Simple guillotine

[BillyBones]

The guillotine in my opinion is one of the most useful tools that you can own. If you are wanting one and have the desire to make one, get on the youtube. 

Mark Asprey just did a video series on making a gate latch. (i suggest watching the whole series) In the 3rd video he shows how to make the keeper and the tenons. He goes over his guillotine. The thing is stupid simple, a peice of angle iron, 2 pieces of square tubing and 1 washer. 

 

 

[Hefty]

I saw and appreciated this video and it got me thinking about guillotine tools, too. I'm still only beginning my blacksmitherly journey and I'm planning to do bladesmithing and blacksmithing along the way, so I am planning an offset guillotine tool that will double as a blade fullering tool in future. Where Mark's has two pieces of square tube welded to some angle iron for the hardy hole, I'm going to make some form of hardy shank (tube/angle iron/etc) and then weld two opposing pieces of angle iron to it, upright, to make an "X" cross-section, then I'll weld two pieces of rectangular RHS into the opposite opening of the upright "X" to take dies made from some large leaf spring that I have. I'll have to either weld the top and bottom die guides on with separate pieces of angle iron "X", or cut the webs in between to allow the tool to be used from both sides. Depending on how sturdy I need it to be, I may weld another pieces of angle iron, offset to the outside of the tool, as another support on the far side. Here's a working drawing of what I'm thinking of. The possible offset support is in grey in the top view.

Now that I look at it again, I might need to extend the offset on the right side view to allow a blade to fit past the hardy shank/upright.

Whadya think?

[blacksmithgnome]

how do you think he drilled out the holes in his tooling? do you think he put two pieces together and drilled them or one piece that he drilled then cut it in two

[BillyBones]

My guess would be 2 pieces. 

[Goods]

If you drill then cut, you loose some material and the dies don’t make a true round of the drilled size.

For round swages, square the blocks up, line them up, put small tack welds on them, drill them to size clamped tightly, then grind the weld back off. Finally, to avoid marring the surface smooth off the transition from the flat face to the swage radius. The larger the transition radius from face to swage the more material that can be move in forging without marring or creating cold shunts.

Keep it fun,

David

[wirerabbit]

I've made Mark's tool for my small 30 kg anvil. Right now I've just got fullering dies made. Super simple, even for me! Because my hardy hole is less than an inch, I just used solid square bar. The dies are 1 inch square, and I took the time to case harden them after grinding the profile.

When I make the tennioning dies, I am going to precut the stock bar then drill the hole. That will make the total height of the hole the dimensions I need. Much of the square corners will be ground off, and I expect my finished opening to be more flattened circle shaped than circular.

 

 

 

[Frosty]

Drill then cut, remember to break the inside edges of the tenoning swage or it'll leave sharp flashing.

The loss from sawing the hole is called "Relief" and is necessary to swage a round section. This is a closed die and closed dies require relief or the flash tends to cause poor results. This is covered in one of the old smithing books, maybe "The Art Of Blacksmithing," but I don't recall and my smithing library was stolen. 

You have to rotate the stock in the tool as you swage it or it won't come out cleanly round. Use a modest weight hammer and use light blows after you knock the corners down on square stock. If you're using round stock use heavier blows till you've gotten close then light blows to dress. 

A "go, no go" gage is really handy if you're going to use it very often. 

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[BillyBones]

You ever see something so obvious but it takes you years to realize it? I just had that moment. Of all the years that i have worked with metal from blacksmithing to machining i just now put the 2 and 2 together that tenoning dies are closed die. Doh... I just always thought of closed die as something on an industrial scale with huge presses and the like. 

Frosty, now that i see it as closed die you are absolutely correct, you have to have that relief. 

I use my monkey tool as a gauge, once it fits inside that i am pretty good to go. 

Mentioning holes and a bit off subject, i spent 6 hours today trying to get a reamer to cut within tolerance. I got .3535"-.3565" And with a .3545" reamer it would cut both undersize and over sized. Using an 11/32" drill (~.344") as a pilot. Bout pulled my hair out. 

[Frosty]

I have those head slapping DOH! moments all the time, it's one of the things I really like about Iforge. 

Reaming a couple tenths over with a reamer is a pretty common unsteady hand thing. A tenth under is more of a question. What was the temperature of the stock you were reaming? The thickness around the hole would effect heat effect too. 

That's just skyballing it, I'd have to look things up to guestimate the changes and I'm still coming round from my mid morning nap. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

[BillyBones]

The temp was at most 100F. The reamer is in a floating holder. I am also not the one who tooled up the job and have no clue as to why they chose a reamer. I ended up using a 9mm drill (.3543") ground down slightly to about .354"  in a rigid holder and cut 1000+ parts after lunch. 

This job is on a Davenport 5 spindle screw machine. Notoriously difficult to get reamers to cut worth a ...

[Frosty]

Must've been holding your tongue on the wrong side. I was thinking the stock was cold enough while reaming might result in oversized holes but . . . 

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

I do not know if you know anything about screw machines but these are made to run high volume parts and are not CNC. One machine that i run in a 10 hour shift makes 17,000+ parts. I can hold tolerances of +/- .001", usually, doing that as well. So heat is a huge factor in what i do. Heat and chips are my 2 biggest enemies. 

 

 

[LarryFahnoe]

1700 parts per hour makes me chuckle when I think of the time it takes me to design the part I want & then turn the cranks on my manual lathe to make it! I've never seen a screw machine in person but am certainly intrigued with the pics I found when I went looking for a Davenport 5 spindle screw machine. Are the CNC machines able to compete with these machines or is this a sort of protected niche market?

--Larry

[BillyBones]

Our CNC department is lucky if one of their machines makes in a day the volume i can make in an hour. They do however make a Davenport that is CNC now, we do not have any, that i beleive can produce that volume. 

I f find them quite amazing machines. Everything works off cams and gears. They were designed at the turn of the century originally to run off a belt drive system. 

[BillyBones]

I could have absolutely hit some one when i walked into work today.  If any have been following my reamer saga it did not end. 

Thursday i switched from a reamer that would not hold the dimension to a drill and ran half a shift of good parts. These ... "guys" on day shfit came in today and spent 7 hours trying to get the reamer to work. Oh and there is no reason to have a reamer other than an Acme screw machine could not make the parts with a drill with out throwing a big bur out of the hole. There is no finish requirement. The whole part is only .080" thick/long. It is molded into a piece of plastic to keep a nut from smooshing the plastic when attached to a stud and tightened down. As long as that hole is no bigger or smaller than waht the customer, Honda, wants, it is a good part. 

Sorry, i just had to vent some. Just got home and have been mad enough to spit nails today. 

[Frosty]

I just watched a video about screw machines by COX and holy COW. I can see setup and initial adjustment is paramount, from then on it appears to be a matter of keeping an eye on everything and catching problems before they become a problem.

What you describe above reminds me of one of the senior drillers (soil sampling) I worked with. He was on a different crew, and drilled centerline on roads, I worked bridges and foundations a whole different set of methods. Anyway, there was a lathe in the shop a modest old 13" x 48" LeBlond entirely manual with a little lash as expected in a 50 YRO lathe but still capable of maintain the tolerances necessary for what we needed. 

Well, the senior driller, call him Doug took a metal shop class and was the "expert" as acknowledged by the office geologist engineers up front. He knew the principles of sharpening a cutter but couldn't get it into his head that carbides are 5* and HSS cutters are 15* different tool posts and holders. He didn't understand the dynamics of what happens when a cutter cuts. When his parts came out with long tapers or spindle shapes he'd stat adjusting the lathe.

Seriously, he needed a piece of 3/8" round and instead of getting a purchase order # and buying a 20' stick he cut 4' of 1/2" round and tried turning it down to 3/8". The bit pulled that long flexible rod enough it cut through and broke before he got half way. Sooooo, he angled the tail stock, then carefully TRIED to measure the angle cut on the failed piece and adjusted the angle on the cross feed. The CROSS feed!

Any time old Dougey used the lathe I'd have to spend an hour or two centering it again so I could actually get something done.

It was worse than maddening, I bought a bench grinder of my own so I could build a locking box to prevent him and others from grinding grooves and corners off or reducing the wheels to nubs with the dressing tool. I had to lock my lathe cutters in my locker with the stone dresser just to save the pedestal grinder and my cutters and drill bits. Heck, the ONLY time I had to take the dressing tool to a wheel was when some moron loaded it with brass or aluminum or just burned a groove in the center of the wheel by not moving the work. Ayup, that's how it's done Frost, push HARD in the center!

Nobody turns on a power tool in MY shop util I've checked them out. Do it safe, do it right or keep your hands OFF, argue and there's the door.

Right now I can see Doug (not his real name) adjusting every possible angle on the lathe trying to get the wrong too to do something it's not supposed to. I'd bet it'd take a couple techs at least a shift to re-zero a screw machine if Doug didn't spend the whole shift burning up tooling on the while killing a grinding wheel or three.

Sorry for the rant but it's so much nicer having my own place, any mistakes or breakage are mine alone, I don't have to keep fixing other's . . . I can't even call them mistakes.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

We are divided into groups, set-up guys and operators. Those of us who do the set ups are the ones who have to have a good grasp on machining and even metallurgy. 

One day about 2 weeks ago i came in and we had a quick meeting. The old guy in the tool room gave us a good but chewing becuase someone ground aluminum on our big snag grinder and clogged the wheel up. it is a 14" grinder so those wheels are far from cheap. 

[Frosty]

Oh man I have too many stories about people with no shop skills buggering things up, grinding wheels always suffered. It's why I brought in my own grinder, lathe tools and hid the stone dresser.

It's hard not to still be angry thinking about them.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

 

 

[BillyBones]

And the saga continues. 

They decided to use the reamer like i said the other day. What i left out was that they had also decided to mess with the spindle bearings. When i left work Monday one of the spindles had quit feeding, the collet was not opening. I left out the other day that while trying to get the reamer to work the guy on 1st shift decided that it must be that the spindle bearings was loose, so he tightened them.  So the bearing locked up. Yesterday i walked into the machine half tore apart. I pulled all 5 bearings, installed new. The press in bearing were now to tight for the spindle so they needed honed. Rather than getting a hone that can be used in the machine, think engine hone, first shift guy and the foreman decide to pull the bearing back out, press in remember, and put them on the lathe. Use a piece of sand paper and a finger to remove a couple thousandths to get the spindle to fit. Why? Becuase they were not sure if an engine hone would be concentric enough. 

I threw up my hands and said i was done. They can fix it. 

[gewoon ik]

why make your life easy, when you can make it hard as well?

[Frosty]

Reminds me of too many examples to do more than pick one. Oh . . . Okay, the day I came in to find one of the other drillers tapping something held vertically in the vise with a hammer, so I walked over to see what he was doing. I knew the shop was in trouble when I saw the tap and die set on the bench and guess what? Ayup, there was something wrong with the taps he couldn't get them started so he was starting the tap with a . . . HAMMER!

He was famous for taking a repaired or new built tool, part, etc. to a grinder to "improve" it. Which meant I'd have to quietly make another to replace the "improved" whatever when it broke or otherwise failed in use.

I should try just reading this thread, his antics still tick me off and he wasn't the only one.

Frosty The Lucky.

[BillyBones]

So i came into work today and after spending 2 days pulling bearings back out, working them on the lathe they are now... wait for it... still to tight. Come Monday, we do not work on Fridays, they are going to use an engine hone in the machine to fit the spindles. Another day lost on a job that is behind on delivery to start with. 

What Frosty? You have never driven a tap in with a hammer? Now a die has to have the bar driven through it rather than drive the die on the bar. 

Seriously though, when i was working on trannies we had an old guy break a 6" bench vise installing a U-joint into a drive shaft. How you may ask, by clamping the caps into the vice and tightening the vice it will push them in nice and easy, usually. Well they were not going easy so he thought a good idea to tighten the vice some, smack the jaw with a hammer, tighten a bit more smack some more and repeat. Broke the moving jaw clean off. 

 

[Frosty]

No, I'm afraid tapping threads with a hammer is too advanced a technique for me. I feel so inadequate sometimes. <sigh>

He must not have had the U-joint centered in the jaws. I've used the tighten SMACK technique many times in the field. We had a press in the shop so I didn't show any of the other guys the trick. Even after one of the more clever ones modified it from a 12 ton, manual over hydraulic press to a 50ton, air over hydraulic jack. Ayup, turned the press frame AND jack right into scrap. 

That antic gets me too worked up to describe further, I'll leave you with. Not being able to figure out how to make the jack work upside down the real genius of the pair, WELDED the cap to the top frame. 

Frosty The Lucky.