprat, who was originally french of course. We always called them swedges and still do but I was a newcastle apprentice. Phil

I have some photos of the press die holding system of a forge shop near albury that does a bit of forging, I am going to use their method of attachment, basically a parralell key in the middle of the blocks to hold the dies in line and a slot arrangement/Tee bolt system to attach the dies to the upper plattern

Rust, mud, scale, lost tongs, lost jobs, even worse what is in the bottom of our oil tub, we found a dead pigeon floating in there, how long it had been there no one knew. Phil

Thats a xxxx big swing Dale my son.

This is a carry over from the HT section and a thread on there. Basically we made a set of swages for our press and it has saved us approx 3 heats in the finishing stages of these eye bolts. They are 4340 as forged material, and they are made to swage to 150mm dia. Prior to making these, we were rough rounding these eye bolts under plain dies in the press and it took ages to get a good hammer like finish. With these swages we forge to a rough (and I mean rough) 150 oct then get a heat on the whole shank, have the dies in the press and one heat later they are on the floor cooling off. As I was taught when I was an apprentice, "Phil the quicker you can get your job into the swages the quicker you can have it finished". The only thing we have to do now is to effect a better means of retaining the swages in the press, to stop them from moving about too much. The eye bolts are rope adjusting bolts for Marion draglines operating in Queensland open cut coal mines. They start life as 250KG of 280 dia 4340 black as rolled round bar. After forging we profile cut the heads to shape, then have to get these proof machined to 5mm per side over size, they have to undergo full ultrasound, and we have to supply certs for Chemical, tensile, and hardness to standards. Then they go to Sydney to be finish machined to have a 5" dia unf thread on the shank, lube holes drilled, bore machined etc etc. then go north to Queensland to our customer. Phil

While I am here and still sober enough to post, who is going to Ironfest 21 22 April Lithgow. Come on its Friday night guys, the missus has fallen asleep with one of the kids (GPFO) and I am left with IFI. How sad is that.

Nah I did that ;last year and where did it get me, BBQ duties for this year.

So you mean I can't still just make punches and stuff and just give them away on the day like last year. what am I gonna do, apart from the bBQ. I could jsut drink beer n scotch n GPFO I suppose.

I always stress to my guys that 2 of the most dangerous pieces of equip in our workshop are the grinders and the forklift, they are used a lot with not a lot of thought for the ramifications of an accident, they are used by all of the guys working here, and they are common to most industrial workshops. Guys side loading on grinding wheels, using them when they are out of balance, using them with chips missing out of the faces, etc, they just don't seem to realise the danger that they can present. Hopefully this guy has not lost his life in vain, and that it will serve as a reminder to everyone to be safe at work, and I don't just mean by wearing ear, eye and other PPE, we have to take a whole of workshop approach to this. Glasses ear muffs and apron won't save you if you get run over by a forklift or hit in the head by a piece of shattered grinding wheel. My condolences to his family. Phil

The human forklift has left mid last year to go underground drilling in the mines, that is Jay our 2nd year app, he is not yet a human forklift. These are swages for our press, they will not have handles but will be attached to the top and bottom blocks, just about to go grinding them up this morning, put the radius on and generally clean them up, they are 4340 so we will not be going to HT, just leave them as normalised. We just held the handles there to see what response we would get from IFI. Phil

The only tools really needed should be a bottle opener, and a set of BBQ tongs. OK I'll do the BBQ Saturday night then.

Forged up some new swages today, just trying to decide what style of handles to put on them, flat bar or round bar, or maybe pins.

Hi all I have come back to this post as we have been trying forging down shafts by going hex at the earliest point we can and just seeing if there is any benefit. We have been taking the shaft to square till about 3/4 inch above our finishing size then taking off a corner as for oct but then going to hex to forge the rest of the way. what I am seeming to find is that the bar is staying hotter longer, or gaining heat from the metal moving, and we get to rough round with less forging then by going oct, we have not as of yet had any pipes appearing in the ends etc so it would seem that it is not to detrimental to the stock re splitting and it does seem quicker to go square,then hex, take the corners off the hex and then round (polyhedral). We have experimented with sizes to 30mm dia up to 105mm dia and all sizes seem to me to forge hotter, easier, and quicker when forging to square, then hex (instead of oct) then rough round, then swaging. I'll try to get some footage of it and post it to you tube then nail it into IFI. Phil But I'll add that this is all forging to parallel shaft not forging tapers. If we have to forge a taper where ever we will rough forge it to oct tapered then use a set of taper swages

This is one of these problems that you can lie awake at night in bed thinking about, but here is what I have found from 30 years of doing this stuff The handle will always normally break of on job No 10 of a run of 10, or job 15 of a run of 15 it does'nt really matter it will break in the last few minutes of the job, or break in the 1st minute of a run of jobs, Just cause you have drilled upset and peened is not a guarentee of no breakages (see the photo) Sometimes it will be the top tool which breaks off, sometimes the bottom, there is very little logic to which one is going to break next. Putting a few beads of weld along the handle at right angles to the axis of the main weld seems to help as some guys have suggested I have been told brazing the handles on works well also. Even our stopper pads which have a short piece of 50 x 6 flat welded onto them to go on to the pad holder, break off after a while (in the second photo you can see where it has broken off and we have just turned the pad 90 deg and rewelded it). I think the jarring effect of the hammer also helps to fatigue the heat affected zone of the handles, we have found the better the mateial that the handles is made out of (ie certified K1020 material) seem to last longer than just common old garden variety MS. Maybe due to the errant alloys being controlled better in the certified steel. If you put a hinge in the top handle itis going to be exposed to a lot of jarring, twisting vibration etc, and you still have to attach the hinge to the tool, I doubt if the extra work in making a hinge is going to be justified in the long run. Try it and see, then let us all know, it will save us the hassle of doing it if it fails, if it works you'll be a hero. See I have'nt solved any problems but I may have cancelled out some doubt. Phil

What sort of BBQ are we gonna use, before I go putting my hand up for it, We gonna use Moonies gas one, or is it gonna be a plate balanced on some rocks with half a tree alight under it? Phil