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I Forge Iron

The Steel Puck.


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For the longest time, I've been hunting for an O2 cylinder or the like so I could scavenge the bottom for dishing metal.  Never could get my hands on one, so I made a few rings, but wasn't really happy with them.  Making a depression in a stump certainly worked, but the stumps always wore out or cracked... and always seemed to get in the way when I was doing something else.

Talking with my dad, recent purchaser of a vintage Southbend 9x30 belt-driven lathe and just aching for an excuse to tinker with it, he said he had an idea and soon presented me with this very nice addition to the shop.  I'm calling it the Steel Puck because I don't really have a better name and it does kind of look like an oversized hockey puck.

Five inches across and a solid inch thick, it weighs just over five pounds.

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I believe Dad said the slope of the depression was 20º, but I might have misheard.  For working bowls and such, I prefer a conical depression over an actual bowl shape because it seems to offer better support regardless of the size of the piece you're working.

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That pretty finish didn't last long!  Hammering cold steel on the Steel Puck is a fun experience, but it's murder on the looks. :D

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12-gauge steel worked entirely cold from a flat sheet.  The only time heat was used was when the ladle was seasoned.

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Overall, I'm very very happy with these things.  Dad's already talking about trying to make one with an actual radius so I can form a bowl right to it, but I'm not sure I'll like that for general work like I've been doing.  The Steel Puck sits still on the anvil even without a stem for the hardy and I'm hard-pressed to think of anything I'd change.  Once the cold weather sets in, I might hunt for a stump that I can insert the puck into so it's at a perfect height for hammering on while I'm sitting down.  Until then, she'd doing a dandy job on the anvil and I'm looking forward to making more bowls.

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Greetings Vaugn, 

.         You could easily make a wood saddle to fit over your anvil with a depression for the puck. I would try your puck on a stump first to see if it offers the hammer resistance that you had on the anvil... Keep up the good work . 

Forge on and make beautiful things 

Jim

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Thanks, gentlemen.

Jim, a wood saddle is a good idea.  The Steel Puck of Awesomeness™ does a good job of staying put on the anvil even without a hardy stem, but being able to sit down while hammering would be a nice bonus.

Here's my largest bowl to-date, and the Puck certainly helped a good bit with the making of it.  If I can find larger sheets to work with, it will be fun to see just how big I can go...IMG_4516.JPG

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19 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

....they took a solid piece of steel and 'blipped" a depression in it with some plastique...

Well, I can happily say that the puck is working better for me than a ring or a tank bottom.  However, if I was able to get my hands on a 'blipped' piece of steel, I'd gladly retire the puck just so I could work on a chunk of steel that was forged by high explosives!  That would just be far too cool a tool to have in the shop!! :D

 

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When my 3cwt hammer cylinder head cracked I was intrigued to see that the concave depression, which mirrored the dome of the piston, had been formed by a single continuous spiral cut made with a round nose tool.

I managed to reproduce it almost exactly by using a boring bar held in the turret of my Ward 7 pre lector lathe and rotating said turret by Rowing the end of a bit of scaffold pipe stuck in another tool hole of the turret. The boring bar gave me about a 500mm (18") radius from the turret centre.

Bowl tools are a bit like lathes, in as much as you need one to make one. 

With a fly press I made my first bowl tool by pushing a 12mm (1/2") thick disc into a section of tube with a series of round chumps which produced a hemisphere. Once formed, I welded on a 1" chucking spigot, and then made all the other bowl radii tools using that first bowl as the top tool.

Alan

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22 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

One of the more interesting methods of making dishing forms was employed by a friend of mine.  She talked with some friends at the explosives research facility on campus and they took a solid piece of steel and 'blipped" a depression in it with some plastique...

I heard somewhere about some blacksmith playing with explosive forming...it must of been in your country as we are not allowed any bang stuff here. I seem to remember something about doing it under water and wrapping one piece around a prepared shape / block form with the blast.

Alan 

 

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http://www.nmt.edu/news/all-news/522-2014/4985-explosive-artist-opens-exhibit-of-detonography

The campus has a number of explosive repousse pieces and explosive welding art scattered around it.

I attend a lecture on it given by the artist and remember my crogglement as afterwards she was complaining of how the war in the middle east had quadrupled the price of plastique.

Lots of neat things you can do with explosive welding like make steel/aluminium bars for use in building ships---weld the AL part of the ship to the Al side and the steel part to the steel side.

AND NM Tech has a great fireworks display every July 4th...

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Ah yes that is it. In that case as it is in that area, and over that length of time I will likely have heard about it from a certain Mr Joyce.

Curiously enough given your comment, we left Santa Fe after our visit with Tom on a July 2. or 3. and travelled up to friends in Aspen where we attended the July 4. parade. I was most impressed with the enthiusiam expressed for the event by both the participants and the onlookers...everybody seemed to really get into the fun, even a gang of outlaws on Harley Davidsons. The fireworks over the town were fantastic and set off from the mountainside by the fire brigade...luckily they were on hand because the year before they had managed to set fire to it!

When I made some comment about keeping my mouth shut so no-one would realise I was British I just got blank looks...seems there was not that much of an association remaining between the holiday and the celebration of Independence with the origins and actual oppressors from whom the independence was won. But maybe everybody was just being polite! :) 

Happy Days.

Alan

p.s Crogglement? new one on me lementably...will log it away for later. Thank you.

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I find it strange that R. D. X. should become so expensive. It is the chief ingredient in standard plastic explosives like C-4. It was first discovered in 1895, and patents for it have long since expired. Also composition patents. It was used in W. W. 2 (the latter part), and definitely thereafter. (Korea etc.).It sounds like price manipulation to me. Various R. D.X. compositions were developed in the later half of the war. and C-4 was compounded in 1956. So it is not covered by patent any longer. Neither are any of the C-4 ingredients. Also, the explosive's raw materials are inexpensive.

Her supplier is taking her for a ride.

Artist sculptors have been using the technique for decades. Some other artists do not resort to molds. I have seen leaves and "other" objects made to leave impressions on metal plate canvases.

Moral of the story, get another supplier or if no one else is willing to help, contact a member of most any terrorist groups. (their marketing department). They might help.

Just trying to help,

SLAG.

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The fact that it is heavily controlled adds a huge bureaucratic load to the price.  Not too many suppliers---go tell your local FBI that you plan to go into plastique production and see how they increase your overhead.

She was buying it through the University's explosive research program and I would think that they got it at a big discount just like computer manufacturers are happy to sell computers to Universities so all the new talent thinks of their name when they think of computers.  She has also been doing this 30 something years now...

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T. P.

The local Feds, (F.B.I. et al),

 would probably throw me in jail.

The research labs usually get super pure reagents that drives up the cost considerably. About a decade ago there was about 14 tons of Czech. Semtex floating around. The late great benefactor Khadafi had bought it and still had much stockpiled for future happy occasions. (he had already generously sold some to the I. R. A. a while before).

Maybe Libya has some left, for sale.

Always Helpful.

SLAG.

Semtex is lower quality "C-4".

 

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  • 3 months later...

Deliberately: the large Snake up by the EMRTC building, the main Library, the preforming arts auditorium, just off the top of my mind.  And of course a lot of smaller items around campus, book ends of 4" steel with nasty gnarly holes chewed through them, dishing forms for the Fine Arts Metals class blipped into heavy steel,...

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  • 5 months later...

I'm sure you'll all be happy to know that the Puck is still working well.  I've made a bunch of little dishes with it and she's a bit worn, now.  Still, hammering eighth-inch cold steel will tend to scratch things up a bit and I can't fault her for being a bit roughened. :D

I was given a couple nitrogen tanks by a friend and am turning the bottom of one into a sit-down dishing stump.  These are old tanks with thick walls, but I'm still filling the stump with sand and oil to help deaden noise.  Between the Puck and the Stump, I'll be a bowl-making fool!  

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 8/15/2017 at 5:06 PM, rockstar.esq said:

Could you case harden the face of your puck?  

Never case-hardened anything, but I'm sure it could be done.  The puck's are just mild steel as far as I know, but I'll ask Dad to be sure.  

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