BillyBones

At our local strip the shut down is kind of short and the sand pit, you would rather run off into the creak next to track. If you run faster than an 11 sec. 1/4 (well 1000 feet now) you can only run 1/8 mile. The track is still NHRA sanctioned ( there is also a NASCAR sanctioned round track there) so every once in a while we will get a big name racer come and show off. On the 4th of July we have the "Night of Fire". Jet powered semis running. National Trail raceway in Columbus (that is where i ran the Olds) used to be home to the Summer Nationals, then it became the Buckeye nationals, now it is up by Cleveland. Anyway i always wanted to go to the Winter Nationals. I do not know if it is still true but Cali and Ohio used to be the top 2 in number of drag strips in the state. Any group of folks who love drag racing as much as i cant be all bad. I did get to go to a filming of that show "Pinks" at a drag strip in Louisiana.

Nothing finished yet, but here is why we dress our struck tools. The piece missed me but i have had to dig a piece out of my flesh before. Notice it aint even mushroomed over very bad at all either. Even a little can chip off. So i spent a good bit yesterday dressing tools. Sorry the pic is a little blurry, phone kept wanting to focus on everything but the punch, but you can still see the chip out the side of it.

A guy locally has a Champion for sale. He wants $400 for it. Needless to say he has had it for sale for a long time.

I spent many a summers night at the drag strip when i was a kid. My dad was a racer. He ran mostly door slammers but we were at races with some of the biggest names in drag racing. The guy that did the heads on my dads car is the same guy that did the heads for Don Garlits. i remember i had a t-shirt that said "Pit Crew" on it i always wore. I spent my own time on a strip but never sponsored or anything just going out for test and tune or something. I had a NO2 powered Mitsi that could turn a 13.5 in the 1/4. A few years ago i built a TH 700 for a guys Olds Cutlass and he let me run it. I worked for him so it was not like we had just met but that was a huge thrill. 418 small block, blown, running nitro methane. It dyno'ed at 1800HP. I went 180 MPH at an 8 sec flat. Drag racing and baseball are the only 2 sports i enjoy. Oh, another memory of racing, when i was a kid my dad also street raced. We have a road here that is straight and level for 3/4 mile till it goes up a hill, then still straight for a mile or 2. The police would sit on top of the hill late at night. If they turned on their lights that meant that a car was coming and we needed to get off the road till it went past.

Frosty, that sounds yummy. Need to post the recipe over at the Vulcan grill. We always just lopped the head and tail off, gutted them and fried them skin on. I hated fish as a kid becuase you had to pick out the bones and if you missed one it would poke the back of your throat. I used to keep fish tanks. I had a really nice reef tank and a nice fresh water. I lost the salt tank when we moved but my fresh water tank i kept going. When i first got it i put this little Plecostomus, sucker fish, in it. About 6 years later i got divorced and had no where to put the tank so the x kept it. Well the fish kept growing and growing. After a couple years of her having the tank the fish finally went belly up. He had grown as big as he could in the tank. At least 12" long and provably weighed 3#. The x having only ever had goldfish, flushed him down the toilet. Needless to say that did not work out well.

Frosty, actually many cranks are cast. You can tell the same way we tell if anvils are cast, raised lettering. Racers spend big bucks to get forged cranks for their cars. Look up any hot rod catalogue and they will have listings for both cast and forged. Their have also been many many an article devoted which to choose for your application. Cam shafts on the other hand i am not sure about. Fun fact, top fuel drag cars have some of the cam lobes up to 180* out of time, that is why they "lope" or miss on the line, when they launch the torque of the engine actually twists the cam into proper time.

I was under the assumption that it being free machine steel it could not be used. The only time i tried was with a piece of small hex stock and it just crumbled under the hammer. But just becuase my print said 12L14 does not mean that is what we got. Would not be the first time we received the wrong material.

Glenn, beat me to it. Local codes here say no, but you have to have a much larger clearance for single wall as to class A pipe. You can call local building inspector or fireman.

Latticino, nice ax. Will, mostly no shim but i have used them on a couple that were stubborn. I use Borax with some metal filings thrown in. Not much, i keep my Borax in a .50 cal can, about a table spoon of filings in half a can of Borax. The worst part of making the ax is the heat radiating off such a large surface. You definitely want a long handled spoon for your flux. Be prepared for failure. Even though i have done a bunch of these i still have quite a few in the scrap pile.

I always wanted one of those big long hillbilly beards i could tuck in my belt. I can not get past maybe 1/2" before i have to shave, the itch drives me nuts.

I have made better than a dozen axes from leaf spring this past year. Yes it is a pain to weld but once you get the technique down it gets much easier. Do not get lax in that technique though. Do it the same way with as much attention to the details as the first one. Here is one i made a while back ago. I will start by necking down the center of the spring some before folding, that helps with the eye profile. Also after i have it done i fire up the old stick welder and run a bead in the blade side of the eye. That will take out the sharp "V" shape to get more of a gentle curve, more of a "U" shape. Edit: Done as in the welding and shaping, weld before heat treating. Just to clarify.

SinDoc, nothing of note in Ohio? You do know we are the "Heart of it All", right? I see you are in Marysville. That is about an hour away. Have you looked up SOFA yet? (Southern Ohio Forge and Anvil). SOFA is over in Troy at the fair grounds. SOFA is home to the most important event of the year, Quad state. Anyway hope to see you there and if your ever near Dayton with some time to kill give us a holler and bring your hammer.

Frosty, some of my lumps of coal weigh in at about a 100#. I stand them up and use an old ax to split the seem. Once i get pieces about dinner plate size and an inch or so thick i put them in an old tar bucket and crush with a 12# sledge. So i will call the next part overthinking, not thinking and heartbreak. First the heartbreak. Started grinding my slitter and discovered a crack. It is far enough towards the end hopefully i will be able to lop it off and draw it out some more to salvage the piece. I think i worked a little to cold at some point. About halfway up the grind spot on the left going diagonally towards the end. You can see it good on my phone but not so much here. Now the overthinking and not thinking. Made a chicken cooker for the hangy thingy. Was having trouble getting the weld for the treble hook. I figured the 3/8 bar may be cooling to fast and loosing welding heat from forge to anvil. So i put an anvil on my forge (read that as a 15# block of 4140) Put my iron in the fire, set my hammer close, on my tong rack, got my heat, grabbed my iron and then about blistered my hand. Not thinking, Hammer handle that close to the fire gets a little warm. Overthinking, chicken cooker is basically a vertical spit. Spits have forks for holding the meat when cooking. Spits have a fork on each end. So i made a sliding fork to hold the top of the chicken. Overthinking, how do i get that big fork through the bird? Going to be hard enough for that ring. The wire was for holding the useless fork back while i was welding the treble. Would like to give a special thanks to Jenifer, her blacksmiths diamond video gave me the understanding to do the welded collars. You can see one right below the loop on top. The idea is to be able to turn the hooks so you can get an even roasting. Also trying out a new finish. It is called Howard's Feed and Wax. A combination of beeswax, carnauba wax, and orange oil and "other ingredients" (what ever they are) Seems to like to go on metal much cooler than other stuff. Gives more of a silvery black finish also. I also made a hook, no pic, for grabbing the top loops to turn or remove the meat from the hangy thingy. Yes i know, i need to empty my ash bucket. It has been a day or 2.

We are running a job at work of hex material, 3/4". It is 12L14. Really bites looking at piles and piles of scrap steel that is anywhere from 1/16" diameter to 1", 6"-8" long and not a bit usable, all free machine steel. Occasionaly we will get 1018 or 1030 maybe a bit of 303 stainless but almost all of it is 12L14. After a quick search on the internet machine there has already been a discussion of PTO shafts and group agreement comes out as 1040-ish. If the piece is something similar in use to a PTO i would assume that it is something similar in material. I have run into hex lug wrenches also, which has also been discussed and they are 1080 or L-6 typically. Also crow bars are usually hex and i want to say they are also 1080-ish. As a side note we are running a job in the CNC department out of a material called Kovar. $20 +/- a pound, a single bar is $400.

Made a hangy thingy for next to the campfire. Then a new slitter. Still needs some work on the grinder. Made from A-2. Also managed to lop off a hunk of my hand with my coal axe, still sharp.

I scored a piece of A-2 recently that was 12" x 4" x 7/16", was becuase i hacked of a 4" x 4" piece to make a flatter, mostly i was thinking slitters but maybe a chisel will be in order.

Thanks guys, that is exactly what i was thinking just wanted to clarify. Also to clarify i did not think it was a soft spot on the anvil meaning less hard. i have heard the term softening a corner when taking the edge off. Some of his terminology is slightly different and I was just not sure if he meant the same thing.

I was going to ask this in just another thread but decided to make its own thread, thought it may help others. Anyway i spent some time yesterday watching some videos. One was a Mark Asprey video of him making a miners candle stick. That video shows a great method of making sharp corners on a piece. During the process he said he would use the "soft side" of the anvil and that his chisel had a soft side he would use to finish a cut. So what does he mean the "soft side" of the anvil? I assume that he means that the corner has more radius on one side than the other and same with the chisel not being sharp all the way across but having one side slightly rounded rather than sharp. But we all know what happens when you assume. Just want a little clarification and figured i would ask the experts.

Oops, copy and paste. Sorry i knew that it was not actually by Franklin but has been credited to him for years mistakenly. David Auerbach is the one who actually said it.

"In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria." - Ben Franklin

So that is why i got the weird looks. Drank straight from the bottled wrapped in a brown paper bag.

Wine with corks and now curling? We need to quit or someone may start to think we are civilized here.

If ya'll make to the park give me a hollar, my house is 2 stop lights from that park. Maybe 3/4 mile or so. The park has a fossilized coral reef system from the Silurian age (what ever that is) It is actually quite big with riding trails and the like. Well big for this part of Ohio. For info it is part of the Beavercreek wetlands water shed.

Not many skiers here in Ohio so we use pine tar for baseball bats.

I am no conosuire of wine so i must ask, Why are the bottles upside down?