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I Forge Iron

eutrophicated1

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Everything posted by eutrophicated1

  1. O.K., Mr. Frosty, if you say so. You just better be triple sure about the "bolts" holding those idler pulleys on. They don't have hex heads, nor are they secured with female allen heads. The only other way they could be secured is that they're studs, welded or threaded into the platen and frame. That's why I 'asked' how they were attached. At least I'm willing to look, listen and learn, not you though. You're so busy being right, you don't have time to listen. And that's scary. DONE
  2. Well, I'm going to have to build a press, if I ever want to draw out some billets. Though I'll start with come stock reduction blades, then heat treat them. Because I also have spent the last 25 years doing IT work. Lots of stress and no hammering on stuff to relieve it. So now that I'm into my 4th quarter century, and having had triple bypass surgery 10 years ago, and having good welding and mechanics skills to go with my mechanical engineering/materials science education, I find it reasonable to consider a hydraulic press sooner, rather than later. Just gotta sell off some stuff, so I can get what I need to make a grinder first. And, BadOlPuttyTat, I also live in Michigan, in a suburban area, where over-sized Butler-hammers are verboten. So we may have one or two things in common here. I hope your wife doesn't think you're crazy too.
  3. Its a Jurassic hydraulic red-white-and-blue beast monster, heh heh. I love it. May there be many, many billets squeezed through there. You may not have enough room in your shop anymore. Maybe I should buy that drill press, and relieve some of that tool pressure.
  4. Hi, again, IBT. I hope you don't mind the contraction of your name. Mine is FJH. I was wondering what retainer system you used on the wheels for your grinder; and is the drive wheel fully mounted onto the motor arbor? It might be possible for the belt tension to move that drive wheel just enough at high speed to allow the motor arbor to "machine" the wheel hub rather quickly, especially where the keyway is. What material is that hub made of? Sorry to keep going on about these details; but the last thing I want to hear is an injury report.
  5. I don't know if I would trust my life to a wheel set as light as those appear. If a belt grinder throws a belt, because a wheel broke, parts/pieces could go flying every which way in a hurry.
  6. High, Dave, and welcome. I'm a newer member here as well. I have seen Jeremy's videos, and am impressed with that 2x72 design, and implementation. Jeremy is a prodigy for sure. And I plan on using his videos and documentation to build my own belt grinder. The only caution I would give is that the design requires significant fabrication and welding skills, and a high degree of dedication to the time needed to complete the project. This is a complex build, with quick-change attachments for: platen, 10 inch contact wheel, small wheels, small radius grinds and several types of table rests. I've seen videos of professional fabricators trying to build this beast of a machine, and messing up the job. Jeremy's build showed clearances of only .008" on the sliding accessory tube; the pros had to have twice that just to get the sliding fixtures to work. Sloppy. I would really appreciate seeing the progress of someone having a good result with the build. I believe that there are others on this forum who would also enjoy seeing your thread of such a build.
  7. At some point you may want to add an attachment for a 10 or 12 inch "large" wheel, very handy for hollow grinding and some handle work on blades. Also maybe an attachment for a set of small diameter wheels for those really tight radii grinds. These 2 by 72 inch grinders can be amazingly flexible in configurations.
  8. There's enough sulfur in cheap engine oil(and some expensive ones) that came out of the ground, to make a pretty good sulfuric acid for pickling steel. Its the sulfur oxidation process from all the engine starts and stops that turns the sulfur into SO2, which in turn breaks down the oil, to grab some of its hydrogen, then more oxygen to make H2SO4, which ionizes with the aid of more acquired water from yet more broken hydrocarbon chains into sulfuric acid. All that "Cracking" of hydrocarbons in your engine sump, is what turns the fresh oil black. The metallic wear factor in engine bearings, camshafts, lifters, rockers and cranks in motor cars comes out to be maybe 3 grams, over the whole life of a well-maintained engine. Dirt? what dirt, how's it going to get into the engine sump? Well, there are the situations of poor engine designs that let coolant into the cylinders. That'll make dirt. True synthetic motor oils are polymerized out of methane and ethane. There are a couple of synthetic motor oils that don't have sulfur in them. That's why they can last up to 50k miles. Similar synthetic oils were invented by the Germans during WWII to run their aircraft and panzer tanks. Maybe the best reason for using some of the vegetable oils is their higher flashpoints. Automatic Transmission fluids have much higher flashpoints yet, in the range of 600 to 800 degrees F. In fact, after 10 years of rebuilding tranis, I've never seen the fluid actually combust. Throw a lit match into it, and it just goes out. And I've seen some tranis so abused the fluid in them congealed into solid varnish. Of course there were the cases where the fluid came out stinking and black. The trani clutch-pack plates in those cases were friction welded together, like a damascus nightmare. It looks like most of the steel alloys are liquid-quenchable. So, which liquid(s) are best? None of the motor oils mentioned had associated viscosity or weights attached to them. Maybe multi-weight oils are better, if they actually increase in viscosity as they become super heated.
  9. Right, regarding the hammer time. I'm too old to start swinging more than a 2 pound'r much. I've seen several bottle-jack press builds, been wondering if I should go air-over hydraulic, or straight hydraulic pump. Didn't even bother to check the prices yet. I'll start with stock-reduction bladesmithing first, maybe some 1080 steel. See how that goes, then maybe build an electric heat-treat oven with PID. I actually made steel in my youth, the open-hearth furnaces in East Chicago, Indiana. Some 12 hour bottle-top stainless heats, then some zip-zip 3hr. mild steel heats, different furnace. 250-400 tons per heat. Beeeeeg ladles. Had to shovel & wheelbarrow 1200lbs of manganese, 600lbs of molybdenum, 500lbs of chromium, 400lbs of magnesium, etc etc per furnace load. Then tap the furnace with an oxygen hose threaded onto 12feet of 3/4" pipe. Then throw up to 20 50lb bags of coke into the trough leading to the ladle. Did you know that molten steel pouring down a trough is translucent? You can see into it, when you're wearing those dark purple glasses.
  10. A very good reference to that thermometer, Sharkfood; can it really "look thru" the furnace opening to a spot inside? Wondering how the lasers work; think I'll call Amazon, and ask one of their experts... or not. Maybe its just my OCD wondering... I might try building a natural gas forge for my shop next year. Welding machine first, then grinder, etc
  11. Thanks, Sharkfood, thanks, Thomas. This thread hit me in my ignorance wheelhouse, and I appreciate the very specific information.
  12. In case you ever look back on this topic, you can recover the iron that has rusted on the surface of any iron-based tool by putting it into a container with a baking soda solution in water in it, having first cleaned the part or tool with acetone to remove all oils or grease. Then hook the part up to your small auto battery charger set to about 2 amps. Positive hooks up to a steel framing nail hung over the inside edge of the container and suspended by a single strand of bare copper house wire. Negative hooks up to the rusty part. Turn on the battery charger and observe. The bubbles rising off the part surface are 'some' of the hydrogen, taken from the water; The metal strip releases oxygen, also taken from the water. The baking soda just makes the water more conductive. Some of the hydrogen taken from the water grabs the oxygen in the rust, and makes water, which goes back into the solution. The oxygen in the rust is removed, leaving much of the iron in the original part. Doing this in the open air means that no hydrogen will remain close by. The process is called electrolysis, and has many practical variants, metal plating, for one.
  13. If its O.K., secondary questions: 1. Are there low cost thermometers for forges? 2. Is it common practice to modify the flame in propane furnaces to have a reducing mixture? 3. Is anyone using a thermostat to adjust the flame in propane fired furnaces?
  14. What an array of grit, etc, heh heh. What size wheels will that 1hp Jet turn?
  15. I believe that "Tap Magic" originally had trichloroethane in it. When it was found to promote lung cancer, it was removed/replaced, etc. It was also used as an all-purpose cleaner at some of the auto plants around town here. I know of several me who died from it.
  16. I've been looking at a lot of metal working tools, from angle grinders, to 2x72's, to welders, band saws, drill presses, etc for 9 months. Around the world on u-tube, as well as various forums, as it were. Metabo angle grinders lead all others in current popularity, 5 to 1.
  17. Thank you all for your good and detailed responses. I just had one more question about this issue(typing furiously to get this all down): as a welder in a former life I sometimes used a carburizing or reducing acetyene torch mixture when brazing pieces together; has anyone here done that with their forging furnaces while heating up various steels to press or pound on?
  18. why do my posts now show up in technicolor? they didn't used to when I first joined the forum. This browser doesn't do that on any of the other 3 forums I belong to.
  19. Please educate me in metals and high temp chemistry, as practiced in small shop forges. My only experience is in making 400 ton batches of "bottle-top" steel in Open Hearths. 1000lbs of Manganese, 400lbs of silicon, 400lbs of magnesium, 400lbs of chromium, 1000lbs of powdered coke. No, Please, don't let it be a Sulphur heat! As you say, metals burn in the presence of oxygen; does that mean that there's also a presence of free carbon? Do your propane or natural gas forges ever use reducing flames? I've heard flame adjustment mentioned before. Have you or anyone else here at IFI had laboratory chemical analysis done on the black scale from forging? Could this mill-scale be metallic carbides as well, from the forge burner? Have you or anyone else here seen the lack of significant "mill-scale" coming out of your electric heat-treating ovens?
  20. Sorry if I'm going against any grain here; I just looked up the data sheet on 304L stainless at Crucible online. There is no mention of any black oxide forming metals on their data. So my next thought was: "What in my shop causes black coatings most often?" Answer: any organic, carbon-based compounds like acetone, gasoline, linseed oil, etc. Or any activity that resulted in soot or carbon-black from something burned. If I wanted to remove anything like that, I'd use an organic solvent, like acetone, 95% rubbing alcohol, high-proofed vodka, etc. Pure carbon coatings can be really stubborn to dissolve, but I wouldn't heat any aforementioned liquids. They really love to burn and with a totally colorless flame. The heated vinegar idea might work too, because it contains some acetic acid, and doesn't burn. In that case, formic acid might even work better; don't know where to get that, though.
  21. The terminology used by blade smiths, the various words, phrases, etc., may not have the same definitions by everyone using them. For example, when the word 'normalization' is used, it may have different meanings or evoke different processes in the minds of various people. In the end, the specific steps used in knife making procedures must be expressed very carefully, so that there is no misunderstanding between us. Having come from engineering/chemistry/physics and computer programming lines of work, all of which have differing definitions for 'normalization', I hesitate to use the term, ever. Now heat-treating, hardening, quenching and tempering all have good contextual meanings for knife makers. Yet I've seen the term 'normalization' used very differently in discussions about damascus steel making, including wootz masters. In particular, Al Pendrey used the term when air cooling freshly made crucible ingots. In fact he cycled the ingots through several-to-five heat soaks in his forge to very specific temps, before letting them air cool to ambient temps, before ever beginning to 'work' the ingots into billets. And he called that process 'normalization'. I'm convinced he was referring to reduction in carbide crystalline sizes. Only after doing this procedure did he take small cuttings off the ingots to send out for metalurgical and chemical analysis. Of course Al was 10 years older than me at the time, so I listened very carefully to every word that man said, inferring as much meaning as possible. The ore he used to make those ingots had vanadium in it. Very rare. The ingots contained .05 to .15 per cent vanadium. The old swords and knives made from the original Indian wootz, were never cut or folded. The damascus patterns were naturally derived out of the original crucible steel making process, just as Al Pendrey's were. STOP using weird colors and backgrounds to highlight your posts, its hard to read, annoying to remove and messes with the translators
  22. The terminology used by blade smiths, the various words, phrases, etc., may not have the same definitions by everyone using them. For example, when the word 'normalization' is used, it may have different meanings or evoke different processes in the minds of various people. In the end, the specific steps used in knife making procedures must be expressed very carefully, so that there is no misunderstanding between us. Having come from engineering/chemistry/physics and computer programming lines of work, all of which have differing definitions for 'normalization', I hesitate to use the term, ever. Now heat-treating, hardening, quenching and tempering all have good contextual meanings for knife makers. Yet I've seen the term 'normalization' used very differently in discussions about damascus steel making, including wootz masters. In particular, Al Pendrey used the term when air cooling freshly made crucible ingots. In fact he cycled the ingots through several-to-five heat soaks in his forge to very specific temps, before letting them air cool to ambient temps, before ever beginning to 'work' the ingots into billets. And he called that process 'normalization'. I'm convinced he was referring to reduction in carbide crystalline sizes. Only after doing this procedure did he take small cuttings off the ingots to send out for metalurgical and chemical analysis. Of course Al was 10 years older than me at the time, so I listened very carefully to every word that man said, inferring as much meaning as possible. The ore he used to make those ingots had vanadium in it. Very rare. The ingots contained .05 to .15 per cent vanadium. The old swords and knives made from the original Indian wootz, were never cut or folded. The damascus patterns were naturally derived out of the original crucible steel making process, just as Al Pendrey's were.
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