Fred Beagle

I was thinking perhaps all smart folks on here could help me out with something and I'll get to that in a minute. But what I've been building lately is a little home made lathe roughly based on Dave Gingerly's lathe book except I'm not using aluminum castings but rather I decided to make it out of steel.. A couple of mistakes I've made was one I went cheap and instead of using cold rolled steel I used what I had available which was hot rolled stuff and I've had heck getting everything flat.. But I've overcame this problem with a good amount of valve grinding compound and lots of sweat and I've hand lap the bed down to .002 and not in these pictures which are a couple of days old but I've just about finished making both the cross slide and compound slide of the carriage and I'm getting ready to tackle the head stock. Which brings up my question. In Dave's book he uses a piece of cold rolled 5/8's round stock and bores out the bearings and uses bronze bearing inserts and yada yada ect. On my lathe I doubled the face plate from 1/4 to half inch and that's attached to a 2' long piece of 1/4 x 2x2 tubing to make it very rigid But I'm seriously thinking pillow block bearings mounted on the very thick plate blocks of steel and maybe going up to 3/4 cold rolled round stock and this shaft will be powered by a v cone step pulley riding on it as well. But better than that perhaps I should look around and find a shaft with a Morse tapper insert that way I could use collets I was thinking, And I'm having heck trying to find what I need on ebay or anywhere else for that matter What do you guys think? Any help would be appreciated.... Why make a cheap lathe? Why not better than having absolutely nothing! But yeah it's been a really fun challenging project so far

This guy clearly has way too much free time. He should go find a fat girl and make a bigger door in the mud hut for her and start a family.

If you haven't seen any of his videos,You should check them out.. He doesn't say anything but watching him build everything from stone axes to tiles for his mud hut can be memorizing. I guess he's leaving the stone age and ready to enter into the bronze age... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVV4xeWBIxE

Ok here's my little forge/furnace that I melt small amounts of aluminum in. And as you can see it only does a small amount. And here's the new furnace and old propane tank I had got off an old man who had pretty much butchered the tank so it is what it is and hopefully someday this new furnace will allow me to take whole small engines/2 stroke engines,Car engine heads and allow me to melt them without having to break them down into smaller pieces. All my forges/furnaces burn raw wood with air blast from squirrel cage fans. I do have a propane burner but I live way off the country and fire wood and scrap wood is abundant. I also have some commercial grade fire bricks but they are rather expensive and I when I make my refractory for my forges it usually goes something like this one part sand ,one part portland cement ,one part fire clay. I'll get back to these in a minute. A few more thoughts on the big furnace is this: There will be a hot water heater tank as a big crucible and there will be a down spot with a mud valve for pouring during the melting process. The inner crucible will have big steel pins that lock it into place so it doesn't move around during the firing and mid way up there will be a serious grating bars that the Hot water heater tank ~"Inner crucible"sits on as well. On the outside of the main tank there will be a swing arm that removes the heavy inner crucible but it's just for dumping out the crucible when everything has cooled the following day. and this is what the upper door in the tank will facilitate. It will allow me to take out the inner tank to dump it and I will have to allow for the drain pipe and both these doors will get a serious amount of refractory/fire bricks on them as well The lower door is the fire box door and it's where I'll be loading wood in and I'll have to turn off the fan before I open this door or it will be Nebuchadnezzar and the three amigos revisited! Yikes Now the very top will have a removable donut type insulated hinged heavy steel plate lid that lets out the smoke and fumes and I can skim off the slag as well out of the crucible as well. Other things I will probably get is a ceramic blanket to wrap around the inner crucible as well to help retain the heat. Now here's my question and it's probably going to sound crazy as I try to go cheapest way possible as usual. But I was thinking of instead of lining out this big tank with high dollar fire bricks why not either use old Red clay bricks like they would use in an old style pizza oven. Or go 3rd world even and make mud bricks "dirt" and use that instead. I mean I expect it to crack and break any how. Why do we want to spend hundreds of dollars on a commercial insulation that's rating up to 3000 degrees F or higher when all we really need is to get it to about 1200 degrees F for aluminum. Oh it would be cool to be able to throw a waste oil burner in it and melt something like brass... But I'd have to get a graphite crucible and total rework the pouring aspect as well. But yeah I was thinking either home made dirt bricks or line it with red bricks and then plaster that with fire clay. Of course this things gonna weigh a ton but I think it will be a fun project. Now tell me what am I missing that I've not thought of. I'm just soliciting opinions before I get serious with this project. Hey it may be spending a couple of hundred dollars is the best way to go.

It's the same over all height of the anvil which comes up to my knuckles when I'm standing. This will allow it to act as a anvil support stand for longer pieces. I just copied the ideal from here and I gave the legs a bit of a sprawl rather then straight down.. http://www.saltforkcraftsmen.org/DoItYourselfProjects.shtm#swage stand

Well for those who are interested. This is the stand that I made to hold the swage and it can be turned on all sides and the block alone weight is about a hundred pounds. When I first started I had a big piece of tubing that is 12" wide and 4" inches thick and the block is like 24" inches long. I had wanted to build this thing for a while but I didn't get around to till recently and the tube had really bad rust damage so it really is pitted but It was either do something with what material I had or scrap it And I loathe to scrap anything. So yeah it would look better if I had used new material, Just really wanted to use what I had on hand and as long as it works that's all that matters. I'll still be working on cleaning up the surface of it with sanders and filling in pits but for right now I'm pretty much done with it. I'm building a new aluminum melting furnace and I'm looking for a hard refractory option if possible. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Here's a pic of the melting furnace as well just starting on it today.

I dig it. I sure need to get me a big anvil like that. One thing I'm gonna do to my forge is what Trent here has done and that's a gravity ash dump lid,and clinker breaker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNvoUzvn7Cs

Another old man that I worked for and he later came to work at my father shop was a yankee name "Bill Sherry". He was in late 70s when I knew him and I would imagine he's done passed on to his reward in the sky. But he was a foreman on the Reunion Tower in Downtown Dallas and did all the Stainless steel work.. And while he could do masterful blacksmith work,his main thing was being a layout specialist... The man didn't need a calculator because he was the calculator! He probably hung out with Tesla back in the day lol. And yep he gave me and quite a few others many butt chewing over the years! But I sure miss him all the same, He changed my life and made me a better man!

I've worked at several wrought iron shops. One of them was I was just a green welder coming straight out trade school and knew very little of the craft. And I found the owner of the shop who shall go nameless was very arrogant and obnoxious and he'd consider himself a master. I remember channel 13 pbs came out and did a documentary and the showboating was on full display. But the main guy under the owner who I had already mention was an exceptional smith in fact he was under a contract with the owner It's just my opinion and don't mean squat but the shop foreman "Ken" was many times the craftsman as the obnoxious owner ever was and yet very humble. I doubt he continued working for him for too long. I didn't exactly hang around to find out.. A couple of jobs later I worked for an old smith from Russia and his family had own Dallas Iron works for since the depression and He was a dream boss...... He used to sit in his little office drawing stair rail blueprints and at the end of the day we'd share a beer and he'd tell me about" The Battle of the Bulge" and how German tanks were better than ours and how you could only take em out by blowing up the their tracks.. I've known a couple of old wise men who I would consider masters and a few of young men like my friend Ken who I would consider one as well.. But perhaps the wanna be masters should just do like the Samurai and duel it out!

If you stake it and I WOULD STAKE IT! She'll hold. The landing is only something we would use on huge swing gates that goes across drive ways. You may not have that sort of room. And how is it going to look aesthetically as well has to be considered. The other posts had some good ideals as well. By going in 3' foot deep and perhaps tying into the the stop post under the dirt to make a rigid frame seeing how you don't want to come off the building with anything is something we've done before. Like I said the stakes you drive them off into the side of the hole and drive em deep! Then when the swing pole is level,weld it to the stakes and cover with cement.. Good looking gate by the way ,really nice work I like it!

You're not overdoing it at all. I've done a lot of gates over the years On a heavy swing gate we use to put what I'd call a landing but it was like a 3'x3' square dug a foot deep and then the posthole will go right in the center of it and we also "Stake the post too" with several 3/4 tubings about 2' feet long driving into the dirt diagonally up against the post and weld them onto the post when you have the post level. A helper to hold the post level in both directions helps while you do this. But the cement will cover the stakes and you might want to put some rebar in the landing as well. but let the green cement set for a day or two until it's cured and when your hanging a very heavy gate it doesn't hurt to have it slightly out of level so that when it's finally hung the weight of the gate will drop it down to level. Heavy duty barrel hinges with the grease fitting and ball bearing inside the hinge is what I would use for hinges as well. I realize the landing might be over kill but for years I was an installer doing this and this is what we would do for monster swing gates that go over drive ways and used an operator. a walk gate maybe not so much.

Hey that's a great ideal.. I've been thinking about making things like a big rounding hammer by reforging old sledge hammer heads, Of course some tools I'll buy as I need them. Other things like a guillotine I'll probably make. It's a lot of fun making stuff!

Well thank you I appreciate the encouraging words. You know I've been really blessed with having had some great teachers in my life . Yeah my little swage block has some half rounds and V grooves already plus I do have some jigs for that fit the hardy hole and I'll need to the top matching fuller hammers and I'll make those in time. Of course a swage block that is solid iron or cast steel is going to be stronger but this design was just so much faster to make one this way though, I mean I would spend probably a month welding up and every nook and cranny were I not of use the aluminum. Around all the edges I have 1/2 inch plate that is also reinforced with a thick 2x2 x1/4 wall tubing plus other pieces of solid stuff so that it will indeed be able to take a pounding. I'm now making a serious stand for it as well and then I'll post the final pictures of it.. As far as the aluminum casting goes I'm thinking about casting my own drive wheels for a belt sander. Making molds has been a frustrating experience though.

I have another question. If a guy used raw wood instead of charcoal does it contaminate high carbon steel making it unsuitable for knives and other cutting tools? I use both and I often make my own charcoal and I like how convenient it is when I'm running low on fuel to just go grab a shovel load and keep going. I think I read this is how Europe became deforested because of ship building and running forges and steam engines. Any thoughts on the matter?

Well not wrought Iron related but I've often wondered why not forge weld some carbon steel into these rail road knifes to give the knife a better edge?

Well I know one for sure and that's this... If Helen of Troy looked anything like Barbara Eden I can see how the Trojan war got started!

Here in Texas we have a place called "Kings Supply" and what that is is a dome cap for 6" inch pipe. But it isn't the one I wanted to use seeing how it's not truly domed but flattens out a wee bit on the bottom. The kind I wanted to use wasn't available at the time. But there are other things I guess that could be used like a Oxygen bottle cap. it would be smaller but it's a good dome. One jig I'm gonna make I'll be hammering different size ball bearings into two solid blocks of 1" thick steel and these will eventually become ball swages for forming ball ends on tong handles. Just upset the steel handle ends to a certain size and then throw em in the ball swage.

Maybe I overreacted a bit. just "Gosh,diddly darn it" don't do it for me. tell ya what though I'll delete my bad word. ah too late he done got it. No we're cool. been working on other stuff but I'm finishing up the swage and then I'll make a stand.

Well It seems I've offended the moderator over childish stuff there for I guess I need to be moving on. Here take that!

My momma was a redhead and she was mean as xxxx. I'll stick with the brunettes!

I was reading a story a few years back about an old smith and he was lamenting how wrought iron was hard to find and it being replaced by mild steel. He was saying how much easier wrought iron was to forge weld. But mild steel needed to be brought to a very high temperature to be able to forge weld and that he kept burning it. Well thanks for the info. I thought he was joshing me it would be wonderful if steel had this quality though,It would be like working with melted glass lol.

I was told many years ago by a guy who I would consider to be an outstanding blacksmith. I mean he did beautiful curved staircases and beautiful ornate scroll work as well. You name it he could make it and he even studied blacksmithing in Spain and pretty much if he said it I tended to believe it. But he told me that real wrought iron when heated up to a yellow heat acts a lot like mozzarella cheese in that it could be pulled and stretched and you can really do some wild crazy things with the stuff. I've never worked wrought Iron but this seems to me looking back now to be a little bit far fetched and maybe he was just pranking me. But he seem quite serious about it. So is this true or false? Come now somebody's gotta know a little about this just seems to good to be true!

Probably turn it into big slag puddle and have the dang furnace fall over and collapse on me! Darn shame too cause I was gonna get a couple of cases of beer and have some of my drunk buddies help me hammer my new dream anvil into shape...

I stand corrected all I was doing was melting aluminum I believe the melting point is only like 1200 degrees. I have been watching these youtube videos of 3rd world folks smelting iron ore into a workable "bloom" but they are only make a little blob. But to make say a big monster size anvil out a huge bloom not to mention forge welding a high carbon steel face plate to it would to take a giant clay smelter and would be way to big of job for a little guy like me.. Besides there's like 40 of them on the duel bellow pots and all I got is a squirrel cage fan! But yeah my ideal was to build this big monster clay furnace and then take a bunch of charcoal and instead of Iron ore load it up with scrap iron and see if we can't melt it into a big ball of iron!