JNewman

This is exactly the plan right now. It turns out the pliers were used because they worked. I have talked to the customer and am waiting for pictures of the product being removed, although these seem to be used for quite a few different castings, and I want to avoid overly customizing them because of the price point he is hoping for. I discussed with my customer making something that will do a better job of removing the castings than the pliers. I am going to make a prototype pair and hopefully meet with the end user to improve them and have a far better solution than the pliers. For my prototypes I am leaning towards something that is closer to being a pair of pickups with heavier bits and serrations on the lip but not on the fullered groove so they can get a good grip to break the castings free of the mould .

That would cut off the bits and reins. There is a round pocket cut in both halves that could be cut with an end mill, but take a look at the other half of each half, it is round with the bits and reins interupting the circle. At first I thought the rivet was actually a tenon but if you look carefully there is a circle on each side of a pair of pliers. After talking to the customer it turns out this is just for pulling hot castings out of permanent moulds so I am not sure I need to serrate the fullered section. My plan right now is to serrate the small end of the bits that closes and just leave the fullered section smooth. I am going to make a small chisel that has multiple edges more a forming tool than a chisel and try that. If they want the serration on the fullered section as well I am going to make a fuller with serrations even if the sharp points don't develope I think the grooves will do the job.

A few years ago OABA got a tour of Research castings http://www.rescast.com/ where they mount dinosaur and other skeletons as well as casting fossil replicas. They had 3 full time blacksmiths and several others with forging experience that could work at their forge. The armatures for genuine dinosaur fosils are very particular as they have to hold the fossil without damaging it including screws, and the fossil has to be removable for scientists to be able to study the fossil. We learned that most of the dinosaurs in most museums are not all one skeleton they are usually a mix of fossil and replica parts taken from other skeletal discoveries. While we were there they were building two full sized bronze t-rexes as well as mounting some fossils and preparing some whale bones for mounting (smelliest swimming pool I ever want to see).

Thanks for the info, I have been breaking fewer hammer tools since I started using the flashing oil technique. I have been heating them back up in the gas forge with the burners turned off and pulling them out and splashing a little more oil back on, but I will try using a heavy block. I am using quench oil I bought 40 liters of it a few years ago.

He has some of the pliers in stock but when they are gone he cannot get more. The ebay ones will just delay his need for a replacement.

Now that you guys have brought it up I am not sure that I could have forged the teeth up to a point. I have cut teeth into tong bits but they were just crosshatched chisel marks. I think that I probably would have tried to rough forge them in with a top tool, and then used a file to sharpen them up Setting up a bridgeport to cut each tooth individually would take forever and a custom cutter would probably be too expensive for the volume. Maybe a simple broach would be a good way to cut the teeth, forge the curve and then force a cutter down between the plier jaw and a backer. Shims could allow the cut to be made in a couple of cuts if necessary.

If this foundation for a crane that the hammer is mounted on is for a cantilevered type crane the foundation could be many times the size of the recommended hammer foundation. I have been looking into putting in a freestanding 1 ton jib crane and have been advised that I need a 4'x4'x5' foundation for that. A crane for loading rail cars would likely be many times that.

The teeth look like they are not entirely radial there appears to be draft. However I have since spoken to the customer and have more details. It sounds like tongs will work for their application and will be necessary to keep the price reasonable. It turns out teeth exactly like the ones on the old pliers will not not be needed but I have to work out with the customer what they do. If it turns out that there was not draft to the teeth I could have cut them with the curve opened up and then closed it. I may have had to do some filing to sharpen the tops of the teeth or contained the sides to help fill in the points. I am going to make some sample tongs and perfect the design with him. If they work out well he may be able to supply his former supplier of these pliers with the tongs and create a much bigger market.

I don't plan on using the by the door method although that was the method sometimes used by their internal shop despite what the drawing says. I had good results using oil and I think I will continue with this. These chisels are for scraping tar off coke oven charge doors and cleaning carbon deposits out of pipes in the coke ovens. They are definatly a consuamable and in use are often heated way past the draw temperature, when they had their own blacksmith shop they would often straighten them after them being badly bent.

I have a customer that I have made tongs for in the past who wants me to make him some pliers that Crescent tools used to make but has stopped making. They are called Gas and burner pliers. I have told him that he will be paying way more than he was paying for the factory made ones but he is still interested. Has anyone made pliers? Any tips? I am thinking of forging the blanks including the teeth. Drilling the rivet hole then plunging an end mill in to make the hinge. The outside round of the hinge seems the only tricky part. I will have to grind and file this to match the hole. The volume on these is not huge about 10 pair /year but it should be enough to warrant doing them. I am thinking 4140 quench and tempered or would I be better with somethng a little harder?

They had run at least one maybe 2 normalizing cycles. When I heat treated them I normalized them as well. The grain structure on both my heat treatment and the heat treaters was very small. The surface was very smooth. One thing that was different between the ones I had crack and the ones they had crack, was the cracked surface was blue on the ones they did and gray on the ones I did. So they cracked on them while the steel was still hot while the ones I did cracked after they had cooled. Forgemaster can you give more information on flaring off the oil? You have also mentioned reheating forge tools to the igniton point of the oil to temper them. How do you keep all the oil from burning off in the forge while reheating them before they get to the flashpoint of the oil? I quenched the replacement chisels in oil and tempered them to 450F and they seemed hard enough. After this I was talking to a retired smith who worked at the steel mill these are going to he told me that they often just placed these by the bottom of the shop door in the winter and the cold air was enough to harden them.

Just got back from a weekend ice fishing. Yes the Blacksmith Depot firepot is the one I produce. I sell all the blacksmith tools I make through them in the US.

I would fabricate the stand out of steel if possible, if you have to build it out of wood build it stout. Make the stand tall enough that the ball clears your head by at least an inch at its lowest point. Kiss blocks or stop blocks are just blocks of steel held under a tool that they bottom out on. Depending on the tool you may have to get inventive.

I am getting a little confused here. Red you are raising two different issues, standards and this new anvil design. You are suggesting that there be standard tooling, this is difficult with many of the tools being used being antiques. However there does seem to be something of a standard hardy hole size being adopted of 1" for most new anvils and anvil tools. When I designed my stake plate and some cast stakes for some silversmiths a few years ago I checked a number of manufactured stakes and found no standard taper even among different tools made by the same manufacturers. At that time I decided that would make all my stakes and the stake holder 5 degrees, 2.5 per side I would love if that became the standard for all manufacturers but unfortunately I don't think that companies are going to change their tooling to match mine but there were no standards to adapt to. There are not huge volumes of tools or money being produced and these are not consumables like cars so I feel it is unlikely that there will be rigid standards adopted. I did cast the angle of the taper into the holder to help those making their own tools and for anyone who wants to make tools to fit into the plate. Your first post showed a new style of anvil which you suggested as the start of a new standard tool holder. I have had wild ideas that I bounced off others that I have done nothing with but may use some of the input others gave for other projects. But I don't understand you suggesting that tool producers should start thinking about making tools for a base that does not exist. If you beleive that this tool is a good idea, go for it. You say you cannot afford to build one of these, if you believe in it sell that hay budden you already have that should be enough to have two of these flame cut. After you sell the second one you are on your way. If you don't believe in it why can you expect anyone else to invest their money into it. if you don't beleive in it, it's time to move on to another idea. In answer to your question I do have a web site, the address is in my signature. My blacksmith tools for sale are not on the site yet but they are all on the Blacksmith Depot site in the USA I sell everything through them.

I have to agree with Tim everyone needs at least 2 of those stake plates that Blacksmith Depot sells. Of course I am biased because they are my product that I sell to Blacksmith Depot :)

I know a smith who took a similar press and used it as a frame to build a Kinyon style hammer. He removed the crank and flywheel and added an air cylinder.

I find this design interesting and after thinking about it, it has SOME advantages over the dovetail anvil. The tooling could be fairly easily fabricated, and the base anvil would be cheaper to make than the dovetail anvil. I though the prices quoted for the material sound high, I have found that flame cutting shops are often the cheapest place to buy plate. I recently had a motor mount cut out of 1" plate and even with 4 holes cut in it the plate was considerably cheaper than a piece of used plate that was very close in size. However I do agree with Thomas Powers in that the market for these is not the beginner looking for a cheap anvil, but more advanced smiths using more specialised tooling. A mild steel anvil will stand up to a LOT of use and can be customised like Brian Brazeal has done. As well even if you do wear a mild steel anvil it can easily be dressed with a grinder. While a hardy shank is simple to make and has been used for centuries for bottom tools it is not perfect. Tools bounce around causing a loss of efficiency and the movement can also cause other problems. Both of these alternative anvils solve this problem, however a slot or hole can be punched or cut in a hardy shank and it can be wedged down. I personally prefer the idea of a dovetail for the following reasons - I believe the dovetail is a more secure method of holding down the dies. - holes (bolsters or hardy holes) through the dies do not interfere with the hold down. - one piece dies are easier to forge or machine - for fabricated dies the dovetail would be easier to forge than the tang with a hole.

There are at least two other things that can cause this sort of problem. Make sure you do not get too sharp an inside corner, sharp inside corners especially if they are then bent cold will often crack. A sharp inside corner can be a misplaced hammer blow with a hammer that has sharp corners. Another problem is getting a cold shut which is where the metal is folded over on itself, effectively it forms a very sharp inside corner. If you are not carefull shuts can be formed when you are creating transitions from thin to thick or wide, often they are caused by a sort of smearing action by misplaced hammer blows or movement on the anvil. If you get a cold shut or start of a crack grind, file, or chisel cut it out immediately as they tend to grow, if you catch a crack early you can often save a piece. If you have put a lot of work into something you can often gas weld a crack shut although often it is quicker to just start over rather than fixing up the weld.

I machined 1/8" off the oil quenched sample (Carbide inserts are great) and at that depth it is just as hard as the surface. If the oil one is that hard the water one will definately be as hard. I will quench from slightly higher temperatures next time and quench in oil. Well at least I have learned from this, but I think I will be dropping by the heat treater tomorrow.

I checked the hardness on the broken one I quenched in oil from about 1500 after tempering. I ground off a little to remove the decarb. and it came in as between 50 and 55 Rc. I think on the higher end but my hardness tester is a set of Tsubosan files so I cannot be sure. However it is inside specs. I am still going to check the hardness at 1/8" depth and also compare that to a water quenched sample.

I had quenched them in water because that is what the drawing called for. I just quenched one of the broken ones in oil and one in water the oil quenched one seems plenty hard. I am tempering them both at 450 for an hour and I am going to mill or zip cut off 1/8" and see how hard they are. Assuming they are hard at depth I think I will take them into the heat treater and get him to throw away the bill. He did cut the bill but I am paying him for his knowledge as well as his equipment.

A few weeks ago I forged 50 scraper/chisels for a customer out of W1, quench and tempered to 50-65 Rc. which is what the customer specified. The chisel is 1" diameter then is a 3/8 thick blade tapering down to a 1/8" thick square edge. In heat treating them myself I had two of them crack near the edge so I had to make one more, I should have made the extras to begin with but this customer will not accept extra parts so I didn't want to sit on the inventory. I had 30 more to make this week so I made 34 of them and decided to take them to my heat treater to avoid the cracked parts and because I have a fair bit of rush work right now and I figured that they could do it cheaper than me anyways. I went to the heat treater this morning to pick up the parts and deliver them to the customer they had cracked SEVEN!!! out of 34. I now have to make more chisels and the job is already late. I questioned the guy at the heat treater trying to figure out what they did differently than I had. I had used warm water to quench the parts, they had used BRINE!!! he claimed that with W1 using water the hardening would only be .030 deep I can see this in a part a few inches thick but this is only 1/8" thick in the area that has to be hard. Do any of the Metallurgists on here know how deep the hardening would be on a 3/8 thick piece of W1? I think when I heat treat these I am going to re-harden on of the chisels that is cracked on the tip cut it appart at the 3/8 end and see if it is hard. Till now I have been very happy with this heat treater but this experience has me questioning there knowledge.

John, have you ever considered selling your exhaust control valves separately?

I recently replaced my 5" makita which had put up with many years of abuse and always worked well, I burned it out running a 7" diamond cup wheel grinding the concrete foundation for my hammer. After reading this thread I thought that soft start on the grinder would be a good idea. I do like the soft start and for light grinding the soft start allows more control. However with the Makita the soft start does reduce the torque. With my older grinder if I leaned into it, it would just bear down and grind away, with the new one I can stop the wheel.

Because I am not using an Iron Kiss custom made valve I found that cracking the valve to allow the head rise up reduced the control of the hammer. The adjustment of the roller valve also became very touchy. What I ended up doing is to drill a small hole in the hose nipple that threads into the valve. It works very well that way but maybe I should try drilling the hole out larger for a faster return when using the hammer for single blows. I had forgotten what a difference your modification makes till I demoed at the OABA meeting on the weekend. The hammer I demoed on was very well built and had excellent control but I had to play with the treadle to get the stock and tooling under the hammer. Setting up higher tooling such as for punching is much easier and safer using a hammer with your modification.