make - forge? - wedge for feathers-and-wedge rock-split Featured

I was thinking along the lines of forging if I wanted to make a number of these. It would be fairly simple to make some forging dies for my flypress and them forge them down from square or round stock.

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When we sore-armed students drooled over the smith's trip hammer he warned us that one needs to understand manual forging very well first, as things can go wrong awfully fast with it.

After considering the cost and time for the alternatives I'll buy more if I need them. My spring shop time will likely be spent on upgrading the capacity and durability of the sawmill. The blade guides are skateboard bearings from a smaller previous sawmill and don't last long at 90 km/h.

Simple and reliable.

And the modern names of many plumbing items are based on the Latin terms, and are more descriptive than politically correct.

Yes, and also true of the Egyptians who preceded the Romans. Very few bronze tools were found around the pyramids and the like.

Iron was too expensive to use for anything but knives and swords for centuries, so bronze endured. I don't know the exact historical sequence, but steel (versus cast iron) kept getting cheaper.

Bronze knives cannot be made sharp enough for many things, so the Egyptians used obsidian knives, and had a guild devoted to production and use of obsidian knives, in particular for preparing the dead for mummification.

I think I read that as well.

I've read many books on how screw threads were cut in the old days when there was a screwcutters guild. Think olive and wine presses, and later the printing press.

Most threads were hand cut into wooden rods and nuts, usually with a specially shaped chisel, often following a string carefully spiral wrapped around the rod to be threaded.

The nut would usually be cut by making a metal tap, by the process for threading a rod. There were many ways.

Yes. What followed was the classical change-gear thread cutting lathe of Henry Maudslay, circa 1800, which is the prototype for all subsequent toolroom manual lathes to the present day, more than two centuries later. While digital control is now replacing many of the gear trains in modern lathes, most of Maudslay's approach endures.

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Joe Gwinn

I think 4340 is EN24 which Peter F mentioned. C-Cr-Mo-Ni steel. Through-hardens readily - can quench in oil.

Minded to find some C-steel and see how it pans-out. Would learn a lot along the way for sure - before starting with higher-value material.

Peter F's "O1" steel sounds interesting. C-Cr-W-V steel. Description makes it sound like created by smart pragmatists.

Thanks for correcting me that EN8 is 0.4%C steel. So long since worked with these.

All of you - thanks a lot, as always.

Hi David If easy to send. Sounds perfect. Would reimburse postage. On my website weldsmith.co.uk there is a contact form. To first "handshake". Typically you'd pass me a phone number or email address. Rich Smith

Hi all. Thanks for helping me develop thoughts. To expense-wise putting the horse before the cart, maybe get hold of some spring steel from eg. a truck, and either grind direct to shape or forge and retreat.

Also, got some more wedges on-order, so might take 3 wedges and try grinding a millimetre off either side of the wedge and see how they perform. Am used to using an angle-grinder. Good strategy for removing a fixed amount can be to gash with a slitting disk to depth you want to remove (in this case 1mm) - you can measure accurately how deep a gash is - then generally grind until you just remove the gashes. Knowing where you are going with it, you cna control grinding rates and temperatures - don't change the material.

Smooth - finish by gliding on the side of the disk... Well used to doing this to make tight joints / flat surfaces.

Will see where all this takes me.

It would be helpful if you had a way to chuck and spin them from the end providing they spun somewhat true. Then you could just work the angle grinder back and forth along them as they turned. Yeah, I know... probably not feasible 🙄

Having the desired hole size in a piece of wood laid nearby and testing off/on would likely be easiest...

Hi all. Thanks for helping me develop thoughts. To expense-wise putting the horse before the cart, maybe get hold of some spring steel from eg. a truck, and either grind direct to shape or forge and retreat.

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The problem with leaf springs is thickness, plus used ones may have cracks. You could anneal it and saw out the wedges, or just plasma cut them, but assembling a stack could be difficult. Brazing might work as long as hardening didn't melt it.

Minded to find some C-steel and see how it pans-out. Would learn a lot along the way for sure - before starting with higher-value material.

Peter F's "O1" steel sounds interesting. C-Cr-W-V steel. Description makes it sound like created by smart pragmatists.

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I might check local fabricators or heavy equipment repair shops for scrap AR400 or similar to sell and see if my plasma cutter can handle it. Some jackhammer bits have a similar cross section, but are wider.

I might check local fabricators or heavy equipment repair shops for scrap AR400 or similar to sell and see if my plasma cutter can handle it. Some jackhammer bits have a similar cross section, but are wider.

------------------------------------- Do you have snow plows over there?

A neighbor is welding a new cutting edge onto the bucket of his tractor. It's a strip of high carbon steel 1/2" thick, a shorter cutoff from wear edge repair material for Fisher snow plow blades. It's not drilled or painted so it might be a cheaper substitute of hot rolled steel.

O-1 steel is very common in the US for one-off designs, where quantities are too small to make sourcing the perfect steel worthwhile. It can be quenched and tempered quite hard or quite tough.

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Another very common steel for such is W-1, which is iron with about 1% carbon. W-1 is far cheaper and easier to use than O-1, can be even harder than O-1, and so is used for making very sharp cutting edges. It can also be made quite tough.

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Give that the wedge and feathers device has been around since the Bronze Age, I would just try what's any steel that's at hand.

Joe Gwinn

Hi everyone Ground 3 of the current wedges so looks like wedge-and-feathers will fit into 12mm drilled socket. See where that gets me for now. Appreciating all the inputs. I will want to forge something which has to cut. Thanks everyone.

Did you look at capping? Seems simple enough, and couldn't be cheaper (if you already have a drill) - some old carpet, a hammer, a steel rod with a machined end, and a £10 box of caps.

You only need to drill 8mm holes, and though you might want to drill them a little deeper than for wedge and feathers, you need less of them. Wedge and feathers is about cutting straight surfaces, capping is more about smashing big rocks into smaller ones.

While it's good for breaking boulders, I don't know if the technique could be used on a face; but cavers use it a lot to open up leads, so maybe. Probably work, but it might be a bit slow on a face though.

Peter Fairbrother

I'll look into this. "In the moment" response - this is using small charges about the size of an "AAA" battery?

I've seen videos of in the USA. Apparently given a specific exemption as "not explosives" because they won't detonate "unconfined". That while for-purpose, are engineered to be impossible to use for nefarious puposes... ???

If so, didn't know you could get them in the UK. Assumed without checking that like side-arms - what you are free to do in the US and is normal is completely prohibited here... Cavers use... Can visualise that - crawling along in a tiny space, having to carry any kit in such journey, and no space to swing a sledgehammer if you come to an obstruction...

Apologies if "got the wrong end of the stick".

Rich S

No, those are "snappers". Cavers did and apparently do use them sometimes in the UK, but they are very coy about talking about them, possibly because their legal status is questionable. I don't know anywhere or even if you can buy them.

Capping or Hilti capping uses Hilti nail gun gun cartridges, which you can get on ebay, from Hilti, in hardware stores and elsewhere, without paperwork.

You want the red or better the black ones, but the black ones can be more expensive and harder to get.

Some somewhat dangerous examples of use (cavers are nuts anyway):

It is possible to use them in a safer manner!!!

Just "crawling along in a tiny space" is bad enough ...

Peter Fairbrother

Thanks. I visualise they are frequently hopping around in various types of pain.

A young fellow who has come along as another volunteer at "our" mine has what I take to be identically the same drill as second caver type is using.

I've got the masonry-drill in mine, while he has the pick chisel in his

- on non-rotative obviously. So we alternate machines. Drilling and "feather'ing" until cracks, then swapping over to use the pick to open-up the rock releasing the "feathers" and completing the split / separation. While the other drills.

Because dust accumulates in the air in the mine, do the drilling under water flood. Always ejecting slurry.

Do have to find a way to wash away the slurry, as the "10mm" feathers are a tight fit in the 12mm hole. Plus want slippery metal-to-metal contact, lubed with oil-graphite spray - don't want abrasive paste of the slurry in the wedge-to-feathers contact, increasing wear and making friction.

Not found answer to that yet. Might make say 11mm dia bit of polymer rod, with small central hole you inject water down some way. Hopefully efficiently sluice-out the slurry from bottom to exit of hole.

"Capping" looks interesting, but if it's anything like in those videos, is not going to be happening at "our" mine.

As I'd like to go for a shot-firer's ticket, might be best to come over as measured in what I do.

So likely stay with wedges.

Thanks. At least I have been amused. Second guy could have been able to sing very high notes if rocks had gone in another direction - as other comment.

Regards, Rich

Do have to find a way to wash away the slurry, as the "10mm" feathers are a tight fit in the 12mm hole. Plus want slippery metal-to-metal contact, lubed with oil-graphite spray - don't want abrasive paste of the slurry in the wedge-to-feathers contact, increasing wear and making friction.

Not found answer to that yet. Might make say 11mm dia bit of polymer rod, with small central hole you inject water down some way. Hopefully efficiently sluice-out the slurry from bottom to exit of hole.

Regards, Rich

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I drilled dry, outdoors, and removed the dust by blowing into a 3/8" flexible PVC tube with a 1/8" (3mm) nozzle, that I had made to restart smouldering stove fires. The tube is long enough to keep my face away from the dust and the fire. Drilling a convergent nozzle hole with a tapered wood screw bit like this improves the discharge coefficient and lets you easily test and increase the hole size. A smaller hole worked well, 1/8" empties my lungs at a sustainable breathing rate.

For a different project I fitted a 1/8" pipe thread to push-in tubing adapter into the cap of a carbonated drink bottle. The combination might let you wash out the hole with water from your squeeze bottle.

If you're into mild mischief a cap with a well centered hole (lathe) turns the bottle into a water + compressed air rocket. I was experimenting with the rocket remotely pressurized and self-releasing to see how much air it would hold before bursting. Alternately the bottle can be overfilled with water so it lifts off slowly and sprays all around as it wanders before accelerating upward. A 6mm hole and 1/4th water is a good start.

Aluminium, brass and plastic parts like these can be made on a small inexpensive hobby lathe. When I tried making larger steel parts I realized I needed an industrial lathe, plus a vertical knee mill and a bandsaw. The 10" (diameter) South Bend has been more than enough for most hobby and lab prototyping projects, their 9" model was very popular. I'm redesigning the blade guide roller assembly for my sawmill and turning or milling each part to the CAD drawing as I progress, to aid and confirm the 3D fitup.

This CAD program is for printed circuit layout. I found it could draw machined RF-tight enclosures for the microwave circuit boards as well, though not correctly export as .DXF, the parts were machined from paper prints. Is there a free CAD for 3D printing that keeps the program and designs on an isolated computer instead of the cloud?

On 08/04/2024 00:46, Jim Wilkins wrote: Is there a free CAD for 3D printing that keeps the program and

FreeCAD?

I use it all the time with .stl's and Cura slicer for ffm 3D, but it does .step's and .dxf's as well.

Not great, but it is free. Fairly comprehensive, but a bit buggy, also can crash so backup often. Supposed to be open-source, but some parts aren't. Bit of a Curate's egg, good in parts but some parts are... not good. Learning curve is steep-ish.

Default is local storage only.

Peter Fairbrother

On 08/04/2024 00:46, Jim Wilkins wrote: Is there a free CAD for 3D printing that keeps the program and

FreeCAD?

I use it all the time with .stl's and Cura slicer for ffm 3D, but it does .step's and .dxf's as well.

Not great, but it is free. Fairly comprehensive, but a bit buggy, also can crash so backup often. Supposed to be open-source, but some parts aren't. Bit of a Curate's egg, good in parts but some parts are... not good. Learning curve is steep-ish.

Default is local storage only.

Peter Fairbrother

---------------------------- Thanks, just downloaded it.