What did you do in the shop today?

[jlpservicesinc]

Do you have to drive for water or how deep is your well?   A few of my friends lived in AZ and they didn't have enough money to drill a well (to deep), so used to drive into town with a tanker every week.. 

6 hours ago, Hans Richter said:

My lords, as far as the monsoon is concerned here in Flemish Limburg, I now have webbed fin's between my toes and fingers because of the heavy rain here. The sewer barely runs off and my lawn is a big swamp.

You weren't that fish dude in that love story????  Were you??? 

23 hours ago, PVF Al said:

Spent the afternoon working with a friend. Started out .750" x 1.5" x 12.5", finished 18.5" x 6.250" Al

Al, great piece..   all hot cut or started on bandsaw?    Can't see the back so is the middle collared?  Doesn't look like it but just wanted to clarify.. 

Free form practice or sketch and pattern?       Nice work... 

[ThomasPowers]

I'll have to ask my Landlord how deep their well is down here.  We're overlooking the Rio Grande valley and so at least down in the valley the water is shallow. All our area is Rio Grande river sediments so a lot of sand.  Of course the casita's well water is high in Arsenic but good tasting!  At my other place we are on "city water" ; however the Polvadera Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association gets our water from wells, it's high in radionuclides up there and tastes great. Massive organization they have 3 employees; Lucky for us we can abbreviate the name on the checks...

I've spent time in areas of West Texas with no water, like 800' and nothing drinkable, where they tankered in water; kids had a 90 mile each way bus ride to school too.  Folks in some places in Australia have similar situations IIRC.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Not at the home shop, but at ESSA (Eureka Springs School of Art), we assembled four new KMG 72 inch belt grinders. Had to assemble the HF tool tables and modify them to be roll around's. Debi did all the wiring on the motors. The school now has a total of 5 belt grinders (1 Grizzly 72 inch) for an upcoming knife making class.

[JustAnotherViking]

Today I was doing some fire welding practice and made a few basket twists... Next I'll have to practice a few scarf welds and join them onto something 

Have also been working on the small metal tree as a display stand for leaf key rings, but still have some tweaking to do before I share 

(first time using tig to join branches up. Now that is a fun way to Weld!!!) 

[Al Stephens]

Hi JLP Thanks, the piece was  butchered, fullered, drawn, hot cut, from 1 piece, the "collar" is the only original sized portion left, and goes completely around the piece. We did it from the video link below,  some pictures I had taken at a Fred Crist demo in 2003, and a photo of the Yellin piece in a book. Other than the centerline and first butcher lines, nothing else was measured,all done by eye. On the video he called it "The Yellin Challenge".  Al 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUh6BrtAsK4

 

 

[bubba682]

Just another viking heres a display tree i made for crystal ,and jewlery ithey went over pretty good.

Heres a couple of good sellers i made this winter got a bit of custom work comin in its allright...

[jlpservicesinc]

2 hours ago, PVF Al said:

Hi JLP Thanks, the piece was  butchered, fullered, drawn, hot cut, from 1 piece, the "collar" is the only original sized portion left, and goes completely around the piece.

PVF Al- it looks like it was a fun piece to forge..  Really very nice..  Personally I like work like that as it lets you explore your skill set and while it may not seem like it having the side by each helps with the keen eye..  I would imagine you also have a pretty well stocked set of set tools, swages and such as sharp corners or bosses like the 'Collared" section is hard to get clean without them... 

Curved edge butcher or just offside?

[ausfire]

3 hours ago, JustAnotherViking said:

Today I was doing some fire welding practice and made a few basket twists... Next I'll have to practice a few scarf welds and join them onto something

Nice work with the basket twists, JAV.

I, too, have a few of those sitting on the bench waiting for use as handles, but the thought of scarf welds is a bit daunting. I have some (limited) success with fire welding folded fire pokers where the two pieces are already together, but I've never been able to weld two separate pieces. Not enough hands, and one piece always loses heat too fast. Good luck with your practising and I hope you have better outcomes than I did.

[Al Stephens]

JLP, We used the same off side butcher, and the anvil edge for everything. The lines looked clean, but by the time we were done some cold shuts showed up at the base of the c scrolls. So there were some miss hits somewhere.  I think between the 2 of us we had every hot cut we had laying around. Mostly used a straight, handled one I made years ago from a jackhammer bit, and yes it was dressed a time or two during the afternoon. Al

[JHCC]

Fred was my first teacher, some 35 years ago. Great guy. 

[Judson Yaggy]

Today In the shop I made scale.

Scale made at the anvil.

 

Scale made at the swedge block.

 

Scale made at the old power hammer.

 

Scale made at the new power hammer. Sucker hits HARD, joy!

 

While waiting for the bigger stuff to come up to heat I poked around the edges of the fire and made some roses and feathers for a local non-profit raffle.

 

 

AND, to cap it all off, cleaned out the barn with the help of the world's best dog.  

[jlpservicesinc]

13 hours ago, ausfire said:

I, too, have a few of those sitting on the bench waiting for use as handles, but the thought of scarf welds is a bit daunting. I have some (limited) success with fire welding folded fire pokers where the two pieces are already together, but I've never been able to weld two separate pieces. Not enough hands, and one piece always loses heat too fast. Good luck with your practising and I hope you have better outcomes than I did.

Just a hint.. Don't open the cage before it's welded onto a shaft.. 

If you can weld the 4 bars together  then you can take a center bar and scarf the end with a round scarf vs flat..    Then with 6 or 8 round bars vs the 4,  the diameter of the bars should be  just slightly smaller than the inside diameter of the shaft round scarf. (There must be a small gap).    Then wire the bars after scarfing one end with a flat rounded face scarf, Put these with the scarf around the scarf of the shaft, flux and weld..    This way everthing is held in place and since the scarf is all ready in the center of the bars it will hold everything together as you come up to welding temperature.. 

if you are good, you can actually twist the shaft as the bundle comes up to welding temperature and you will feel it weld or tack.. At this point remove it and set the tack, clean and reflux, put in for a full welding heat..  

There are 100's of different scarfs used depending on what the shape of the materials are.. Not just the 2 commonly used now.. One being the stepped scarf as popularized by Mark Aspery's videos' as well as others and then the old faithful flat rounded scarf.. 

There are Y scarf, T scarfs, flats, fillets, V etc, etc, etc.. 

The main problem with any light gauge weld is the ability to get everything lined up and at the same welding temperature and still be able to move it to the anvil.. 

The method shared above will take all those problems away..  Easy Peasy.. 

[JHCC]

Not much time in the forge today, but got in some more work on the forged bowl I’m making for Lisa. 

[jlpservicesinc]

12 hours ago, PVF Al said:

JLP, We used the same off side butcher, and the anvil edge for everything. The lines looked clean, but by the time we were done some cold shuts showed up at the base of the c scrolls. So there were some miss hits somewhere.  I think between the 2 of us we had every hot cut we had laying around. Mostly used a straight, handled one I made years ago from a jackhammer bit, and yes it was dressed a time or two during the afternoon. Al

Thats even more impressive and the anvil must be near perfect..   In the way back I ended up making set tools and rounded and squared top sets for the wrought work I was doing.. it really helped to clean things up.. 

I also found that certain metals are more prone to vibration cracking than others as well as heat stress cracks..   Anytime there is a sharp corner or radius with a stretched corner or branch V I noticed some very shallow cracks..   A36 with show these more so than 1018 CR or HR..  

Still nice to see..  

Judson Yaggy - Nice scale making..  That special formula must be working good because I have never been able to get a green tractor out of the scale or a nice Doggie..     Next meet I'm going to hang out with you more so I can learn you secrets..    

[Mark Ling]

with the time I had I tried out my new brass brush on a key chain and letter opener, I like it. Then about a week ago I did a 1-3/4" bottom swage. And also I cleaned up a vice I got at the scrap yard a while back. 

                                                                                                                                             Littleblacksmith 

 

[ausfire]

11 hours ago, jlpservicesinc said:

Just a hint.. Don't open the cage before it's welded onto a shaft..  The method shared above will take all those problems away..  Easy Peasy.. 

Wow! Easy Peasy? I really think I would have to see that done. Way beyond my current skill level, but thank you for the advice.

[JustAnotherViking]

Many thanks for the advice jlpservicesinc, i'll have to see how I get on next weekend when I get back to the coal forge (the gas one I have at home is too big for my burner to get up to welding temperature.. might make a few internal baffles out of the remaining castable refractory to reduce the size when I get time).

I made a start on a scarf weld between two pieces of square bar, got a light tack done, then couldn't get it up to temperature again, the pieces separated. Later, I pulled a HUGE donut of clinker out... needless to say I wasn't the only one welding in that particular forge yesterday . Didn't feel the need to get annoyed at myself by failing repeatedly, so moved onto other work instead. 

 

littleblacksmith - great job on the vice cleanup. I assume just wire wheel and oil? Something about that finish looks great!

[DaveGas]

Did a lot of staring and beer drinking the other day as I began a hang test for my first chandelier project.

Far from scientific, but if one scrolled hook can hold the entire weight of the project then four definitely can, right? Sounds reasonable. I plan on going hook to hook until I've done all of them and I'm satisfied. If anyone has experience with this subject I would appreciate input (I've never made an overhead piece before). So far it's weighing in at 76 pounds with chain and all.  All load bearing pieces were riveted with two 1/4" and also welded on the upper ends to ensure they will hold (don't like the idea of this thing falling on my head so I'm not taking chances).

When I mocked it up the entire chandelier is 69" tall. Turns out it's going to hang too low for where I wanted to put it. Plus side is that I have a split entry house with a cathedral ceiling in the living room. The 30" ring will be come the living room chandelier and the 20" ring will become the entry chandelier. It was originally supposed to be a 12 light, two tiered chandelier. Looking like I'll have one 8 light chandelier and one 4 light. Oh well, now I know and knowing is half the battle.

I was thinking of 1/2" tubing running along the inside from light arm to light arm. Probably with a 1 inch gap between runs to splice and the wiring and hide the wire nuts inside of the light arms.

[jlpservicesinc]

1 hour ago, ausfire said:

Wow! Easy Peasy? I really think I would have to see that done. Way beyond my current skill level, but thank you for the advice.

it sounds way more complex than it is..  It's one of those a picture is worth a thousand words..    If you can weld the 4 bars together and get the nice baskets you are..  This is nearly as easy.. just takes a few more minutes in scarf prep time.. 

I get asked all the time what is the most difficult thing to make...      There is nothing more difficult or less difficult than the other..  It just takes longer..  The skill set is the skill set.. It just depends on how one applies it..

[JustAnotherViking]

Thanks for taking the time to do the illustration jlpservicesinc, that really clears it up!  I shall definitely be trying it out next weekend.

The baskets I did for practice were much simpler... two pieces of round, bend them in half so you have two U's and slot the two 'open' ends together... much less welding, and no messing about trying to hold or tie the bits together. Not as nice as 6 or 8 piece baskets, but a very quick and easy way to practice without investing too much time on failed attempts and burnt steel.

 

The following pic is an in progress shot of the tree I am working on... I will either do some file work to cut some notches into the branches, or some bending with the oxy-propane torch to add hooks for the key rings to sit in... have just hung them on for illustration now

Before I get that far, i'll need to make some roots, and i'm thinking of either wrapping the roots around a small rock, or for a twist, I might try making a rock-like shape out of wood, and curl the roots around that.

[ThomasPowers]

All y'all are saving your scale to do a bloomery run and make it back into iron, right?  It's magnetite a high grade iron ore much like the iron sand used by the japanese for smelting.

[JHCC]

I’ve been using this rounded-off 5# dumbbell in the vise as a ball stake, but decidedly to weld on a hardy stem for use at the anvil. The ball is cast and the stem is some kind of mystery ferrous, so I hope the welds hold up. 

[Glenn]

We have a whole size range (different weights) of those in the shop. They come in handy for lots of projects.

The round weights for bar bells are good as bending dies. 

Thin tin does not need much to be able to form against. Hot metal can be formed easily against an object. Working cold metal ... well, they have a saying about doing that. (grin)

[Hans Richter]

Have this key worked out for a friend of mine, he owns a house in Germany that is listed as a monument. Part of this agreement is that he can not simply replace hang and latches against modern locks. So the question was to make extra key(s). So before I started I made a print of the original key in lead as a template for the copy. I hope it fits when he visits his vacation destination next time. So as you see the blacksmith becomes also a lock smith in some case. I did have to clad up the beard by MAG welding because it was too thin for the original beard.

[Marc1]

Interesting Hans ... I have a similar key for the screen door at the front of my holiday house. Has a few extra slots across but basically the same. We can still buy blanks like that here.