BillyBones

I am not getting this bump thing, isnt that the same as when some one says they are reviving an old post maybe from years ago? Anyway, am i the only one who read that story in a Monty Python documentary kind of voice?

I have used leaf for a few chisels, mostly for wood working though. I made a couple big Bowie knives with leaf a couple years back, of course a few axes, i think i still have a couple unfinished, and the dies for the guillotine as well. I am kind of thinking of using one leaf, the one with the bushings on the ends, and build some sort of ballista. Use the spring for the limbs of a giant crossbow more or less.

Interesting fact i found out, the most mined substance in the world today is sand. My knowledge of what minerals that are around me is rocks and dirt. As a matter of fact that is about what i know about geology at all. Really though around here to find anything of value like that it would be either Indian artifacts like arrow heads, spear points, etc. or fossils. Oaks Quarry park, Frosty knows of it, is about a mile from my house. Someone there a couple years back found a fossil of some kind of tube worm. Now the shells of them are pretty common but this one had the worm's "head" sticking out of it. Looked kind of like palm leaves. It was valued at many thousands of dollars. I have found a lot of what i used to call natalists but i think someone told me they were ammonites iirc. The Indian artifacts that have been found here are really old as well. 500BC old. If you find something you are allowed to keep it but if you sell it you break a few laws. There are ways to sell the stuff but it is not easy. I have found a few semi precious stones, carbuncle, garnet, amethyst, etc. And one piece someone told me was jade but i have my doubts. Being this area i live was were the glaciers stopped, we have a town just south of me called Moraine, it can be a toss up on what you will find. So, thar maybe gold in them thar hills yet. Ohio also has a lot of flint and if pyrite were valued like gold, we would all be rich. I used to live with a girl that was a geologist and here father was a geology professor at an Ivy League school. When she moved in she was the one who told me my water stunk like sulfur becuase there was a vein of pyrite under the house, the bacteria eating the pyrite waste product was what gave it the sulfur smell. She took care of that and as long as we lived there had good water.

One summer they renovated our old Jr. high school (used to be the high school until the mid 80's). Built in the late 50's. When they were taking out the sinks in the science classrooms they discovered tons of mercury in the drains. For years it was just dumped down the sink from what i came to understand. Amazing how any of us survived childhood. Playing with mercury, lead based paint, asbestos, drinking water from the hose, long hours shirtless in the sun...

For a while it will be making rust... with the other dozen or so leaf springs i have.

Got some road kill in front of the house today. A piece of leaf spring, unfortunately it also explains the loud POP/BANG noise i heard pulling into the drive way. Guess i get to replace my leaf springs next weekend.

Wow, that is way more information about gold than i can digest right now. I have not heat treated yet. But was figuring on drawing it back to an almost purple. That is what i figured it would be for more scraping and breaking up soil than hard digging.

I gathered all that from watching a few videos, like cracks and crevices, where the water slow, etc. That one guy i mentioned, the geologist made a model river to show how hydraulic something or others worked in how heavy material gathers in certain spots. I thought it was pretty cool as a way of seeing physics at work in nature. I watched that show Deadwood and deducted this from gold mining. If i were to want to make money i would be either the blacksmith making and repairing the miners tools, the general store owner, or the saloon/house of ill repute owner.

I know there used to be a couple gold mines here in Ohio. But no, Ohio is not known as a gold producing area. I watched a couple of the videos he suggested and one a guy who says he is a geologist said the same thing about panning. Find the gold and then triangulate where the gold is coming from and that is where you mine at. But the pan is just used for the detective work. As far as getting rich, nah, i watched another video where a couple guys spent a day crushing rock and actually smelting gold. 1/2 ton of rock and 6 hours later they got 1 1/3 grams. Seemed like a waste of time to me unless it is just for fun. Fun to watch as well and i learned a bit about smelting. More interesting to me than the gold. Me and my grandpa went panning a couple times but never found anything. More of something to do with the grandson most likely and yeah it was fun. I could see it being a fun hobby, getting out in nature and the like though. I wouldnt know placer gold from a nugget or what ever it is all called. What kind of steel? Well the kind made from iron. Seriously though i am not sure. I cut a small piece off and it hardened in oil though. I am guessing that since i got it from work it is in the 1045 or so range since that is about the highest carbon steel we work with. Thanks for the compliments.

I would try the bearing on the seat of an old office chair. Have an old guy at work that has discovered youtube, specifically videos about gold panning. He has bought pans and a sluice and all that, i am expecting soon he will buy a mule, a floppy hat, and bibs. But anyway he asked if i could make him a small pick. So anyway yesterday i made this little guy. Needs a bit if grinder work, not real happy with the eye, the bottom one end is a bit thin, and heat treated. Made if a mystery metal that hardened in oil.

Frosty, you are absolutely right. It is like clockwork, all about timing. And yep, it is all in the set up. Just keep it fed and watch for problems, sometimes those problems can be quite disastrous too. Youtube has all the training videos available for the Davenport. They are kind of dated and a lot has changed as far as tooling and and a few other things. Like the training videos say that there is no adjustment for cut off depth, there is now.

Yes it is a screw machine. Davenport model B. I think the ones we have were built in the 70's and 80's. No electronic controls except for the button that turns the motor on. Adjustments are made by tweeking a deadstop or swing arm. However the new tooling for these things helps tremendously. We use carbide inserts now instead of the old circular or dovetail tooling. Change an insert and vary rarely do you even have to make an adjustment. I must also admit that tight of a tolerance is usually only one or 2 of the dimensions, the rest i usually get +/- .002 or .003 on. One job i run has a +/- of .005" on the tightest, i love that job. I can sit on my but and watch cat videos when i run it. I am hoping that soon i will not be doing that anymore though. My foreman wants me to move into the tool room to take over for our tool maker who will be retiring soon. Our tool maker and engineer are also both trying to get the GM to give me the nod as well. Since the first time i ever set foot in a machine shop that is where i wanted to work.

We have this machine that you input the dimensions of the of part, put parts in the machine, and it uses lasers and within about half second measures all those dimensions and tells you what the measurements are and if they are out of spec are displayed in red. Those instruments are by 1/2's to the hundred thousandth but accurate to the tenth. A lot of parts i run have +/- .0005" tolerance. I am also holding that tolerance on a machine that was designed 100 years ago and run anywhere from 3,000 to 17,000 a shift. Depending on material, size, etc.

That thing with the pins i have always heard called a contour gauge. It is quite useful in carpentry. Say you are laying floor and there is a pipe or something that you need to fit around. Just push it against the pipe then transfer that "image" to your board and it will fit. Takes a lot of guess work and trial and error out of doing it. Starrett makes quite high quality measuring tools. Just about every set of mics i have ever owned has been Starrett. Brown & Sharp is also a good brand but i have a hard time reading them. All of our digital instruments at work are Mitutoyo. They measure down to .000005".

That is a pretty cool doo dad.

We just repaired a casting on a machine at work. Mill or grind a couple flats on the broken off part. Drill, i would use 3 from the looks of the size of the piece, holes through the piece. Drill and tap 3 holes in the place it broke from. A bit of JB weld will hold it in place while drilling and can be easily dislodged after. Clean both surfaces really well then bolt it on and have a competent welder run a bead around the seems. The machine we repaired is basically and automatic lathe, Davenport 5 spindle, that is pushing a tool into a 7/8" round bar of steel. The repair point is the fulcrum for the tool and i will guarantee it has way more pressure on it that what you have. The repair has been holding up nicely.

I did not have the bale (iirc that is what it is called) in the pic. Mainly becuase i had yet to make it. So first thing today a i made it. Maybe seeing all the parts will help with what a hasp is compared to a hinge.

Had the day off work today. So out in the shop i went. Made this here hasp for a project i have.

You should have several different radii on your anvil in my opinion. Near the cutting bench on the far side of my anvil it is a good 1/2" radius, that is what i refer to as the "soft" side. Makes an excellent fuller. I have a Mousehole that was made in the 1850's so much of it has come from being used for that purpose i suspect. Then the radii get smaller as you go around my anvil, to the front side that has very small radii. If i do need a sharp corner i use the end of the heal sideways or an anvil block. About the support on the horn, the horn is an obtuse triangle and with the one angle on the bottom of the horn it is inherently stronger with more support than what a cylindrical shape would be. I think that is why some anvils the horn slighty points upward and is more of a scalene triangle. The driving force of the hammer blow is directed into the body of the anvil. Or i could be full of hot air on that.

Frosty, when i was a kid my grandma told me that you have to let a wild spot grow in the yard so the Fae folk could have a place to live. I have always had a spot or corner of my yard that i do not mow or take care of and let it grow wild becuase of that. Nobody, For me along those lines it was "finer than frogs hair" usually in reference to an attractive woman, Ribeye britches instead of milkbone boxers, the cat one got me, and "Fair to middlin" was usually in response to "How ya doin?". I had a squad leader in the Army that had a couple good ones i always liked. If you asked him what was going on he would say either " Aint nothin shakin but he beans in the pot and the beans aint shakin cause the water aint hot" Or "Aint nothin blowin but the leaves on the trees and the leaves aint blowin cause they aint no breeze" I just recently learned of that talkin to the bees thing. Tanging, now that is definitely new to me but we used to clack rocks to attract bats in the evening. Me and my cousins would get a couple rocks and bang them together, with in a few minutes there would a bunch of bats around. It was usueful on those nights when there was a lot of mosquitos about.

1st shift at the shop i work in took their break late. The lady that owns the shop is an absolutely wonderful woman, she bakes us brownies and cookies all the time, sends us birthday cards and stuff, dont tell her if you just had a child our grandchild she will want pictures all the time, but anyway she made sure that everyone their had glasses to watch it with. I work nights so i did not have to be at work till 4pm, the show was more or less over by 3:30 here so i got to watch it then leave for work. We had warning about people coming here to watch it and that the roads and stuff could be jam packed, but like i said nobody wants to come to Ohio and i had one of the best drives to work since covid shut everything down.

In Iceland you will find little tiny houses on road sides and the like that are put there for the Fairies. This past summer i taught my granddaughter how to build fairy houses with twigs, leaves, grass, etc. in the backyard.

I very rarely use the horn of my anvil. I have tried but as far as fullering on it i get much better results using the soft edge or a hardy fuller. Mostly i just use the pein of my hammer on the flat face though. For rings and scrolls i have anvil bicks and the like for that. If i were looking for an anvil, i would buy it. If it had good rebound and no dead spots that is.

Frosty you are right about the month but it is 9 years away in 2033.

One of the reasons i like living in Ohio, nobody wants to come to Ohio. We had clear skies and i got to see the eclipse quite nicely. Did discover one thing though, my auto darkening welding helmet does not darken when pointed at the sun. Had to get out the old one with just a dark lens in it.