Donal Harris

Less hippo looking. 

I enjoyed this one. It is a copy of the book in the Cornell University library. I believe it was free. 

Wrong medication or medication at the wrong dosages. The pharmacist likely should have caught that. It is their job. Causes death sometimes. 
 

Happy it worked out. 

Much of the entire thing was a slog. But if you keep digging, there are more than.  pearls to be found. 

And the reason I stopped trying it after getting my daddy’s cast off drill press. 

 Very, very necro’d.

On 10/30/2008 at 9:01 AM, Glenn said:

There has been a lot of talk about using borax as a flux, some use it straight from the box and some talk about using anhydrous borax. The difference is the chemically attached water. Borax can be easily converted to anhydrous borax by baking in the oven to drive off the water.

You drive off the water at 250-300 degrees F to turn borax into anhydrous borax. So what is different from using 1500 degrees F to do the same thing. How is using borax on hot steel different from using anhydrous borax as any water will be driven off as soon as it comes in contact with the hot steel anyway.

You can drive out the water by simply heating it in an oven at a low baking heat?

Could I use a glass baking dish from  a thrift store or yard sale, or is  a metal pan better?

What about a mixture of borax and boric acid?

Mail Call as well…..

Much less expensive than the originals, one volume at a time. 

Titanium and other such coated drills become plain HSS after sharpening, correct?

What about mill scale or high carbon steels, HSS works well for those?

Carbide requires a press?

5 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

"Third hand"  I added one to my cylindrical pipe forge.  The forge was made from a section of Oxygen welding tank so lots of metal to weld accessories too.  I found a piece of sq tubing and welded it parallel to the long axis of the tank and found a piece of sq stock that would slide back and forth in it when aligned; but would "lock" in place when let rotate a few degrees. Bent an L in one end and have an easily adjustable third hand---I added another on the other side so I could have one for the back opening of the forge too.!

Do you have a drawing or photo?

1 hour ago, BenW said:

Made a little owl talisman or trinket.  I have wanted to make one for while, and finally got around to it.

Looks cool. What punches or fullers did you use?  Do you have a holder or something to work on them in?

5 hours ago, alexandr said:

Monday 10 May. 14 hours, 400 km, 3 completed objects.

Is there a net, screen, or glass for it, or are bitting insects not a problem in St. Petersburg?

My snapping smaller bits with hand drills is probably a little bit (NPI) cuttings clogging the flutes, but is mainly too much speed and not keeping the drill vertical over the hole. The bit binds and snaps. This never happens when I am using a drill press. 
 

I forget who it was earlier in this thread who said “high pressure : lower speed”, but thanks. I tried that yesterday and bits I had thought were dull cut very well. 
 

I also tried hand sharpening a bit. No luck. All I managed to do was make the bit about 1/4” shorter.  I even had a brand new bit to use as a reference. I am buying a Drill Doctor. I usually use cobalt bits, so it would pay for itself in only a few years.

Something like this looks like it wouldn’t be too difficult to fabricate. You wouldn’t be able to do nearly as much with it as you could with a post vise, but it should work for holding things for grinding, filing, or twisting. I’ve never seen one in person or known anyone who has used one, but I expect someone here has and would know if the are useful or not. 
 

This one has joints in the top for the side pieces, but you could probably avoid those with a welder. 

As for what I did today, I took some flat bar and scrap 16 gauge steel and made something to hold a trash bag open while I sweep leaves into the bag.  I used some of the tips given on drilling holes (heavy pressure - slow speed) that were given on another thread.  The difference in how much easier it was to drill the holes was night and day.

I didn’t use the forge. I wanted to see if I could do it without heat. No idea why. I just did. To join the pieces I just cut 1/4” round into 1/2” pieces, beveled one end of each piece, put them in the holes, and hammered them down. Not pretty, but it is very functional. 

Excessive rebound.  I learned very quickly not to lean my head over the anvil while working. I missed and struck the anvil. The hammer nearly broke my nose when it bounced back. 

I spoke with one of the SCABA directors. He told me to bring it by and he would swap it out for a much cleaner one. 

Without a drill press, if the bit you choose for the pilot hole is too small it will snap more often than not. Probably not a problem with thinner stuff, but with thicker stuff it is. If the bit is in the hole and you shift the drill even just a little bit out of line, it will break off in the hole. This is the reason many drill sets you see in someone’s shop are missing a few of the smaller sizes. 
 

It isn’t as much of a problem with a drill press. You can usually find used ones for very little money. Don’t worry if they are old and beat up. Mine is a beater from China that my Dad gave to me one day when he was in a very rare mood. I’ve been using it for three or for years now. 

I’m with Bantou. Fish does not belong in a taco. Chorizo, pork, or beef. No fish.

This thread brings to mind one of the things I found most distressing when I was first starting. Math is required for blacksmithing. 
 

Which brings to mind a joke my Organic Chem professor told me. Calculus saves lives. It keeps the idiots out of medical school. 

16 hours ago, Bantou said:

Thanks for the tip. I’ll pick one up today. 

Be careful with it. PPE is essential and always be ready for it to catch and kick off at an odd angle. Of all the dangerous tools we use, a wire wheel is right up there with the worst of them. If you have an apron, wear it. If not, expect to be pulling wires out of your legs and belly. 

Wire wheel is better than a flap disk. It only removes the rust and not the iron. 

The twists I had put in the legs were worse than terrible. I untwisted them and re-twisted them this afternoon and joined them together. In doing so, I found my welds on two of them were not actually welded. I tried again to get them to take, but ended up just drilling a small hole in each of them and riveting them. A little bit of a letdown, but I’m still new to this. At least the legs are relatively straight and the twists are reasonably even. 
 

Tomorrow I hope to get the ring added and at least begin the trammel hook. 
 

Should the ring go through all three loops on the legs?
 

And I REALLY need to straighten up around my forging area. 

Good job on the candleholder. 
 

It also looks like it would make a very handy thing for home defense in a pinch. I don’t mean that in a negative way. It is just the second thing to pop in my head when looking at it. 

pnut, you looking for the earlier individual books or the later version where all three volumes were combined into one book?

eBay has one of the latter for $75 OBO. 

At a SCABA meeting a few years ago, I used one of those to cut paper to make tags the trade items. I had asked the guy whose shop we were at if he had any scissors. He said, “Sure” and pointed over to the shears laying on his bench. 
 

They actually did a fairly decent job of it. 

I really should continue working on my campfire cooking tripod or any of my other unfinished projects but I get bored and my attention wanders.

I began the afternoon on the tripod. Straighten the twist back out of one of the legs. Two more to go. Put that away and worked on a flatter a bit and then came in to play Red Dead Redemption on the PS4 for a while.  It had just got way too hot out.  I am starting to wish for some St. Petersburg weather.

I need to upset it still further and straighten up the lean a bit. Then it should be ready for me to punch and drift a hole for the handle. 

The business end had a piece of axle tubing around the carbon steel inner part. It seems to have welded Ok. The tubing sparks like mild steel and will not be harden-able. Time will tell if leaving it on was a mistake. 

Is that tubing?

How did you hide the cord?

Did you join any of it by arc welding?