Dishing Stump Repairs

[Old N Rusty]

Here the welding supply stores are very glad to GIVE away old OX. bottles. They will have broken off the valve , ensuring the is no way for the bottle to hold gas.  The bottom of an OX bottle has a fine dishing shape.My shop has a concrete floor so with carefull measuring you can figger out the correct height to cut the bottle and weld it to a tire rim . If I had dirt floors, digging  a hole deep enough to up-end the tank into is the way I would have gone.

[Charles R. Stevens]

The told of those bottles make nifty bells. The ring with the righting on it is just swagedon to the neck and torches of, leaving a nice small neck, a little fabrication and you can tread in a pipe plug/lifting eye and a dingle. That hard steel rings sweet.

[Jim Coke]

Greetings Charles /Rusty,

 

I mentioned the bottom of a oxygen bottle earlier on this thread...    I have made several bells from them and they sound great... BTW if you cut both ends off and just set the cylinder on concrete you get a whole new ring that seems to go on forever...

 

Forge on and make beautiful things

Jim

[anvil]

I use short sections of seamless pipe. I roll the top edges of the pipe outwards to form a lip and weld a crossbar on the bottom to clamp in my post vice. I have these in various diametérs from 1/2" to 6". I have two forged to teardrop shapes that was for a one off job that I now use for compound curves.

very quick to make and easy on the budget. unlike commercial dapping blocks, you can have an unlimited # of radius from the pipe avalable.

as for durability, I've not worn any out in 20 years or so.

I once made large candle cups hot this way using a milling ball with welded "skirt" around it for a top tool and 4" pipe made as above, in a hydrolic press using 3/8" rounds. I think the rounds were 6" dia. took longer to make the rounds than to forge to final shape.

good luck

[Old N Rusty]

Thin wall seamless pipe 3" O.D. and larger can usually be scrounged for free, if you look for DRIVE SHAFTS ! 

[ThomasPowers]

Careful about quenching driveshafts if you work hot

[01tundra]

Since the weather started cooling off last week the checking has really kicked into overdrive......I have a feeling that days with my beloved stump are numbered, I guess those humid TN summer days are good for something afterall  :D !

 

 

[Chinobi]

this is likely just my inexperience with dishing, but it seems to me like that's an awful lot of stump for a very small working surface.  could you get a 6x6 or 8x8 solid or glue-lam post and carve your dish into the end of that?  Maybe add a steel strap around the top as added protection against an errant overpowered blow splitting the thinner sidewall.  Then inset your new dishing post into the remains of that stump or some other stump to bring the working height to something that feels comfortable to you.

 

I think that would afford for the most adjustability in terms of working height and could also receive posts with variable sized dishes as well as facilitate rapid replacement should your dish break or start checking.  plus the smaller dimension of the post should resist checking better than a full 30" diameter cross section stump and can be cured/dried in a much more controlled manner.

 

then again, im not much for wood work, so make of it what you will :)

 

edit: I would also support the adaptation of crack control joints here, if you want to use a big circular stump, but will inevitably face checking, sawcut some grooves into the face to make it look like a pizza (maybe into 8ths or so), leaving the gap between cuts large enough to install your dish without interference.  this might help force the wood to crack in a more predictable pattern (the sawcuts) as we do with concrete.

 

also, if you go with a metal swage as your dish consider changing to a wooden hammer instead of a metal one.  right now your setup is metal hammer against wooden dish, so your blows bend the metal when the wood compresses ever so slightly.  if you go metal hammer against metal dish your blows will be more inclined to stretch and thin the dish at the point of contact, rather than bend, which can cause a lot of problems with warping as you dish.  you want either your dishing form or your hammer to be the part that yields, not the workpiece.

[01tundra]

Good point on the hammer, I having been wondering about that myself. 

[ThomasPowers]

in armouring the mantra is "Hard over Soft or Soft over Hard" WRT the dishing hammer and form

[Chinobi]

as always, much better way to say it Thomas :)

[knots]

Careful about quenching driveshafts if you work hot

 

"If you work hot"  Is an important point.   From the look of your stump before and after the checking set in, it looks like you work cold and use a fairly light gage bowl blanks.  

 

One big advantage of a cast Iron swage block, bowl form, or steel torus is that you can work the iron hot.  Sinking hot on iron or steel bowl forms allows the use of thicker plate material as well as producing no smoke.

 

If you really are attached to that stump you might try drilling a series of holes centered on the offending crack. Coat the holes with glue and drive dowels into the prepared holes.  I would perform this task in two stages,  First spacing the holes a bit less than the diameter of the dowel used.  Glue in the dowels the repeat the process in between the first course of dowels.

 

One thing to be careful of is that the dowel holes do not dead end without a way for excess glue to escape from the hole otherwise a tight fitting dowel will act like a piston and hydrostatic pressure could stop the dowel before it reaches the bottom of the hole.  Generally the crack will provide a passage for the excess glue to escape.   I also like the idea of banding the stump.

 

I would suggest a test of this process on a crack in an unused area of the stump.  I have stabilized checked stumps with shim shingles and glue with some success however for a bowl form the dowels would provide end grain exposure.

[Awalker]

Might try melting some pine pitch and pouring into the cracks. It is firm but will give. It is also used for the type of work you are doing.

[Alan Evans]

I appreciate all the ideas.  I have applied Anchorseal to each end of this stump to minimize checking and it has helped, but it's still going to check to some degree.  I could throw the next stump in my kiln and dry it prior to carving out the bowl.

 

Let me ask you all this, since I've never used one, would hamming bowls in a swage block be a worlds difference from what I'm going now?  This Hickory stump is so hard, I'm not sure if I'd really notice any difference hammering in cast iron instead.  I've been wanting a swage block for other uses, but if I could effectively do my bowl work in it as well it gives me more justification for looking into purchasing one.  This is a long term solution type of deal, that's why I'm wondering if I should be moving away from stumps for making bowls.  To put it in persepective, I've made 40 bowls since Monday night and will make at least 40 more before the end of the month, so if springing for a swage block will make life easier down the road I'm willing to save up money for one.

 

I was thinking that I could possibly pick up a smaller (60 lb) swage block with a 3" ladle dish in it and set it on top of my stump.

 

Thanks everyone for the help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are making that quantity you might consider buying in spinnings or spend a morning making a set of tools for a fly press and then spending an hour in the afternoon making your 80. 

 

Have a look at this video of my bowl tools to see if it would suit your product/work flow/philosophy. The blanks I use on it are stainless steel so if it will do that with stainless, mild steel or copper is a doodle!

 

 

You can either use the bowls as-is or planish them subsequently on the same top tool if you prefer that sort of surface texture. Either way just taking seconds to form the basic bowl shape is a good starting point.

 

A search on th forum with  "bowl tools" including the inverted commas will bring up a few more threads with various ideas. 

 

The bowl swages I always though were incredibly restrictive. Once you have one base tool or ring it only takes a few minutes with a press to make up sets of any radius for kink see bowl making. also vary easy to use the same approach to make open ended tools for elliptical forms, see the thread about Danger Dillons sculpture which comes up with that search.

 

Alan

[Robert Yates]

Being that you are from Tennessee my self I recommend a very simple solution Bodock stump/ Osage orange/ hedge apple tree stump there is only a few other stumps /trees that are harder than them . and band the top, middle with double or wide bands.

 

they work very well for anvil stumps also .

 

Sam

[01tundra]

Here's what I have set up on a temporary basis. Would love to have a flypress, but the funds aren't there for one.

 

I wish I could come up with the tooling to make them with my 20-ton hydraulic shop press, but I doubt I could make it work without having them crease.

 

Pictured is a 4" ladle bowl, I'm considering stepping up to the 6" bowl to have a little more space for my fingers.

 

The stump has a large area because I perform other duties on the surface as well and like the extra space.

 

 

[Alan Evans]

20 tonne press would be fine, the only problem is that unless you have a big motor it will probably be a bit slow. You could always do a stack at the same time though!

Those tools in the video were made original ally for a little number 3 or 4 fly press and they are being used there on a single acting 12 tonne hydraulic. They have also been used on a number 5 flypress. Speed is good so I always take the weights off the fly press so it is fast response. You don't need a huge pressure when you have those tools because their efficiency is achieved by the lack of wasted workpiece metal movement. You are not putting a dimple which you have to then unbend to smooth out which is what happens when you use a hammer.

The kinks come about through unsupported or unconfined metal. As long as you work it like I do in the video starting from the outer edge and going in concentric circles into the middle it is fine.

Alan

[01tundra]

Very good info - thanks Alan