On 12/30/2024 at 12:12 AM, JHCC said:

Spent a good chunk of time today cleaning all the blown-in leaves out of the shop.

I picked up a battery powered leaf blower from Walmart (Hyper Tough) 20V 4.2Ah and it works wonders, in not only cleaning the leaves from the deck it cleans the floor of the shop & garage in half the time it used to take with a broom. The nice thing is it has a speed control trigger from very mild air blast to 100mph wide open. At first I was a little concerned about how long it would run on a battery charge but two and a half hours of constant running to clear both decks and the Celtic garden really impressed me.

  I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.~ Semper Paratus

So, you like your new variable speed cordless leaf blower eh, Randy?

Seems to me you're going to have to change your sign off now that you CAN control the wind.

Happy new year Brother!

Frosty The Lucky.

Step one of the cutting: breaking down a welding cylinder into appropriately sized bits. 

Next step: grind the edges of the side pieces smooth and flatten them under the fly press. 

Oh, I also added some covers (made from aluminum flex conduit) to the propane hoses on my forge. 

Just dropped in to wish all of my friends here at IFI a wonderful, happy, and prosperous New Year. 

Back atcha!

You too Billy and all the rest of you lugs out there!

Frosty The Lucky.

This is what I did on the first day of 2025. I decided to make another adjustable punch holder tool to take as my trade item to the January FSBC meeting. Usually the 2nd of a thing is better... I might bring my original as the trade item instead, lol

We'll see if I have time to try another that's better. If I do it again, I'll do a fold-over weld instead of upsetting to gain mass on the hole punched end. The first one I did was from 1/2" square and one of the struggles I had was getting the threaded portion to a specific diameter. I was at least thinking enough that I threaded the shaft before the wingnut. Figured whatever size I ended up having on the shaft is what I'd match to the wingnut. Anyway, this time around I figured I'd start with round stock the diameter of the shaft and just beef up the one end that has the drifted hole. 

I haven't even threaded any of it yet. I just really don't like the look of that drifted hole nor am I proud of those wingnut scrolls. 

 

Same to you all!

 

Yesterday I forged out and heat treated a 3lbs steel faced wrought iron hammer and hafted it today:

I also hafted the ball peen from a couple weeks ago:

 

Keep it fun,

David

Beautiful hammers David, you're getting good at it.

A couple things Shaina. First, you're working with steel the punched and drifted ring is more than thick enough to hold a chisel / punch / etc. If the tool is too loose in the ring just flatten it a little at a time to elongate the hole and narrow it till it suits you.

Forging shapes to a threadable round section is easy, you just need the finishing tool and they're silly easy to make. It REALLY helps if you have a drill press, I'm sure you know someone who'll let you use theirs. For trading stock you get to show them how to make a new tool. 

You'll need some square stock, preferably 1" sq but 3/4" works well enough. Cut two pieces 3x the diameter of the hole's diameter, long, for example for a 1/2" dia. swage cut them 1 1/2" long. Clamp them in a drill vise with a business card between them keeping everything even. 

The business card makes each side slightly less than 1/2 a round hole so the swage can forge to a finish size. Once drilled you need to soften the edges of the hole so it doesn't cut the stock when you swage it. A couple strokes with a single cut file and a few seconds with a flap sander does nicely. A flap sander that fits in a hand drill works well for this.

Lastly you want to connect the two halves with a spring. A piece of flat strap stock bent the easy way into a hair pin shape that holds the two halves of the swage together, aligned and slightly open say 1/16"- 1/8" or there about. The spring gets welded to the swages. I keep them aligned while welding by clamping a piece of round stock the dia. as the swage between the jaws.

Once welded up you have a spring swage to dress round section for precision steps like threading.

Make sense?

Frosty The Lucky.

Thanks Frosty! I do have a drill press. The table is really a pain to adjust so I just stack blocks to raise my item as needed. So I can totally make that tool! I'm sure someone has told me how to do that before because it sounds real familiar but I didn't remember when the time came, lol

As for the drifted ring, I know it doesn't need to be thick to work but I think it just looks better. What I'm not happy with is the unevenness of this one. You can't really see in this pic, but one side got thin and when I noticed it was too late to do anything about it. I had been cooling that side while drifting to try to get it more even. Then when I was rounding it up on the horn, I forgot to quench that side and just ... wham. I considered thinning the rest to make it all the same but it was thin enough I was worried it would crack on me. It'll still do the job so I'll probably keep it for me, lol ... or maybe not. Would be nice to use a tool that made me proud to have made it.

Not surprising, I've described the spring fuller more than once. It's such a simple idea and build it doesn't stick in memory till you actually have a use. Worse I'm not organized enough to have a copy of the description saved where I can find it so I describe it again. <sigh>

It's good to keep early attempts where you can look at or use them to let you  know how much you've progressed as you practice the craft.

Wing nuts take practice too.

Frosty The Lucky.

Dag nabbit, have to go back to work today. Was supposed to be off till monday but things came up. At least there will only be a couple of us there and i am getting paid well to do it. 

Third times the charm Shaina

Wonderful hammers Goods, I like the little ball.

Used to feel your pain Billy, retired a year ago and never looked back. 

Classy hammers Goods. Really beautiful!

No forging here today, but yesterday I went to load some cast bullets for a new old rifle and found that the bullet-seating stem was cut for pointy jacketed bullets, not flat-nosed soft-cast. It mauled my slugs, so today I turned a replacement stem. Messed up the first 2 but number 3 was right on.

Happy New Year everyone. Matt.

This is too fun not to share.   I was laughing in a rather disturbing manner as I beat that poor sattelite dish up.  I started it a while back.  It's mystery steel but water hardened according to the ticket I made and it has not blunted even though I was also striking a commercial grade stainless steel pot that was in the shop,  hard enough to dent it.  I am going to put one more rivet in towards the tip of the langett to finish ducking it in to the handle and maybe do some incised decorations after some more sanding.  Not particularly heavy,  but very effective... and fun. 

 

Gotta love a good war hammer! Laughing gleefully like a lunatic is a force multiplier in a battle. 

Frosty The Lucky.

Yup, take your shirt off and you become legend.

Spring fuller?  Like this?  

For 1/2" round.

Something like that but not with welds at the ends of the spring. They don't last long in use, too much impact shock it causes work hardening embrittlement. 

Frosty The Lucky.

On 12/30/2024 at 4:31 AM, Frosty said:

That's a fine end to the year Alex. Is This your place? I

Jer, Larry Thank you!

Happy New Year to all forum participants!

This is at the customer's house.
On December 31st I had to go to work. Today I went into the workshop and took some photos.

I really like the colored lights Alex, they make one of your outstanding tables a show piece. The video really says it all. WOW!

Have you thought about the hardware and software that would cause the lights to respond to recorded sound? You know, music, poetry, special effects soundtracks, etc. ?

Frosty The Lucky.

Flattening welding cylinder sections under the fly press. 

And starting to split them lengthwise (don’t worry; the irregular cut is on purpose).

I think I will split the others and then flatten them. It should be easier to handle smaller pieces.

That's a lot of work for a few sq feet of flat stock. Is there something special about oxy cylinder steel? And what you going to make from it?

Frosty The Lucky.

These are going to be the legs (two per corner) for a wood-and-resin tabletop that the customer made. Basically getting paid to practice my torch cutting. 

(Speaking of which, why would my cut lose its burn every few inches?)

I've burned through quite a bit of steel with a torch and in my experience, losing the cut is from not being steady.  Taking a breath or a subtle repositioning of your body can cause the torch to move out slightly from the sweet spot or where the reaction is taking place.  It's like starting the cut again where the steel has to get "wet" looking before you press the O2 lever.  The jagged line you are cutting makes it a bit more difficult to be steady.  Also rust or scale can block the reaction momentarily so clean material is helpful.  What are your gauge settings? 

And I'm with Frosty, that's lots of extra work to get flat stock but I do understand about making do with what you have.