What did you do in the shop today?

[bluerooster]

Yes it does.

I made a mistake on the wire count on the cable.  It is accurate on the center strand, the six outer strands are 18 wires, with 7 outer being about 14 gauge, and inner being about 18 gauge.  The center strand is 9, 14 gauge wires.  

[Frosty]

Silver solder will work just fine Pat but you have to choose the right melt temp and one suitable for steel. If you're going to heat blacken wax or oil you'll need silver solder with a melt temp around say 550f-600f. 

The steel needs to be really clean. I sand and degrease with a solvent alcohol or better. There will be direction with the solder as to what kind of flux to use.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

Well no faire today. guess my daughter was afraid i would give the girls whiskey again. What a worry wort. 

Got some forge time in though and made a fork. Tried my hand at some simple electroplating with copper. Not what i expected but was a fun experiment. 

[Frosty]

Nice fork, well done! Did you use copper sulfate? 

Bummer about the daughter depriving the grand kids like that.

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Didn’t get into the forge today, but did have some fun hammer time splitting a bunch of sandstone flagstones to make a new border for the front flower bed. 

[Gandalfgreen]

have had no time to do anything too much work. hope to find a post vise soon and finish setting up. everyones work looks great and the belt looks no fun any way you look at it.

[JHCC]

For what it’s worth, there’s no evidence for the existence of chastity belts — whether in documents, in artistic depictions, or the actual objects themselves — in the medieval period. 

[BillyBones]

15 hours ago, Frosty said:

copper sulfate

? dont know. I followed some directions i read that you use vinegar and salt. Put 2 pieces of copper connected to a battery charger. It was starting to turn a nice blue color when my dad came over. We started talking and about an hour later i remembered my solution. When i came back to it my anode (?, "-" side, can never remember which is which) had about a half inch of copper colored "mud" on it. I think that is where i made the mistake. So i disconnected everything, cleaned the scale off my fork and did an acid soak. I hate working with acid. Stuck a fresh piece of copper in and my fork, checked my plans for wiring, wired it up and let it sit for a couple hours. 

Like i said it was fun trying, may try again sometime later but nothing i am seriously into. Just playing. Some salt, some vinegar, a couple pieces of copper pipe and to much time on my hands.  

 

[Les L]

Billy, copper sulfate is a chemical that can be used to color metal. It comes as blue crystals, add some to water and brush it on or dip small projects. It doesn’t take much and colors as soon as it gets on the metal. The cleaner the metal the more it will look like copper. You can polish it bright, heat color or wet it and after drying it will start getting green colors like old aged copper. The roses I posted earlier are colored with it. 

[Frosty]

In the early 60s part of the Chemistry set I got for Christmas had a copper plating "experiment." A tiny amount of copper sulfate powder, a strip of copper and instructions. Put the powder in the plastic tube (reactor) add clean water to the mark, cap and shake till dissolved. The copper strip clipped to one lead and the steel nail to the other. Lower into the solution and connect the leads to the battery.

The set came with battery packs and jumpers, your parents supplied the batteries. OR you could combine experiments and use the lemon battery to power the plating experiment. 

Within about 2 hours the steel strip had a ghost of copper, over night it was plated if you left it until the copper strip was gone it was heavily plated.

If you're electro plating you need an electrolyte so current can conduct between the electrodes. (I can never remember which is which either.) Copper ions carried by a salt solution will "work" but the solution is copper chloride and nobody uses a chloride solution to plate anything I know of. I don't know about vinegar but your results aren't great.

Try a dilute solution of sulfuric acid for the electrolyte, hook up the jumper wires and give that a try. The thing you want to plate has to be OCD clean, wire brush and solvent at a minimum, sanded or better sand blasted is better. Polished is from what I recall better still. 

When just doing it I coil copper wire or short sections of copper pipe and wing the sulfuric acid mix. 

For anybody reading this you MUST use proper PPE and safe handling and mixing procedures for acids. When diluting acid, ANY ACID it's ALWAYS acid into water! Never the other way around, and splash puts acid in the air and that's a B-A-D-N-E-S-S thing! Adding acid into water any splash will be water and at most annoying.

Sulfuric acid will not only burn you horribly splashed drops on organics tend to catch fire from the exothermic reaction. A jr. high school demonstration was one drop of Sulfuric acid on a popsicle stick which immediately started smoking and within a few seconds burst into flame.

Rather than acid electrolyte, I HIGHLY recommend you use copper sulfate solution,  once dissolved it is the electrolyte. Do NOT get it on your skin or heavens forbid in your eyes! It won't dissolve your skin off but it can cause burns, wear rubber gloves and safety glasses. Flush any body contact with copious quantities of water warm enough you can do it for say 15 minutes. Read the precautions on the label. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

[alexandr]

I am engaged in upholstering leather chairs. Finish soon.

[Gandalfgreen]

those chairs are gorgeous 

[PHDforge]

Made a spoon to match a bbq fork I had made. Also I refined the fork a little. Was hoping for a wider spoon shape, but not enough material to spread out. Used 1/4” x 3/4” bar stock.

[bluerooster]

Current flows from negative to positive. So the cathode needs to be copper, and the anode needs to be whatever is to be plated.  Then the electrolyte solution can be as simple as water, or as complex as you want to make it.  but I would think a salt solution of some sort would work just fine.

  I went out and started to weld up another piece of cable. It was comming along nicely, until I cranked the blower a few too many times. When I pulled it out half of it was gone. I'd allowed myself to burn it completely in two. I guess that's what happens when you get distracted as it's getting close.

[BillyBones]

Les, thanks for that tip, may have to look into it.

Frosty, words of wisdom when it comes to working with acid. I hate it. You cant be to careful.

Blue, no matter how many times i read or hear what you said i will never remember which is anode or cathode. 

PHD, i like the oval portion behind the working end. Nice design.

Alexandr, as always very nice.

Had a visitor from Mergatroid over at the shop today. Showed him around and fed him some brisket. The rainbowed guy is him, the alien looking thing is his new buddy my grandaughter. 

 

 

[SinDoc]

Was working on the chefs knife Saturday when my grinder broke again. The housing for the bearings melted from friction (I assume) and caused the wheel to become unbalanced and fling the belt across the shop again. My friend who designed and built the grinder said he is done with using 3D printed parts to contain the bearings and machined a solid steel housing for them this time.

Told him I hope this is the last time I have to dodge a belt lol.

[ThomasPowers]

Saturday I took way to much stuff up to a nice picnic area in the mountains for an SCA metal workers guild hammer in.  Poor little 4 cylinder pickup with 4 anvils + stumps, 3 propane tanks, (Fire rules allowed propane forges only.) Tools, propane forge, etc.  Springs were not bending the wrong way; but it was getting close.  Left at 06:30 for the 1.5 hour drive.  Sure was nice and cool and conifer scented.  Event ran from 8am to 4pm and then I loaded and drove back home and unloaded some as it looked like rain.  I was more than a little tired that night!

Sunday I unloaded the rest and then we went to Albuquerque to see our Daughter and her kids---still camping out in their house waiting for their belongings to be shipped in from Okinawa.

Monday I took it easy and unpacked the tools I had taken to the hammer in, re-hafted a hammer and did some reading.

[jlpservicesinc]

Sound like a great weekend..   I love driving early in the morning..  The sights, the smells , the lack of traffic.. 

Great weekend indeed. 

[Goods]

Made four more leaves for my wife, ginkgos requested this time.
Also made a blacksmith’s knife. Started with 1/2 cable about 9” long. Mig welded the ends, heated it up, opened fluxed it and brought it up to a forge welding heat. At that point I twisted it crazy tight and continued the weld (multiple heats) in 1/2” round swage, then a 3/8” round swage. At this point I knew the bar was too small for a knife, so I reversed the twist on half of the bar, forged it down to a rectangular cross section, cut it in half,   put the ground faces together, Mig welded the ends and forge welded it back together. At this point the welds looked good, so I drew out the blade width along the face of the last weld hoping to see a reverse pattern, and finished the rest of the shaping. Now, it’s hardened and tempered. I have to finish grinding it, but any recommendations for bringing out the pattern, if it’s even possible? (Sorry, for the long winded description…)

Thanks,

David

[Rojo Pedro]

No suggestion but good looking stuff.

[Chad J.]

Ripped some walls out of the shop to make room for more shop tools.   Once that project is cleaned up and some wiring done I'll be bringing my table saw and router tables down. 

[BsnNFrnt]

Mr. Powers, Thank you for the post. Super helpful to my mental state that I now have an image to coincide with all the sage wisdom.

[JHCC]

4 hours ago, Goods said:

any recommendations for bringing out the pattern

Try etching in coffee. 

[jlpservicesinc]

Goods.. Very nice work.. You have a discerning eye..  Nicely done..  Looking forwards to the etch photos. 

[SinDoc]

My main gas line under the house blew apart due to corrosion yesterday and flood the crawl space with a ton of natural gas. Was so bad, the crew working on the sidewalk out front thought they hit something and called the gas company. Thankfully they were there within 10 minutes and shut it off. My crawl space is also very well vented with solid air flow as it was clearing the gas fast enough to not let it build to explosive levels.

On the plus side of all that, if that annoyance of a Raccoon was still under there, he probably isnt alive anymore.