Pictures -- made a mini forge today

Iggy I am sure you know that the propane forges are a source of CO2. If you are operating this in your attached garage be mindful of this and use good ventilation and a CO2 detector in the house. Steve

Steve?

CO2? or CO ???

did you plunge the finished article in oil or water to harden it or is it still soft annealed so that it rounds readily the next time?

Steve, this is an acetylene forge, which is also no doubt a source of CO2 as well. I believe that people, by nature, are good CO2 detectors and I would feel some extreme discomfort and distress way before CO2 concentration becomes lethal. If you meant CO, I hope that a slightly oxidizing flame should take care of it. In any case, I will try to find that CO detector I had laying around.

I did not do that, yet, I want to figure out first what is the right way to quench it. Good point.

Yes, You are correct

As a second thought, I am not sure if I should quench it. This is a lathe chuck wrench. If I make it soft, then in case of overtorquing it, the wrench will be ruined (some $20 loss). If I make it hard, then in case of overtorquing the chuck will be ruined (some $400 loss or whatever it is the chuck costs).

I wish more folks would see reason like you.

I wonder how many would be smiths never strike hot metal because they have 1200 bricks they have to make into a forge first.

Mike Graf

Ignoramus30542 wrote:

Well, thanks. I am not even sure if I need to proceed with making a propane forge. I do not plan on extensive blacksmithing -- at least yet -- just on using it when appropriate. For example I made a holder to hang a welding torch, from a steel bar, properly twisted and bent to the shape I want. That's useful. The O/A forge is good for this purpose.

Making steel flowers and scarecrows, not my cup of tea. We'll see. I will now go back to my lathe.

You need to CNC your plasma cutter for those. There is a fairly good market for that type of metal art crap, particularly customized with house numbers, names, etc. The good this is you also don't need a big CNC plasma cutter either, a 24" square work area is plenty.

I would quench and then draw it blue or purple, so the square won't round off or twist and jam in the chuck socket. You shouldn't be able to overtorque it with hand pressure on a standard-sized tee handle.

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Serendipity smiles again; I came across this ad the other day (no connection with the seller), and figured it was likely done that way.

Jon

Case harden so it won't nick up and be a pain. Then if over torqued the shell would be nothing to bend.

Mart> >>> did you plunge the finished article in oil or water to harden it or is

That last part is the tough bit. I've got the plasma cutter and could CNC it in short order, but since I couldn't sell crack in a crack house, I don't bother trying.

(...)

That is a shame. I think the money is there, even still.

I sent a DXF to my pals at Malibu Metals and they sent me a couple of thin example pieces. They turned out well enough.

I couldn't get them to take additional money to cut out the full thickness piece however.

--Winston

On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:45:11 -0800, the infamous Winston scrawled the following:

It could be that Malibu's using the very smallest plasma unit and can't successfully cut the thicker materials, Winnie. You don't want to ruin your rep by putting out bad work. If you're a one-legged

-- We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. -- Albert Einstein

I'd imagine an artsy or university town with a crafts fair/Saturday market kind of deal would be a good place to start with items like that. Probably pull in some bucks doing custom ones for the more well-heeled artsy-fartsy types.

Jon

Larry Jaques warmed the cockles of our hearts by writing:

(...)

Frère Jaques, the thickness spec was 0.25". Hardly battleship material. They could have emailed me back and I could have sent them several pieces of suitable material from my stock pile.

We could have gotten four pieces out of a 10 lb. sheet, 12" on a side.

We Shall Never Know, I fear.

I connected up with them at the local flea market, initially. Both of them are young, strong guys. In the olden days we would have called them 'strapping young men'.

Exactly what I see in the mirror every morning, except 30 years younger, with muscles and more hair. And faces made for Television instead of Radio.

:)

--Winnie