forge pics

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:-) It's the inside work that catches up to you... Couple'a years at a desk is hell on the constitution.
GA

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:16:35 GMT, MatthewK
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Let me toss in a suggestion- a machinist degree only takes a couple of years to earn, and there's a shortage of qualified people just about everywhere from what I can see. It's not much like the old days, either- the hardest part about the job is dealing with boredom when you're running a long job. But, depending on your area, it generally pays pretty well, especially compared to unskilled jobs- and often presents a lot of opportunites for scrounging scrap material and running parts you may need on the bosses' machines (if you get the ok first, of course!)
There's a lot of math, but the schooling also involves a lot of hands-on with machinery.
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Yep. I was dealing with a seasonal layoff in the spring last year, and I know exactly what you mean. Give me 70 hour work weeks over a layoff or unemployment any day- it's all a matter of momentum, and once you loose it, it's tough to get going again for anything, no matter how simple.

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I was building a mountain rifle, tweaking the lock- my fault. It was about the 493rd time I compressed the spring in a hand-vise.
Chas

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I just finished a job for 10 holding springs for a certain make and model power chair folding foot plate. The OEM ones are about 20 maybe 22-gauge and break within a few months, maybe because they're formed with a beautiful stress riser built in. :)
I made these replacements of 16-gauge 1080, quenched and then drawn to a nice blue tending toward the Dark Side (Advice from D. Vader, MFA) with no cutouts to make stress risers.
So far I have tested the living heck out of them and they're holding up well, none broke.
10 minutes work each makes a $20 solution to a $215 problem. (You can't get just the springs. You have to replace the whole assembly, mounting bracket and all.)
Each one uses up 2-1/16 inch by 1 inch piece of stock.

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Cool one. :)
How would you compare your own heat treated springs to hardware store music wire spring steel? :)
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What I want Chas to know is the spring broke and maybe he did cause it if he chingered a scratch/dent into it where it broke. But a spring "should;)" not break... it should be able to bend and stay bent. If you take a striaght spring and fold it back on itself -flat- then yeah... but that's outside of design perameters and doesn't count. ;)
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My 1950 Win-94's two leaf springs had terrible rough-ground surfaces and on top of that, the marks ran across the springs. :/
I filed and sanded all those marks out and thinned the loading port enough where I could shove a shell into it with my bare-thumbs more than once. ;)
Alvin in AZ

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I couldn't. :)
These were flat stock 1-inch wide X 2-1/16 long, cut out of sheet and bent 3/4 round on one end, 1/2-inch I.D. with a 9/32 hole drilled in the other end.
We heated them over critical and quenched. Files only skated. then drew them to dark blue. Tested by hitting one with a 3-pound hammer trying to break it. Couldn't do that either so far. Hammer just bounced, hard. Hammer was not the one used for forging, but the one used for beating the Hell out of things. :)

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Complex springs break pretty regularly. Shooters sometimes carried extra mainsprings with them for flint/percussion locks; found as a 'furnished part' in cased sets an so on. The three-leaved action spring for the Colt's single action is the most common parts-failure for that design. I was grinding the spring flat to the lockplate, by hand; polishing the bearing surfaces and the 'visible' outside of the spring. I had to clamp the spring to get it on and off the lockplate. I probably over-clamped it; compressed it to failure. I had 'actioned' it a *lot*, for the fitting (practicing the skill, not 'having' it)- so it was probably a combination of stressing it- like the novice I was.

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:47:23 GMT, MatthewK
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I *think* I hardened my 1095 properly- it couldn't be filed, anyhow. I used cold water brine, and it seemed to work pretty well. I also tossed about a half cup of dishsoap in there as well without knowing exactly why, other than that was part of that "superquench" recipe. Tempering is where I kind of screwed up.
Seemed like the important part from what I could gather was making sure to normalize the part a few times before hardening- IIRC, the reasoning behind that was to relieve the internal stresses so that it does not crack in the quenchant.

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http://www.panix.com/~alvinj/graphFig6-7.jpg ;)
(and Fig 7-1 Page 174 ;) The lower normalizing temperature for 1035 is ~1560F.
It's now obvious as anything that a careful normalizing step (or three) is about "grain refinement", huh? :)
You said you liked to learn from the old guys and me too(!) but sometimes their explaination for the un-seen part of it, doesn't match with an otherwise really dangged good idea! :)
I don't diminish their idea on such trivial ramblings.
"What to do" is more important for me to learn from them and it's up-to-me to figure out "why" that procedure is a good idea. :)
Alvin in AZ

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:11:35 GMT, MatthewK
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Worth asking the big boys, though- the place I got my kaowool wouldn't sell anything less than a 100 sq ft roll. Luckily for me, since they didn't sell it in lower quanities, they just *gave* me 16 sq ft. The guy at the warehouse wouldn't even accept a tip.
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Definitely not at high as it could be- I'm no expert, but I have managed to freeze my 20 lb tank solid a couple of times. I put it in a bucket of hot water before I start now, and that's better. Still annoying, though- with any luck, I'll be able to scrounge up a 100# tank soon. From what I gather, that's about the size a guy needs to keep the tank from freezing.