forgemaster

Dale I never said that you looked like a dill, I said you were a "dill". Looking and being are 2 different things my son. Phil

During that 7 weeks do you reckon you will get up to our place, or has Moonie got you flat out down there, making austenetic sheep, and changing wheel bearings.

No more Adult apprentices for this guy, 2 adult apprentices = 2 idiots, has shown me that I'm better off getting kids and training them up from the beginning. Sorry Thats not to say I don't allow blokes to come and learn for a few weeks, but no more 4 year indentured adult aprentices, 2 was enough. Phil

We normally have a clip that sits over the edge of the bottom die, to stop the swages moving about so much, but Knucklehead normally manages to bounce the swages, land them on the clip and brake it off. If you have the swages rigidly held there is another place for something to break. Preservation of your hands is due to keeping the job level, and not driving too hard when you dont need too. Sometimes the swage will bounce off the pins but that is due to driving too hard when there is not enough metal left to swage, ie get lighter when you are getting close to the finished size. Phil

Dale I woulda donated the big fella, but ee's left us. Gone unda groune drillin, for a coulpla 1000s a week. We reckon he'll loose 20kg in the 1st month. Hve ta look for somefunt else. I know 1st prize, could be Jay to help for a day, 2nd prize, Jay to help you for 2 days, 3rd prize jay to........ Phil so yes I am looking for another smith, needs to be a good one though.

Hey John Swages breaking is a problem, that for us always seems to happen on the last job in a heat, I have no explanation for how this always happens I think it is some sort of VooDoo thing. the swages almost never break on the first job of a heat. We have found that modern steel is more prone to the breaking at the HAZ, then the older stuff. We used to have a grade called weldex which was a substitute for wrought applications, make handles out of this they would outlast anything, but they were I reckon closer to pure iron than modern steels that I feel are made to machine better. We have gone more to pin swages to get away from the handles problems. I think it shows us using pin swages on our Utube clip, (go, massey, 5cwt, blacksmith, chain anchors,). Normalising does not really have that much bearing on the outcome we have found, the welds running up the reins do make a difference though. Hope this helps Just checked, the clip shows Damo putting the swages in at about the 36 second mark. they are on a removable sqr peg which allows them to be turned around 90 deg when they are not in use rather than lifting them down off the table (that small table we call the coffee table) Phil

Your outside corners are very sharp and you need bigger radii in the inside corners. You have also gotten folds(cold shuts/galls) in your job when you were forging it out. Having bigger radii will help prevent this, it will also help prevent a notch effect starting the cracks. Phil

The high carbon steel will be at its welding point at a lower temp then the mild steel. That is an increase in carbon content decreases the melting point of carbon steels. Therefore if you were to heat both steels together to the same temp, the higher carbon steel would be ready to weld before the mild, then in getting the mild to weld temp you will probably burn the higher carbon steel. So how to successfully weld them together, have you ever cooked sausages on a BBQ with steak, the sausos take longer to cook than the steak so you put the sauso's on before you put on the steak, to give them longer to cook. So to with the 2 different steels, you start getting the mild hot before the high carbon, it will take some practice to achieve this coming together of heats, so as both steels arrive at their different welding temps at the same time. Practice. Oh I've assumed that you were looking to fireweld this hammer, if not disragard the preceding. Phil

Spring steel will not explode when you put it in the fire, he's pulling your chain. Just be careful when pulling the spring apart from the pack though, use 2 G clamps to hold it when you undo the centre bolt, this is where it may fly apart, as most spring packs are under tension, held by the centre bolt and the clips. Yeh and do the safety stuff, glasses etc. Phil

We have found that we can save $$$$$ by only having salmon steaks and caviar sandwichs once for lunch each week and only change the french champange that is used in our quench tub when it really needs it, rather than every week. Phil

Thanks Patrick all my questions answered. Phil

Thanks Patrick That ticks about all the boxes for me, my questions were going to be, do you start punching from the small end or the big, do you use tapered punches or parallel, do you part way punch it with a taper punch then flip it over and come back from the other side with another taper punch, or do you punch almost all the way then just blob punch out the slug from the other side, or do you just blob punch the whole slug out in go into a bolster. Almost all my questions answered in one go, cool. One question remains if you don't mind, regarding the calcs for material, is the material calculated to take account of the hole, or is it just calculated as a solid hub with the material removed for the hole becoming waste, obviously if you are to blob/slug punch the whole lot out in one go into a bottom tool you would calc to forge a solid hub with the slug becoming waste, but what is the procedure if you are going to taper punch it, then come back with a cleaning punch the right size. Thanks Phil

Hi guys we have been landed with an order for these 10 off for (what we call) pinions, but others call a tooled hub forging. Normally we have just supplied the customer with a solid forged hub, ie no hole up the guts of it. We would like to go the extra distance, save our customer the hassle of having to bore out the centre. We want to punch it, now I know that there is a guy gets on this forum sometimes that works for Scot Forge in USA, and I know that Scot Forge makes tooled hubbed forgings. I'd like to get in touch with someone who has some experience in punching holes in tooled forgings to give me some pointers on how it is performed and any pit falls to look out for. I'll attach the drwg as a PDF, all dimensions are in mm. We have the equipment to forge it, the material is 8620, a case hardening steel, and its a job that we have done before, we have all the dies to forge the hub solid, but we just would like some help putting the hole in the centre. Ta guys Phil Metalform pinion Drg 180821S-1.pdf

Hoes we will normally run the colours down after quenching from 850 deg C in oil, we run the colours to about a brown. For a hoe we will quench about 2" of the blade to harden it before running the colours. Shovels we always harden the whole thing then temper the whole shovel to about 350 deg C. We normally have made shovels from CK1055 sheet at about 2.5mm thick. Phil

John, you will be missed but we will press on anyway. "Its a tough job but someone has to do it."

Does this mean that Rich will see more of Aust this time other than Sydney airport, the road to Moonies, Moonies Shed, the road back to Sydney, then home to usa as per last time. Phil

The cutter tips make a mean centre punch, just remember to grind the carbide on a silicon wheel (green wheel). we often put a rod handle on them for centre punching jobs that we have to hot punch so as to make a deep mark to see when the job is hot, (it has a handle on it so as you can really belt it with your hand hammer and not be worried about hitting the hand holding the centre punch)

They forgot that you must use uphill pipe for going up hill and down hill pipe for going down hill otherwise the stuff will go in the wrong direction.

I reckon $500.00 is pretty cheap for what you want doing + a bit more for a plug, when they want $65000.00 is when you start to look for other alternatives.

Anvils for sale eh Dale to me anvils equals Hard work So you gonna go buy ya self some more class A1 boat anchors.

Contact John Heavyside at Ferrous Forge I believe they are in Albion on Ballarat road. I'll dig out the phone No tomorrow at work and post it on here. Phil Pity you are'nt looking for work around Newcastle.

Looks awful similar to some stuff we used to have and which I believe can still be bought, called "Hardite". the main ingredient was I recall cynide, or some compound of it. It will only give a skin a couple of '1000 deep if that. Yeh if would have been interesting to have seen the hardness checked with like a proper Brinell machine. Phil

My old boss I had when I served my apprenticeship told me of a hammer he and his mate made at the old railway workshops here in Newcastle as a foreign order. They made the anvil out of sleeper plates all welded together, stacked on top of each other. That had to be about 60 years ago, and as far as I know that hammer is still going. The tup was also made at the same place and was carried out of the workshops and home to his mums place strapped to the cross bar of his push bike, with both of them taking turns pushing it along the road, home was about 10 miles I guess. The hammer was erected in his mums back yard. The tup is traditionally the bit that goes up and down, but the hammer is rated on the dead weight of the falling parts this would include the tup, the die, the key, rings or bearings etc. Phil

2 words Profile cutter, Never fails, just put a fancy handle on it and the customer thinks he's got a bargain.

Overheads are any expenses that are not directly atributable to a job, such as insurance, rent, electricity, admin staff wages, building repairs, repairs, insurance, rego, fuel, loan/lease repayments for company vehicles, workers comp, superannuation, staff ammeneties, office supplies, taxation penalties, business loan interest, accountancy fees legal fees etc, etc etc. Costs directly attributable to a job (costs of goods manufactured) would be direct labour (ie labour actually involved in manufacturing the job), materials, consumables (gas, electrodes, etc) engineeering supplies (nuts bolts, grinding discs, etc) surface coatings (paint galvanising sandblasting etc) heat treatment, freight/transport, etc etc etc. These 2 cost structures will be different for every business as thingmaker implied, if you are a large shop you may have a receptionist, a sales manager, workshop manager, general manager, staff ammeneties with cleaning costs also accounted for, company cars, for your senior staff, OHS costs, insurance, workers comp. On the costs directly side you would have materials, direct labour (your workshop floor staff), furnace fuel oil/gas for furnaces, oxy/gas for cutting, transport in, transport out, etc. A one man show may have overheads of insurance, personal disability insurance, your car, rego, fuel, car maintainance costs, tax liabilities, maybe rent,etc Therefore your overheads should be lower than the big company, however you alone must bear all your overheads yourself whereas the big company can spread its overhead load over many workers, which may result in a lower overall overhead rate. In Australia anyway there is a big difference in the overhead cost for a business employing 1 or 2 then up to 5 people then up to 14 people then the costs blow out until you reach about 35 employees when the overhead costs even out again. Just has to do with staff and ammeneties and logistical requirements etc required to service these amounts of employees. I dare say these numbers could be different in the US UK and Europe as different countries have different requirements, re licenses, insurance OHS etc. What you need to do is sit down and calculate/estimate these overheads over the course of a year, then divide them by your amount of billable hours you plan to work over the course of the year (I normally allow acutual billable hours of 6.5 hours a working day by all my blokes including me 5 days a week, to allow for toilet breaks, cleaning up, looking for tools, repairing equipment etc). This figure will give you a starting point for what you need to allow in you pricing to cover overheads. Hope this helps. Have fun Phil