January 30, 20206 yr Les is pretty spot on Chris. For smaller stuff you will be using a fairly low amperage and wont need super dark. My auto hood goes to 12 I believe, but I generally use 9 or 10 for most everything I do. Low amp tig 9, mig usually 10. 1/8 7018 it depends on indoors or outdoors. Indoors I use a darker setting. Fixed shade is nice and light, but the auto is nice when you are trying to do your own fits and tig tracking. Or crawling inside of a tight machine haha.
January 30, 20206 yr After some back-and-forth I finally met the owner of an equipment rental place and made off with some of their unusable breaker bits. If I had the time and skills I'd look at sharpening some and see what he'd be willing to pay for re-pointing the worn ones he has (the heat treating requirement is what keeps me from looking into it further). Something like 18-20 bits here, I gave him $20 and a bottle opener.
January 30, 20206 yr Those make awesome hardy tools. Square up the shank below the collar, and shape above to the collar to what you need. Also good for small hammers.
January 30, 20206 yr My favorite hardy was made from the broken off tip of a jackhammer bit. It had the wedge shaped tip already and all I needed to do was to forge down the broken shaft to fit into a 1" hardy hole---and then forge it down a bit more so I can remove it from a 7/8" hardy hole that college students couldn't tell was colour coded for a different hardy... No heat treat but normalization on it for my use.
January 30, 20206 yr The stuff you've listed is why I've been hunting for 'em, JHCC. It would figure I finally get these after buying a few feet of 1.25" Hex 1045.
January 30, 20206 yr STASH, all of the manufacturers of diamond saw blades told me they use 4140 for the body. Well my phone won't take a picture. It says not enough memory, but I did find an internet picture of the Whitney 20-1 punch I bought for $4 at the yard sale. And it appears the punches and dies I found in box of misc go to the Whitney.
January 30, 20206 yr Thanks Biggun- that's about what I was figuring. I was speculating with the guy I bought them from, he was shooting for 1040-1050ish. Steve Great deal on the punch and dies, too!
January 31, 20206 yr Walking to work downtown Boston this morning... found this sitting in gutter next to the curb. Hundreds of people must have already walked right by it, but I picked it up. CM Herc Alloy hook, about 7” high.
January 31, 20206 yr Too bad it's not genuine -- it says "Forged" right on the side! Cool find. I must have missed that when I was in Boston for work a couple of weeks ago....
February 2, 20206 yr Nothing too fancy, but found an 8lb'er at the scrap yard and picked it up for less than $3. Nasty fiberglass handle, will probably blow it out and put a nice hickory handle in. Shorter as well, make a light striker out of it perhaps?
February 2, 20206 yr On 1/31/2020 at 10:50 AM, JHCC said: Too bad it's not genuine -- it says "Forged" right on the side!
February 2, 20206 yr BGD, I picked up one of those Whitney punches at the local scrap yard a couple of years ago but no base came with it. Haven't had an opportunity to use it yet though. Nice you got extra dies with it.
February 6, 20206 yr None of them fit in my silly french hardie hole but I picked this job lot up recently. They were delivered while I was working away, was difficult saying it wasn’t more ‘scrap iron’ given the weight of the box. I’m thinking I’ll make something else with a hardy hole to fit them. I love them already though, and that’s the main thing right?
February 6, 20206 yr To a blacksmith *everything* may be scrap iron and *nothing* may be scrap iron.---We may reforge items others might already say were tools; and we might save odd items of metal to use as tools that others might say were just scrap iron! I learned to tag ALL my "tools" with my tool colour after catching a student reforging my hold down into something else. Now I tell them that they cannot use anything tagged with my tool colour as stock without explicit permission from me! Nice haul!
February 6, 20206 yr 13 minutes ago, MacLeod said: I love them already though, and that’s the main thing right? How could you not love them already. I'm drooling on this end of the Internet! I'd love to come into a stash like that.
February 6, 20206 yr 4 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said: Nice haul! Thanks Thomas, my father used to say ‘if you keep a thing for 20 years, you’ll find a use for it’. I might give a couple of the cut offs a french tail to fit the hardie as they need reforged but I have an idea for a hardie hole for the others. I find it a bit wrong reworking something that a blacksmith of old took care to make and used many many times and put his touch mark on. Perhaps I’m weird. However I guess if I’ll go some way to wearing it out again and someone else reworks it in 70 years I won’t be spinning in my grave. 7 minutes ago, Chris C said: How could you not love them already. Excellent, Thanks Chris. Yet again, IFI gets me back to thinking I’m normal again! I’ve smuggled a couple of them into the house with me tonight just look at them and work out their intended purpose when they were forged!
February 6, 20206 yr 33 minutes ago, MacLeod said: I’m thinking I’ll make something else with a hardy hole to fit Nice score. Isn't that handle in the background to a leg vise, or do you just want to make a portable hole? Yeah, a little tall but a leg vise will hold any bottom tool I've picked up and then some. Frosty The Lucky.
February 7, 20206 yr Just now, Frosty said: leg vise Hi Frosty, hope you’re well! the leg vice is at the other end of the workshop (that’s about 6 feet from that one!). Yet again you have pointed out the straightforward, sensible, pragmatic solution that was entirely not obvious to me! I’m gonna use the leg vise. Goodness only knows how long I would have spent fixing yet another problem I didn’t have. That’s another dram I owe you!
February 7, 20206 yr Single malt scotch mmmmm. Hopefully I'll get to take you up on it some day. Just the word "obvious" is an oxymoron, there's almost never anything obvious about IT at all. I don't recall who pointed to my leg vise after asking why I wasn't using one of the many bottom tools I'd picked up. I didn't have a hardy hole to match the one I needed of course. I do appreciate you're giving me the opportunity to point it out again. Frosty The Lucky.
February 7, 20206 yr Ya beat me to it Frosty. I have a lot of hardy tools that don't fit any anvils I have and get used in the post vise. If they are a tad too tall, I stand on a platform.
February 7, 20206 yr I know smiths that have welded a short piece of angle iron to a hardy stem to make it fit their larger hardy hole. Me I generally have a removable sleeve for the hole to make it fit. (As my large hardy holes are 1.5" on a side I don't seem to have a problems with hardy stems being too large for the hardy holes. Current hardy holes in my shop are 7/8", 1", 1 3/8", 1.5", with several 1" being a bit loose.)
February 8, 20206 yr I see a bunch of hammers in that,1018 carbon steel Rockwell B50 at about $70 U.S. for 2 inches.about $900 for a piece that long new.
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