forgemaster

When I served my time we used to have an oxy line coming into the blower pipe going to the burner for our biggest furnace. If we need to get a job really hot, we would turn it on, (had a reg on it too). You had to keep an eye on your job as the furnace got that hot it would burn your job, (8"square no probs to burn). The only thing has has stopped me from doing the same in our workshop is we have no bulk Oxy tank. It works ok in a furnace as they are a constant rate of fire, a forge would be suitable as you regulate the air with your heats. Phil

Maybe we need to add the one of 2 last blacksmiths in Aust onto here. (See general blacksmithing forum, mirror made by) All the rest of us must just be imaginary. Phil

Material plus 25% plus labour. Labour I charge out as Aus $65.00 per hour per man. Cutting (eg saw) I charge $5.00 per cut. Don't forget to add delivery, cleaning, grinding, etc. I normally try to charge enough to make the customer hurt. Not bleed but hurt. I look at it this way, what does it cost from McDonalds for a hamburger, and that is made by a teenager with no real skills other than to flip patties. Surely you have to charge more than McD's charges for a teenager flipping patties. Quality is like buying oats, if you want good oats you have to pay the price, if you are happy with the oats that have already been though the horse, then the price is a bit cheaper. I had a bloke coming in to use 1 of our hammers on a Sunday to make damascas, he charged a minimum of $1500 per knife, just for a simple utility blade. Phil

Just sent him a ping about it. Ok if he was one of the last 2 left, but he's not. Probably does'nt even have trade papers. We also have a company here that advertises "the only manufacturer of hot forged products in the Hunter Valley". Ok if you are but if you're not, its just false advertising. Phil

The only crit that I have is that you are forging those slugs across the grain, possibly not a problem. You may get some cracks opening up where the middle of the billet was when they are heat treated though. We always try to forge along the grain of the bar, when we are forging out bar offcuts. Otherwise it looks good. Phil

I have a manual for Alldays hammers, send me some info of where to send it and I'll have a go at scanning it. Cheers Phil

Hey Andrew (you big burly blacksmith you) Instead of using screwed reducers swage a large dia piece of pipe down to the the small size, leave a nice radii in the transition. I found that having the sharp screwed ends of the pipe tends to disturb the air flow as it travels down the burner pipe, you dont even have to swage the whole lenght, just a bit at the end then make a nice weld onto your smaller pipe with no dilburrys on the inside. If you can't get gear to do it let me know and I'll do them for you and send them down. Phil

Get in contact wtih Gameco phone 02 9648 5856 161 Parramatta Road Auburn NSW for gas burners regulators etc they are an industrial gas burner supply firm. All I did was used pipe fittings, for the jet i used a BSP plug that I drilled the smallest hole I had drill in my drill set. Worked a treat, I'll take some photos of it today. Phil

I dont know, we retyred some loco wheels for them but they were'nt allowed to put them back under the loco,as they had lost their railway accreditation. They paid the bill though. As to the rest of the park I thought it was still business as usual. Is this not the case? I'll try to get hold of someone from artist blacksmiths and ask them. Phil

Re Valve direction, industry standard is lever down causes ram to go down, lever up causes ram to go up, if mounted horizontally towards the press is down or squeeze, pull back on the lever is lift or return. Imdustry secret No2 is after blowing through the valve to see which way the valve is going, look in the mirror before going down the street to the bank as they sometimes put sealing gunk on the ports which can leave a really stupid looking ring of gunk on your lips and it really freaks out the chick who is the teller in the bank. Phil

We will use H13 for normal hammer dies (ie flat). We sometimes have need to fit special dies to our small hammers for forging things like an order for 5000 off brake shoe keys. I have normally used 4340 for this application, we get about 8000 keys to 10000 keys before we need to skim the dies in the shaper. Phil

Thanks for everyones input guys. Will give me some thinking to do. Phil

So I would guess that they are a tapered pin, sort of a podger. We used to have a job making these. 1000 in an order, they were called by the 2 companies we made them for either bull pins and/or bridge pins, used for lining up holes for the bolts. We used to use 1045, for them. Hope this is of some use, maybe a different material is used in the US though. Phil

We have a job card system in the shop, that I use for all jobs. All jobs have a number, even making stock when someone has run out of work is given a job No. and of course a job card. Getting the boys to fill in all the details as they do the job is the hard bit, such as times taken, getting them to sign and date it is fairly hard to. I have drafted our job cards are using ideas gleaned from the best ones I've seen around, just used the bits I wanted. I'll attach it, someone may find it useful. Job card PDF.pdf

What do you mean "next" time I come to the US, it'll be "when" I ever get to the US. I'd love to visit the US, but time, money and work are just all against me at the moment. Phil

We have had to have a noise survey done in our shop as part of our DA for our new shop, had a geek walking around with a microphone with a sock over it for a day taking recordings of all and sundry. Of interest was that out all our machinery in the workshop, our little gasser furnace was in his opinion the most likely to cause the most hearing loss, as it was "a constant low pitch noise, and most people would not associate that noise as a hearing loss concern and so would not use hearing protection." He felt that OK the power hammers were loud, but we know that, and use protection, also the hammers are a quick sharp noise, that will damage hearing, but they are not a constant "white noise" which what the gasser is. I'll see if I can get an electronic copy of the test results from our planner guy, and I'll post them up on the board. May take some weeks to chase them up as the planner is having an op in the hospital, and is going to be out of action. PS I loathe ear plugs, had to have a abcess lanced inside my ear canal many years ago caused by ear plugs, muffs for me. Phil

the loco is actually on a scale of 12" to the foot, yes its a real one, they are classed as a 10 class, 13 were built all still exist, all still in Australia, a fair few are still running, they were the last commercial steam locomotives running in Australia in 1987 was their last revenue train, coal haulers. 2-8-2 tank engines total weight about 87 tons No, 30 pictured was built in about 1927. Very simple machines, very long lasting, british built (beyer peacock)to go the distance. I was responsible for the majority of 30s overhaul about 11 years ago, from boiler, to mechanical, to painting it, I was the man. Don't know what will happen in the next 20 years though, I am about the youngest still doing this work at this society, and I'm 45 this year, much the same all around Australia. Kids just are'nt willing to do the hard work, anymore, unless you are paying them, and even then you have to keep at them. Phil

Dont have a bike any more, and the missus wo't allow me to get another one anyway, and I lost my bike licence years ago and I can't be bothered going through all the XS to get another. So here's what drives me on my day off. So its racing a cat in summer and part of winter and working on locomotives for nothing in winter and part of summer. Phil

Just interested to get feedback on the way different blokes (and shielas) go about quoting on jobs. Do you have a system where you calculate the weight of the whole job and multiply it by a dollar value then hope you have allowed enough, or do you estimate everything out, down to how many grinding discs, how many electodes, buckets of coke, etc and work from there, then estimate labour time taken etc add it altogether to come up with a price, or has someone come up with a software program for quoting for blacksmithing,(they have them for metal fab businesses). I'm also asking this to kick this section along a bit, lets see your answers. I normally use a mix of both systems, depending on the type of work that we are quoting on. I really would like to develop a program that allows me to back enter all the costs and times taken for different jobs, to allow the program to average out the costs and give me a figure, say per hour, or per KG (or lb) for different jobs that I quote on in the future. I would like it to include fixed costs per hour such as rent, rates, etc, and variable costs such as fuel (oil gas or coke), electricity, steel etc, and overheads.I would have different job sections in my quoting database, such as architechtural, toolsmithing, engineering, metal fab. I know it probably wont work for everything but it would be something to give me a starting point. Does anyone use someting like this, is it succesfull, is it easy to make it work. When I started I used to look at my desk with the quote on it look out the window at the sky look at the quote again and take a good guess, normally I was wrong, but sometimes it worked out OK Cheers Phil

Very rare for hammers to be grouted in as the vibration quickly kills any grout. Generally they have either wood, vibration isolation material, or such under the base plate. The anvil however is more than likely going to be wedged into the foundation with tight fitting fitted wooden wedges, or concrete, or something just as difficult to remove. Allow time for removal of the anvil, the hammer itself is usually easy to remove, just undo the bolts and lift, anvils always are more taxing. Thats why you often see preserved hammers missing the anvil, people just lost interest once they realised the amount of work involved. Not trying to put you off Rick, just forwarned is forarmed. Anvils normally weighed 10 times the working weight (weight of falling parts) of the hammer, so 25 ton say for the anvil on this sucker. I saved a fair bit from the forge shop at BHP steelworks in Newcastle here before it was demolished, would have liked to get more, but money and time was not on my side.

5 years ago I was making a new stamping tool for stamping the ends of railway spike removal bars. I was getting tired, it had been a hot day, I had a near miss, a little voice said "Phil you should stop now". I ignored it and though I'll just go one more heat get the edges of this sucker up nice and sharp, put the dummy into the nearly finished tool, one more blow, to seat it properly. Next thing I remember is lying on the floor with the tongs still in my hands and the metalic taste in my mouth. The dummy and tongs had flown up and hit me on the eyebrow, bit of blood not feeling too good, shut down the shop, locked up and drove 20 minutes home holding a piece of paper towel to my head to stem the bleeding. Missus was out picking up the kids from dancing lessons, they come home, "what happened dear" "got hit at work". Into the car and off the the Hos with me protesting, just need a cuppa tea, a bex and a good lie down. Doctor at the after hours clinic has a look and says "mate I can see your skull and its got a big dent in it, you need to go to the big Hos, went there x rays, talk of call the neurosurgeon, I said to the Missus "lets go, they ain't doing no brain surgery to me". Long and short of it was, compound fracture of the skull, 40 stiches (20 internal, 20 external) face and mouth surgeon even took photos as "its not often we get this sort of thing in here, normally its just drunk people who have smashed themselves up". Went back to work late the next day. I will remember to listen to that little voice next time. I have a mate how is an airforce pilot, he talks about the chain of errors, you need to recognise the chain starting and stop it, he says most air crashes involve a chain of errors senario. Phil

Hammer and tong is only available (as far as I know) at Liquorland and Firstchoice in NSW. If anyone knows dif can you let everyone know. Phil

The term you were looking for was flash point, quenching oil needs to have a fairly high one. Phil

Hey Frosty good that you're are up and about again. Thats actually 5 hammers inside the shop 1cwt massey, 2cwt alldays, Davis and primrose steam hammer which I think is 3 or 4 cwt, 5 cwt massey, perry tagging hammer, then 80 ton horizontal press, 400 ton forging press, Then we have another 5 hammers outside along with a high speed Davy C frame forging press, (these arent used, we ran out of shop space and power supply) We hope to be able to move this year (fingers crossed, local council here not at all geared to industry) into new purpose built factory, then I can install some more stuff. Phil