JNewman

Bolt on dies work well and are likely the best way to go right now. But dovetails are more reliable for keeping die alignment and are a more rugged method of retaining dies than bolt on. I would forget the hex stock though. Hammer dovetails are typically only 7 or 8 degrees as opposed to the 30 degrees you will get with your hex. Cutting the hex accurately longitudinally will be difficult. As well I think you will find it difficult to to maintain the dovetail angle while welding with such a small bearing surface on the bottom. I made a set of weld on dovetail dies for a treadle hammer quite a few years ago, they worked very well. I used 1"x2" flatbar for the dovetail with the dovetail angle ground on with a disc sander. If I were to do it again today I would probably use 3/4" or 5/8" flat instead of the 1" as it would require less grinding. I think I used 10 degrees for the dovetails the 7 or 8 commonly used would help reducing the grinding. I think this would actually be less work than cutting the hex even if you had to use an angle grinder, files and a protractor or template. If you do make dovetails make sure you grease your keys well every time you drive them in. Steel on steel is very prone to galling, as well without the grease rust will lock your keys into place so solidly you may not be able to remove them.

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Go to a spring shop that services tractor trailers as well as cars. They will have new spring stock and have the capacity to bend it if you want them to do it. I don't know if what they have will be 5160 and they may not be able to tell you but it will be good spring stock.

Where is the oil coming from? I have cleaned off the black dust from tumbling by throwing in some wood sawdust. It did a pretty good job, the fine wood dust then coats the work but a little air blast cleans that off. I would make sure the dust is from well dried lumber, as sappy sawdust would stick badly.

I love Solidworks as well it is the best CAD I have ever used, but... The $4000+ for a seat of Solidworks puts it out of reach for anyone not using it commercially Autodesk which owns Autocad and Inventor have some new programs that are full blown commercial CAD packages that are cloud based and are available for a monthly fee. If this is something you need occasionally you could spend the $30-40 for the month license on the months you use it. They do have some light versions of some of their software available for free, it might be worth looking into what they have.

Watch these guys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1XLUg9pQ-s They are not swinging their sledges cross armed, and I think they know what they are doing and they seem to have no problem hitting the hotcut. Watch these guys at about 5:40 and beyond.

I know the continental striking method has become very popular in North America but I was taught by the late Charlie Sutton, an English smith who apprenticed in the shipyards and some industrial smiths from the steel company here in town. They swung/swing sledges like an axe swing but with less of a hand slide than you might do with an axe. With practice it is just as accurate as the cross handed swing. I do think the anvil should be set a little lower for the British style of swinging. I know Charlie mentioned the shops he worked in when he was young had the anvils set as top of the kneecap height. The anvil was set at the best height for the striker as they were providing the power and the smith was more or less just pointing with his hammer by hitting with his hammer. Charlie used his thigh on the butt of the sledge handle to help raise the hammer. That would help keep him striking after guys much younger ran out of stream.

Does not help with frozen up parts short term but long term are you able to replace the set screws with Stainless or Monel? Can you use Anti seize on assembly? A heavy equipment mechanic I used to know used to say If it doesn't get Locktite use anti sieze.

I have one of the Morse saws and am pleased with it. I have mostly used it for cutting 1.5" x1" 4140 on a 45 which is really abusing it, but it leaves a way better finish than the bandsaw I used to use and I don't need to grind the edges. I trashed the first blade doing this and dulled my second blade cutting stainless (there is a special blade for stainless I have heard). If I had room to leave it set up with an infeed and outfeed table it would likely be my go to saw for most of my cutting under 3/4"

Sorry to hear things are not working out well Larry. Have you considered throwing a wall up and dividing your shop in half and renting out the other half of the shop? I am considering buying a second neighbouring building but I will need additional income to offset the mortgage and additional property taxes. The second building is larger than my existing building and I am considering doing this as one of my options. Another of the options is to do some wharehousing in half of the shop. I know you are used to all the space you have but if reducing your space could save your business maybe it would be worth it. If you cannot find a smaller shop space surely others are having a similar problem.

I think this is one of those situations where there are too many variables to have a simple formula or standard percentage allowance. As mentioned likely part of your problem was the small shoulder. So as variables you have radius/taper on top of hole, size of stock in relation to hammer size, size of hole, size of shoulder and finally the heat. I have some jobs I do where I notice some extrusion into the bolster but all of these jobs are repeat jobs so I have established stock lengths that work with trial and error. I suspect I get variation in amount extruded even on semi production items but have never done an analysis on it as i get more variation during the drawing down stage as the drawing down has a multiplying effect on length. As an example drawing an extra 1/32 when drawing 2.75 " to 1" I end up with almost 1/4" extra length. On one off jobs if it is possible to easily cut off extra material or the job can be left heavier than the drawing calls for I almost always add extra to my volume calculations to allow for unexpected issues like your extrusion problem. Steel is cheap compared to labour.

if you put your location in your profile you may find someone local here who has resources that could help you. For example if you are near me, I have scraps of baltic birch plywood you could have for free that would do your narrow strips and I have cutoffs that would do your sides at my cost (wholesale less than half of what HD sells it for) or even a little less depending on my inventory. I am sure there are lots of other people here who work with various plywoods who may be local to you and may be able to set you up with what you need for a similar cost to OSB but a far superior material. If you cannot find a local resource and really need to go cheap I would go with MDF over OSB. The mdf is really smooth, however if it will might get wet do not use it as it will blow up like a balloon. I would be inclined to go with a hardwood plywood. A baltic birch plywood will hold screws on the edge grain if you drill a pilot hole to prevent splitting. The extra bit of money you spend building will pay off in the life of the bellows. Going with high quality material will also allow you to use lighter (cheaper) materials. A 1/2" baltic will be sturdier than a 3/4" OSB bellows

Luckily it was a brick building, so that blocked a lot of the heat although I suspect most of those vehicles are damaged due to the fact a couple of fire trucks were damaged by the heat . They would have been parked further away than all the vehicles in the front and many in the back.

I am away on holidays and received text pictures this morning http://www.thespec.com/news-story/4641177-photos-charred-beams-twisted-metal-burnt-out-vehicles-all-that-remains-after-massive-hamilton-fir/ This is across from my shop. My shop is the smaller building in the upper left corner of the aerial shot with the red door. Luckily they stopped the fire from entering the building directly across which is attached to the burnt building as it is full of toxic waste. Mostly waste paint although they also have things like waste chlorine pucks etc.

Last phone and this one is a waterproof phone. Waterproof=dustproof.

I suspect with an alloy steel if you heated only the face you want to harden you would be fine with a big body of water, I would be more concerned with cracking of the face than under hardening. These are oil hardening steels and I suspect even with any steam jacket problem water is still going to cool the part way faster than oil will. I have never seen a waterfall or firehose used for quenching in any of the commercial heat treat facilities or foundries doing their own HT I have been to and they were quenching parts up to thousands. of pounds They use agitation of the water instead. As long as you have decent water pressure I suspect a large hose running into your quench container you will have a plenty fast quench.

If I were going to forge weld it here are the two ways I would consider welding it . After welding it the round way you could flatten it to the rectangle. I never mentioned arc welding in the wedges just doing this weld as an arc weld. The scarfs should ideally have an upset to avoid thinning during welding although I would probably skip it if I were welding it as a rectangle as the piece in the middle could be sized to compensate.

I have to agree with Jim here. I would not slit and drift that hole, I would punch it close to or even to size. You are removing more of the metal in the hole that way and you won't have to make as much allowance for the leg growing longer, nor would you have to calculate slitting length and fight to bring the sides back to size. I think you could punch all 4 holes in the time it would take to slit, drift, upset and then work the sides back in for one hole. I would also suggest arc(or forge) welding the ends of the 1/8" x 5/8" pieces together. The weld will be hidden inside the joint. Otherwise I think your wedges could end up pulling the ends apart. If you feel the need to forge weld it I would either weld it as a round link then square up your corners or weld a piece in the middle between the 2 sides so you end up with an 8 with an extended middle section. But seeing as this is a contemporary feature I would probably just electric weld it as it is buried.

Depends on what you want as far as shiny goes. A tumbler with scrap steel pieces will make things shiny similar to the shiny you get from a wire wheel but with much less effort and way more safely. It will not give the same sort of shiny that you will get with multiple grits of sanpaper and buffing but it gives a nice "rustic shiny"

I am trying to find a chart that will tell me the rosebud BTU to heat 3.5" round bar. I have been looking online and cannot find one. I have a 280,000 BTU rosebud and i am not sure if it will be big enough. I am quoting a job where I will have to forge the end of a 3.5" bar. I need a short heat because the rest of the bar is heat treated. As well the bar is 14 feet long so it would be difficult to get it from the forge to the hammer.

I think we are talking about 2 different efficiencies here. In terms of HP efficiency I would agree that a mechanical hammer is more efficient than an air hammer, and self contained air hammers are slightly more efficient than utility hammers. That being said my 30hp motor only costs me just over $2/hr based on running under full load for the full hour. So an extra 2-3 hp around an extra 20 cents per hour unless there are demand meter issues as mentioned above. I would disagree with the assertion that a mechanical will outwork an air hammer of the same size. A Massey or a Nazel type I will also take large dies as the dies don't go up into the head.

One suggestion to keep that power bill down is to avoid running other higher power tools at the same time as you run your hammer. Turn your compressor off don't weld while the hammer is welding. I am surprised a 7.5hp motor is enough to cause a demand charge. I would suspect it is a combination of a number of tools at once. You might want to speak with your electricity supplier, maybe you can get your base load adjusted and save on your bill. I have never had a large demand charge even when running 30hp for the hammer 5hp for the press 5hp for the compressor 6hp for the CNC router spindle and a couple of hp for the router servo motors all running at once.

Is that and "Ergonomic" rock I saw?

So lets say 24hrs at $100/hr (pretty cheap for a half million dollar machine, probably a million dollar machine to produce a 12lb anvil) $2400 120lb of metal powder at lets say $3/lb (I bet it is much higher) $360 Heat treatment $150 (minimum charge at a Ht facility with large enough facilities to HT an anvil) So you now have a 120lb anvil for $2910 before any retail markup. or $24/lb

So lets say 24hrs at $100/hr (pretty cheap for a half million dollar machine, probably a million dollar machine to produce a 12lb anvil) $2400 120lb of metal powder at lets say $3/lb (I bet it is much higher) $360 Heat treatment $150 (minimum charge at a Ht facility with large enough facilities to HT an anvil) So you now have a 120lb anvil for $2910 before any retail markup. or $24/lb