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What did you do in the shop today?


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I finished forging the diagonal peen hammer and got it rough ground to shape. Now I just need to clean it up a bit, heat treat it, and put a handle on it. I'm looking forward to moving some steel with her!  First project will be hammer eye tongs out of 1" square. 4AC20300-2A15-41AE-BC76-EA1588F6E469.thumb.jpeg.98acf442b79dccad61268b7c62a4b747.jpeg

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I made one like that and it didn't want to align so I drilled another 1/4" hole and welded a piece of 1/4" round I's sanded a little undersized to one side and it worked a treat. I loaned it out years ago and who knows now.

Frosty The Lucky.

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It aligns pretty well. It only opens about 1/16", and ; the spring is quite stiff (it's the flattened-out center section of the angle iron that's welded to the two blocks at its ends). We'll see how it works with an actual hot rivet; it gripped a cold one pretty well.

Frosty, thanks for the tip; I'll put that to use if the alignment goes out of whack.

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On 4/7/2020 at 8:52 PM, jlpservicesinc said:

Ted, nice clean work.. See, inspirational.   I've never made a bottle opener nor a feather..  I"m way behind the times. 

Anyone with a little experience can knock out a decent hook or bottle opener. What I see in your work, along with other talented blacksmiths, is a quality of precision and symmetry which only comes with years of practice. I've had enough difficulty to appreciate the higher levels of craftsmanship. 

The cutoff tool you made is a good example. When I first saw it I thought: WOW. The shank is centered and square to the flat bottom. The shoulders are the same height, and even all the way across. The tapers up to the edge are even, smooth, square and the same on both sides. All the proportions work. That's very impressive to me. 

Torbjörn Åhman is another smith I marvel at. He has that same stubborn drive to to do it right, no matter how many times it takes. That level of "good enough" is way above me. 

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9 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

Working 1" stock down fairly small by hand?  There are some promising old treatments for that involving strikers/power hammers/rolling mills/drop hammers/powered screw presses/hydraulic presses,...

I'm assuming this was in response to my post. Yes all of those treatments would work. But..... They would take away the fun of finding out how the hammer works!  Also, the only thing on that list I can afford at the moment would be the beer to pay the striker with.... But then we wouldn't be social distancing!  It's okay though,. I NEED the workout!

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It turned out to be 75-25 in the tank of the welder. So after I found and pulled out a welding hood from my uncle's stuff. I cleaned a bunch of galvy (I ground it off with and angle grinder outside away from my normal work space, masked and standing upwind) and rust off a small piece of 2x4 welded wire fence I welded (again outside and upwind) it to a frame that's been sitting in the barn for a hammer rack.

I also ran a BUNCH (5 layers deep, along the whole piece)of beads on a piece of 3/8 truck spring before making this guillotine tool with the next layer of the spring. I cut 1 piece in half lengthwise for the sides, then full sized on both faces top and bottom, on top of a full size piece from the center where a bolt holes is so I can push the bottom bit out of needed, welded to some square tube for the hardy hole. I clamped it tight with 2 layers of newspaper around the moving pieces. The spring was at the thickest end of the welders capabilities but I've hit it a few good times with a hammer and it seems to be solid. It's still a little tight, but I can take off some more scale from the bits to make them slide better. This picture is after I hit it with a wire brush on an angle grinder to see the welds.

IMG_20200110_160655123~2.jpg

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7 hours ago, George N. M. said:

Dear Cannon Cocker,

I'm not sure that is the Black Hills in the background.  It looks a bit more like the Pacific Northwest.  If I am wrong it is probably the snow making the high country look higher.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

You nailed it, that is not the black hills. We are cutting in the bighorns in Wyoming right now. 

 

8 hours ago, Frosty said:

Were it my truck I'd be looking for a big hammer head to lift with the boom. My anvil's a Peter Wright. My hammer's a Peter Built. 

Frosty The Lucky.

I should put some hydraulic lines off the truck that I could hook a press to I'd have a 500hp blacksmiths press! Talk about metal moving power!  And good guess she is a Peterbilt. 39AF028E-80C9-4B06-A4A2-BC0BBA4673D2.thumb.jpeg.bd0acf3b108fd6ef2d1047eb40edc94d.jpeg

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6 hours ago, Shabumi said:

of 3/8 truck spring before making this guillotine tool

Nice looking guillotine tool. Are you going to or did you, because I can't see the top, put a striking face on the top of your die to prevent mushrooming? 

Pnut

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Shabumi, if the frame of the guillotine was welded up from leaf spring, you may want to throw the whole thing in the forge to normalize it. Others correct me if I’m wrong, but the spring steel around the welds may have auto quenched and gotten brittle. Generally, the way to avoid HAZ problems is to preheat the material before welding. (HAZ, Heat Effected Zone, is the technical term you will heard used for this problem)

David

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E is A in Spanish...   I'm glad that where I live we do our firewood by the pickup load!   (Sure make a nice post&beam shop though...)

I get 3 days off starting end of day today; fleamarket is shutdown; so I guess it will be visit the scrap yard, work on the house and work in the shop.  We had the fan in the window last night, it's cooling off though. Mostly low 70-'s except Saturday looks to be 68 degF.

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Oh, don’t take me wrong, English is my native language, of course I could use an excuse. I was just not paying enough attention. I usually spend a lot of time reviewing before I post due to issues like this and the dreaded Autocorrect.

 My wife would be very upset if she saw this error. As a book reviewer and home school teacher, proper use of English is a big deal with her.

Personally, I’ve been blessed with being deemed critical and I’m working from home. So far it’s working out pretty well. I don’t have the free time others have, but I’m not going to have to worry about paying the bills.

David

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4 hours ago, pnut said:

put a striking face on the top of your die to prevent mushrooming? 

I haven't got that far yet, I still need to cut the top die to size. I may leave this one natural so I can see how long it takes to mushroom too much. I have enough left of the rest of the spring I can make plenty of other dies. 

2 hours ago, Goods said:

you may want to throw the whole thing in the forge to normalize it

I did normalize the spring when I had straightened it out. I brought it up to orange red (in outside daylight), hammered flat then let air cool. Should I still stick it in the forge to normalize the whole thing? I didn't preheat before welding, but the auto quench could only be from air cooling, which would bring it back to the same state where I started welding (I think), but this welding is all new to me. If I should normalize again, what color should I bring it to before air cooling? Or should I cool slower in an ash bucket?

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