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I Forge Iron

It followed me home


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Thanx Josh for the pictures of you and your recent purchases...  It will serve me well when I show my wife that I am not the only one who drags home large chunks of metal to " PRESERVE AS ART OBJECTS "  ..  I think we all should go to our doctors and have our blood checked for iron content...

 

Jim

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Thanx Josh for the pictures of you and your recent purchases...  It will serve me well when I show my wife that I am not the only one who drags home large chunks of metal to " PRESERVE AS ART OBJECTS "  ..  I think we all should go to our doctors and have our blood checked for iron content...

 

Jim

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Another "had to have" from the Brooklyn trip.  Crane headache ball.  280 lb.  Add it to my other smaller ones.

 

I donate blood every 10 weeks.  The joke in my family is somebody is getting some iron rich blood, and they will have a strange attraction to industrial objects.

 

I have had several visitors return to my museum with their wives, to show them there are people crazier than themselves.  Usually the wives just look around and shake their heads, roll their eyes....you know the rest.

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I prefer to think that you are really small,  In the unlikely event that you are not, build something unbelievable like a 12 feet screwdriver out of flattened pipe with a log wooden handle for your BIG museum

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I prefer to think that you are really small,

In the unlikely event that you are not, build something unbelievable like a 12 feet screwdriver out of flattened pipe with a log wooden handle for your BIG museum

 

Good idea....however, I would have to make the screwdriver authentic, and make the shaft solid....

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I had a chance to acquire the tools from the blacksmith shop from a loacal ship yard. The owner told me that it had not been used since the sixties and could not remember the last time some one opened the doors. His family has owned the shipyard since 1923.

 

I ended up with the following:

 

150# (I think) Dupont power hammer.

a 6 in leg vice.

a 200+# anvil.

4 - 5'x5' platen tables.

an Ingersol Rand IR34 upsetting machine with about 50 dies.

11 - pneumatic riveting hammers and dies.

a 14" shaper vice for my shaper.

a pile of tongs.

two large hydraulic power packs.

several buckets of 3/4, 7/8 1" and 1 1/8" rivets.

There is also an endless supply of wrought iron chain.

 

post-2703-0-84684100-1407178347_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-75489100-1407178436_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-74618700-1407178486_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-01359600-1407178568_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-69874100-1407178606_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-15506500-1407178634_thumb.jp

 

Does anyone have know what the upsetting machine would be worth?

 

brad

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That is an amazing score.  I hope you photographed everything in its place before removing everything to give it it's proper provenance for the future.  Its only hearsay without the photos.  I am sure there was a lot more there.  Can we expect more photos?

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To me this is a very historic site but there seems to little call for the ship building industry so like many people before them they have sold to a developer. The owner does value the history so he allowed me to collect all these tools.

 

There are NO new tools on this site. They still used the steam engine to drag the barges into dry dock up to a year ago. The photographic opportunities are great. The employees room in the oakum shed had calender and pinups the earliest I could find was from 1952. All the helmets and work boots etc were hanging on the walls waiting for the men to return.

 

Here are some more pics of some the equipment in place:

post-2703-0-90100500-1407182007_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-34087600-1407182044_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-05606700-1407182212_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-66576900-1407183017_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-40435000-1407183041_thumb.jp  post-2703-0-08952000-1407183059_thumb.jp

 

brad

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At least they are not just bulldozing them into a hole or pitching them into a scrapbin headed for re-melt!

 

 

(as for odd sized items---I once ran across some 1.5" graphite rod and so I built a pencil for a calligrapher friend----had some 4x5" balsa for the shaft, inlet the rod and glued up 2 and turned it circular.  Several coats of Mandarin Yellow enamel, a 1# coffee can for a ferrule and some pink packing foam rubber for the eraser  I delivered it sharpened and she was delighted that it actually worked as a pencil!  I also once forged a 2' fish hook as a retirement gag gift---and followed it up with a lightly built dry fly the same size using a filament duster for the body...)

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Greetings Brad,

 

What an extraordinary find...  I have a platen table and it is worth it weight in gold.. I have made lots of tooling for it and use it all the time for backing up and holding my rolling equipment ..  It makes a great solid hold for angle machines , Hossfield Benders ect that I have on rolling pads..  Plus I have an enormous bending forks and plows for use with hydraulic equipment..  I would if I were you try to get the line shaft drive pulleys and clutches .. They are getting much harder to find than a few years ago..  I would have loved to see that old shop when it was fully functioning with the steam engine just a popin..  I wish you well and take care of that super equipment..

By the way the rivet headers make great fly press dies and forms...

 

Forge on and make beautiful things

Jim

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Thanks Jim:

 

I already have a platen in my shop and could not be with out it, but these 4 will go to my place of work. I would like to see your hydraulic ram setup for the platens. I have tried to get the motor and the line shaft but the were two difficult to get safely.

 

brad

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hmmm my profile has my location but it does not show below my avatar.

 

I don't get that but the "location" tag is in a different place on my profile. I was going to edit a couple things, like how long I've lived in AK but it did weird things so I left well enough alone.

 

Maybe Admin can give us a clue or maybe it just takes time, or . . . ?

 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Brad, your photos bring back fond memories.  My first job was working in an old WWII shipyard.  I did layout work in the plate and angle shop.  We had a platen table that was about 20' x  60'.  I spent a lot of time on my knees snaping lines and setting up jigs on it.  The power hammers and presses were so big you could climb inside the castings to hide.  One press even had a table with a checker board and a couple of chairs in it.

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NeatGuy

Click on your name, then the black box right side called EDIT MY PROFILE.

Look for Converted - Location bottom of the page and enter your location.

 

 

for some odd reason there are 2 places for location, only one shows to the public under your name in the forum

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  • 2 weeks later...

Forgot to post these two vises when I got them.  Here they are after being cleaned up.  I've almost finished forging the missing parts and then off to find a new home.  The usual, springs, thrust washers & mounts.

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Now the real reason I thought about posting here today.  Not smithing related unless I end up having to make a bracket or linkage, but my son and I brought home a new project, a '71 RS Camaro.  Body is straight and virtually rust free.  Engine is a 350 with a 350TH.  My son has been busting his tail to save up money and helping me on weekends to smith things to sell.

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That and we picked this up for free from a neighbor.  My son did an outstanding job cleaning it and then posted it on CL to sell.

post-34362-0-18955200-1408122406_thumb.j

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Took a pleasant drive to Tennessee today to poke around a junkyard and this followed me home. No idea what it is. It is VERY heavy, each tongue is roughly the thickness of a railroad spike, they all swivel on the central round bar. I plan to undo the collar on the end and pull them off to do....something...with, but was curious if anyone knew what this was?

Btw thanks to eseeman, I had a great time poking around that junkyard. If it weren't so hot out I'd have stayed longer, but still came back to Bama with 72 pounds of Primo Scrounging Stuff!

(Later edit). I could not get the nut on the collar on either end to budge even one tiny bit, so I ended up taking the reciprocating saw to get it apart, which ate through two brand new Milwaukee metal blades! But I finally got it apart, adding a photo of one of the pieces and the cut end of that center rod). So...anybody know what this is ?

post-53103-0-85490200-1408129547_thumb.j

post-53103-0-76415000-1408132800_thumb.j

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