It followed me home

[Frosty]

That sounds like a screw machine with electronic controls. When were they built?

I don't think any of Dad's lathes, punch presses, shears, etc. were designed in the last century, most were built before 1930 except the newest one built sometime during WWII. Dial indicators were new fangled but he was converting. I THINK I can still read a vernier but it's been quite a while. 

I'd love to have laser instrumentation but will probably not do enough lathe work to justify any. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[BillyBones]

Yes it is a screw machine. Davenport model B. I think the ones we have were built in the 70's and 80's. No electronic controls except for the button that turns the motor on. Adjustments are made by tweeking a deadstop or swing arm. However the new tooling for these things helps tremendously. We use carbide inserts now instead of the old circular or dovetail tooling. Change an insert and vary rarely do you even have to make an adjustment. I must also admit that tight of a tolerance is usually only one or 2 of the dimensions, the rest i usually get +/- .002 or .003 on. One job i run has a +/- of .005" on the tightest, i love that job. I can sit on my but and watch cat videos when i run it. 

I am hoping that soon i will not be doing that anymore though. My foreman wants me to move into the tool room to take over for our tool maker who will be retiring soon. Our tool maker and engineer are also both  trying to get the GM to give me the nod as well. Since the first time i ever set foot in a machine shop that is where i wanted to work. 

[Scott NC]

  One time when I was younger,  I applied for a machinist job, thinking my hobby knowledge would serve me well, but it was a pump manufacturer and I was out of my element and failed badly.  They hired me with the promise of easing me in but that went out the window in short order (and I know perfectly why and it's understandable, in hindsight).  I could cut small gears on my own equipment, doing the calculations and building my own fixtures, but that was with no pressure, time line, and no-one looking over my shoulder in my basement shop.  

[Frosty]

The closest I've ever been to a screw machine was helping the people who bought Dad's shop building move their's in. Dad new them, heck he knew most everybody and I'd met the new owner a time or two myself. I've only ever seen one in operation in online videos and that isn't very informative regarding operating one. What I could see looked like a clockwork machine, lots of set up but once it's running, keep it fed and watch for problems.

Having set up work in lathes and mills I realized setting a screw machine up was WAY more demanding. Even if you get to kick back and sip coffee once its doing it's job, nothing is ever that simple. 

While I can find the front of my lathe and do basic operations I've never called myself a machinist and never had the job. Used a lathe at work yes, but never a machinist. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[JHCC]

A few estate sale goodies; $10 total.

The tackle box is especially fortuitous, as I have a storage need for which none of my other spare toolboxes were the right size. 

[BillyBones]

Frosty, you are absolutely right. It is like clockwork, all about timing. And yep, it is all in the set up. Just keep it fed and watch for problems, sometimes those problems can be quite disastrous too. 

Youtube has all the training videos available for the Davenport. They are kind of dated and a lot has changed as far as tooling and and a few other things. Like the training videos say that there is no adjustment for cut off depth, there is now. 

[yt12]

old new old striking anvil-----w horn-----may need a kiss with the grinder for a nose job.

[BillyBones]

Got some road kill in front of the house today. A piece of leaf spring, unfortunately it also explains the loud POP/BANG noise i heard pulling into the drive way. Guess i get to replace my leaf springs next weekend.

[Frosty]

Road kill is all well and good until you provide the road kill. On the upside you get to double your road kill count next weekend!

At least you didn't lose it on the highway in front of a minivan full of children. 

So, what you going to make?

Frosty The Lucky.

[aaamax]

9 hours ago, Frosty said:

So, what you going to make?

 I was going to ask the same question.  

Often good high carbon, but a bit of a bear to get to knife blank thickness.   Fold around hatchets are an option.

[BillyBones]

For a while it will be making rust... with the other dozen or so leaf springs i have. 

 

[JHCC]

I’ve made a couple of nice chisels from truck leaf spring after splitting it lengthwise with a handled hot cut and the treadle hammer.

[Frosty]

I don't have much use for leaf springs though I have a bunch. I make springs for leg vises and I've made a couple hacks and a hammer face. I have one leaf I use for top and bottom dies for my smithin magician. There's always a piece around if something comes up but if I need to forge something I use coil spring, it's WAY easier than trying to forge anything from leaf. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

[BillyBones]

I have used leaf for a few chisels, mostly for wood working though. I made a couple big Bowie knives with leaf a couple years back, of course a few axes, i think i still have a couple unfinished, and the dies for the guillotine as well. 

I am kind of thinking of using one leaf, the one with the bushings on the ends, and build some sort of ballista. Use the spring for the limbs of a giant crossbow more or less.  

[Frosty]

A ballista would be fun. On further thought I have made log cabin tools with leaf spring though not draw knives. Slicks flat, curved, etc. and a couple froes. The froes were kind of different and used for splitting firewood at the stove not making cedar shakes.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

 

On 4/23/2024 at 1:14 AM, BillyBones said:

lI am kind of thinking of using one leaf, the one with the bushings on the ends, and build some sort of ballista. Use the spring for the limbs of a giant crossbow more or less.  

Having made them from leaf spring, if you make a crossbow, or an oversized crossbow, get new spring from a spring shop. Don't get me wrong, get it scrap - some companies and local governments have new trucks upgraded when they buy them and they often toss the almost new springs out.

Old springs, and especially ones that have broken once may break again. Steel crossbows have a much, much higher draw over a shorter length than a self-bow, and can run in the hundreds of pounds, so this means that if the prod goes, it tends to fail spectacularly and in a fairly danger manner. Spend a fair amount of time on the nut and the trigger system, as well as the cocking mechanism; they are also common points of failure.

There was a site when I built my first one - https://www. crossbowbook.com which had a very helpful book. I believe it's still there, half buried under all the merchandise they're selling now.

That out of the way, I got a two-foot long monkey wrench today. Always happy to add to my oversized tool collection.

 

[George N. M.]

I have always wanted to build a steel prod crossbow but I have always been leery of forging and heat treating the prod myself because if I didn't get it right and it failed there could be catastrophic consequences, sharp pieces of steel flying around at high speed and letting out my and bystanders' inside red stuff.  Also, remember that a crossbow string is under much more tension than a longbow/self bow or compound bow string.  I would think about steel cable for anything more than a 100# draw weight.  And if it is a heavy draw you will need drawing assistance such as a windlass or a come along.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Frosty]

You and me both George and my advice to anyone building one buy new spring and have it bent and heat treated by the spring shop. It's cheap compared to building an furnace large enough to heat treat one yourself. They're professionals who heat treat springs all the time.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

My first one was only stock removal from a small spring and it was still a pain. Cocking was just at the limit of what you could do w a stirrup and pushing with your legs. A goats foot lever works pretty well on small ones.

Natural fibers actually held up pretty well, but you don't use one string, you run a loop or loops then wind around it with a small whip cord to bind it, leaving small loops at the end. You also have to allow for the fact that it will stretch and has to be kept dry. Even w a helper cord (and a people type helper) they're really hard to string and unspring (looking at you, Battle of Crecy).

I didn't have horn, but wood nuts for the trigger mechanism were also a pain. You'll need a hardwood, and reinforced w a steel wedge or plate at the point it contacts the trigger, but it still wants to either throw the wedge, split the nut, or wallow out the center hole for the pin. They all have solutions, but...If you're not shooting for historical accuracy, I'd make the whole thing out of steel.

They get even scarier when you shoot something. A bolt with a bodkin head would go right through a 3/4 piece of plywood except sometimes it would get caught on the rawhide fletching (or tear it off).

 

[Frosty]

Rawhide fletching? I believe historically the strings were waterproofed with lard, beeswax tends to flake off in use. Even as soft as beeswax is the shock from release shatters it. Tod has a number of videos up about crossbows including steel ones.  I really like his methods of research, testing and production.  https://youtu.be/wWiZpenRGx8   https://youtu.be/2IdfmaC_t-Q 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Nobody Special]

Yup, I found some books that said rawhide was used or even thin wood in some instances as feathers tended not to be up to it. Got some rawhide strips, boiled them, flattened them, cut to size and it worked well after a little experimentation. 

You've got to put the fletching a little further forward than on an arrow; the first ones I made didn't, and due to hitting the nut or cord they had problems with precession (it would come off the bow going forward, but at a slight angle and go through the air in sort of a helix before straightening out). 

[George N. M.]

I have also seen bolts with 3 vanes set at 90 degrees to each other, like the vertical and horizontal stabilizers on an aircraft.  That, of course, eliminates any problem with the vanes dragging in the tiller during discharge.  I don't know if they are set to give a spin to the bolt or just stabilize its flight like a plane.

G

[BillyBones]

When i was a kid we used to make bows and arrows. For the arrows we used a horsetail (the weed, we did not cut off tails from horses) a horseshoe nail for the head, and a couple tufts of soft pine needles for fletching. Seemed to work pretty well from what i remember. 

[Daswulf]

My brothers and I made bows using saplings and ocean fishing line as the string. We made arrows crudely out of sticks. I went along with it being younger than them. We then would attack eachother. Thankfully, looking back on it, we all ended up unharmed. I kind of look back on a lot of things we did thinking we were lucky to be alive let alone still be whole. 

[Frosty]

When I was a kid any adult in the neighborhood who saw one of us with a bow would confiscate it immediately and worse, call our MOTHER!

We used to get into dirt clod fights, especially after the "rainy" season when you could grab a hand full of grass and pull a dirt clod with the roots. You could really get some distance slinging it. 

Then I was watching my baby sitter, TV and an episode of "Have Gun Will Travel." Paladin had been way laid by the bandits he was tracking and left on the prairie with no water, horse, boots, guns, etc. He came too, found an old covered wagon that had been massacred by Indians. (mid 1940s TV show) He was able to find water in a barrel, found broken glass to cut canvas to make footwear and clothes. He used a piece of glass as a magnifier to start a fire. Then using a boulder for an anvil forged a piece of wagon tyre sharpened it with a rock wrapped the handle in canvass for a knife. Killed a porcupine with a rock from a canvas sling, ate porky and flour/salt/porky fat biscuits while he sewed canvas into moccasins, cloak, water bag and sack for the biscuits and a sort of hat using porky quills and threads from frayed canvas.

THEN he went to town forging arrowheads and using the knife split boards, carved and scraped short heavy "arrows" fletched them with turkey(?) feathers. Then he carved another board into an atlatl and went hunting bad guys before dawn.

What really stuck in my mind was how he saved himself, got the bad guys, the bounty, his horse, gear, etc. by making it with what was there. 

Anyway, the older kids used to be able to throw dirt clods a lot farther than us little kids so we were always getting battered when we tried to join the fun. A couple of the big kids, one especially were  bullies we were fair game. A little experimenting with bamboo and I came up with a pea gravel slinging atlatl that would raise welts on bare skin at lot width distances, 100' IIRC.

Better still, all the houses across the street from us had been bought and razed for an airport safety zone. A jet trainer had clipped a power line and crashed into the house across the street and one lot down from our place. So, about 3/4 of a mile between us and the Van Nuys airport got turned into a grass seed farm.

How does that fit in with little Frosty's pea gravel atlatl? Every driveway on our street had pea gravel driveways and nobody would yell at us for collecting it from long gone places.

That meant that little Frosty could scoop a flinger full of gravel anywhere on the street and rain pain and welts on the big kids. Even after one ambushed me and took my bamboo flinger he couldn't figure out how it worked and I made another. Bamboo stands were weeds, once rooted it took extreme measures to get rid of it so nobody cared how much we cut down. Bamboo swords were old time toys.

Sorry, long kodak memory but that episode of "Have Gun Will Travel" was a huge inspiration for me to bet into blacksmithing. And YES I can salvage road side steel as boulder, fist sized rock or two, make tongs from split willow and do some pretty convincing smithing at the camp fire. And NO, split willow tongs don't last long but you usually get several pair from one willow sapling.

Frosty The Lucky.