not a tool yet only a part

For most of the week I have been making tools just to be able to make a couple of parts which will eventually be a critical part of a tool I am re making
I am king of bummed at how long it can take to make a pair of what back when I had my fab and machine shop would have taken a couple of hours if that. But back then I would have burned them out with an optic eye torch using only 2 of the 4 heads following a line drawing on paper it would have taken longer to draw the pattern than cut the parts a quick perfunctory grind to remove any slag then tack welded together and clamped in the horizontal and bored clamping them together against the permanently mounted vertical holding fixture would have taken a few minutes then putting the boring bar and end support back on another few minutes the boring process maybe 5 to 10 minutes then over to the radial drill where my wife would have selected a circular hole pattern template and the appropriate centering plug then with a transfer punch marked the number of holes then she would have laid out the 2 rows of holes using another template we had tens of dozens hanging on the wall near the radial drill. then clamped the blanks to the table on riser blocks then swung the little drill head with a center drill chucked in it we had mounted on a double articulating arm suspended on a vertical post mounted on the back of the radial arm raise the drill table up till the drill head was a couple inches above the parts and center drilled each punch mark move that out of her way chuck a bit in the #5 MT quill raised or lowered the table until the quill was fully extended or stopped by the quill stop when the tip of the bit was at least 1/2 an inch above the table. locked it in place release the arm and drill head position over one of the locations lock both head and arm in place set the speed and feed switched on the drill and go check on the band saw then come back and move the drill head doing this as many times as there were holes once the holes were drilled. Blow off the chips move the drill head out of the way grab the small drill head chuck a chamfer bit raise or lower the table for height position then chamfer each of the holes. Then she would have put the 1" gear reduction auto reversing tap head in the quill chucked a tap checked the table height, set the quill stop lock out the down feed so the quill was free to move up and down select the RPM switch on start the tap and just watch as it tapped through the hole once it reached the quill stop the tap head would reverse and back out doing this for as many holes as needed to be taped. Parts done her total time would have been 45 minutes on the outside and the parts would be ready to be separated finish ground on a 6" belt 12 inch disk sander combo ready to be painted, installed or what ever.
That was then this is now
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/b...ving-bar-62901
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/d...ing-head-62925
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/1...ring-bar-62986
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/set-up-block-63032
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/t...s-marker-63049
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/a...5-x30%B0-63005
just to make these 2 parts of a machine I am building
Hand cut
Attachment 19304
tacked together drilled on a 1 1/2 Hp 4" post floor drill press the plates had to be re set for each hole
then hand tapped
Attachment 19305
It is nice to have a sister who is a hoarder she had this nearly full gallon of thread cutting oil that I had before I went into the Army in 71
Attachment 19306
Attachment 19307
Once I get a few more parts and probably more tools made then I can rebuild the machine and I will start posting on the thread
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/7...0277#post57046

Ahhh, now I get what you were talking about with reference to speed in the lantern vise thread. I can see how it would be frustrating to go from having all those specific jigs and big machines to a home setup. Once again it's hard for me to grasp the scale and weight of your projects.

When I owned 10% of one particular company my forte was in figuring out how to simplify a fabrication operation by making a few simple fixtures many critical assemblies could be tacked and welded up up with great precision and have nice smooth welds even the ape handed monkeys they had working for them were hard pressed to screw things up When it cam to drill jigs which do you think is more productive? A fixture that will hold up to 10 parts that may have as many as 20 hardened guide bushings locating every hole in the exact spot or tacking a stack together and having to lay out each and every hole in the top piece of each stack? When the company sold instead of getting money I got the 20 or 30 tons of fixtures and jigs mostly made by yours truly and all of the machines plus most of the inventory because the brand was being moved to South Africa Later I converted many of the fixtures and jigs to metric plus made new ones which could not easily be converted and sold them to the new company

Not until I quit the auto repair and took up fabrication did I really get into the concept of jigs. I first ran into it when we had to build a fruit sizer in place. The orange house was setup so there was no way to install the new sizer completed. So we became part of the install crew and were assigned the task of installing struts. The guy I was working with had come from a manufacturing background and when they told us what we were supposed to do, he asked them for their drill jig. They just gave him a blank stare. They had 4 guys on one half of the sizer, we had two of us and the other half. We made a simple jig and of course we're being scrutinized for being slow as it took us about 15-20min to hunt up the material and make the jig. The other guys had two guys measuring and marking and two guys drilling and were about a third of the way down the sizer by the time we started. We caught up a little over half way and were done well before them. The next stage was to install the pieces we were drilling for. We were done before they even got halfway because a lot of their drops didn't fit. That's where I learned big time the effect of jigs. When I went to work for that sizer co's competitor I ended up building several sizers and once again was struck with the fact none of these crews made or used jigs, doing everything one off and consequentially a mess. I made several jigs for some of the time consuming exactlng processes and that sizer ran good with no problems. I moved on to a different project and found out later all my jigs had dissapeared. Whatchagonnado?

Ther some things that a monkey can not learn. I had better luck teaching my dog to stick his head in a welding helemt when we wanted to watch me weld than I had training this one laid off union Autoworker to properly pre seat compression sleeve's on the fittings of stainless hydraulic tubing. I had made a small hydraulic press and a series of hardened seating tools all he had to do was set the dial to the - size of the tubing slip the nut and sleeve on the end of the tube insert it in the press and push a button it would cycle on then off and the tube would be ready for install. NO he thought that was a waste of time so he would just make up the connections directly on the machine then in testing we would have to go back and tend to all of the leaks and often have to replace a tube that may have as many as 4 bends in it. Now who was wasting not only time but materials? And yet he thought he deserved to be paid as much as some of my other worker who had been with me for a couple of years or even as much as my wife drew for a salary just because I had her listed as an apprentice machinist. HE was under the misconception that his 25 years in the autoworkers union meant something in the real world
Yes I was a hard boss there were 4 ways to do things the book way, the right way, the wrong way, or the only one that counted in my shop Frank's way or the highway which was sometimes contrary to the first 2 ways

A couple more parts in process these will be the pivots shafts which will be bolted to the first 2 plates
Making the first cuts
Attachment 19343
t disk ready for rough machining
Attachment 19344
1018 stub shaft press fit in the A36 disk
Attachment 19345
Normally when welding A36 to 1018 you wouldn't think about needing to preheat
but due to the thickness of materials and not being able to full pin the weld it is better to preheat before welding that way you don't get what I call weld shock in the metal My term weld shock is nothing more than a cold weld start where all of the heat from the arc is trying to flow into the metal so instead of being able to start out with a nice fluid puddle you have a glob of weld just sitting on the surface of the metal with little more than zero penetration when you can fully bevel the parts down to a 1/16" or so then the heat does not have to flow as far and penetration starts almost imeadiatly as in the case of a solid cylinder though it takes a while for enough heat to build up to achieve good penetration or bond to the weld.
Attachment 19346
after welding the front side
Attachment 19347
now the back before the flux is removed
Attachment 19348
this part need only to cool then it will be ready for final machining
Attachment 19349

Beautiful welds Frank. How do you know you've got A36 or 1018, or is this store bought, not "repurposed"? Do you just eyeball seat of the pants that's about right the heat with the rosebud or? You are probably like an old cook, you just know from decades of experience what it takes....

Every once in a while it sure would be nice to see a tape measure just to get an idea of the scale you are working with. I should talk, but just a thought.

I can usually tell by the feel of the steel. I know everyone will say that all steel feels the same but to me some steel just feels harder by the touch and I don't have much feelings in my fingers or hands because the skin is about as thick as the souls of the feet on a barefoot beach comber
other ways by the way a torch cuts it or a grinder makes sparks failing that there is always my trusty pocket knife I make a scratch with it on metal that I have already removed any paint of mill scale the ease and depth of the cut tells me volumes about the metal smaller thinner pieces I might try bending them by hand or even breaking them in some cases a 1/8 by 1/2" piece of any soft to hard metal will give up it's heritage rather quickly when you try to bend it mild steel from A36 through ASTM Gr70 are going to have certain bending properties successfully harder to bend with each increasing grade. ASTM 514 (T1) will still bend but will have a much larger bend radius the armaloy metals like AR 350 through AR 500 are going to have larger bend radiuses than T1 and will eventually break Spring steel is funny as it can be carbon or stainless there are grades of spring brass and aluminum it is all about the alloy's and heat treating
but carbon spring steel will slap you in the face Much the same as above applies to the various grades of bar stock like 1018 1020 1035 and so forth it is after heat treating stock like 1045 by making it white hot and quenching in ice water that you find out real quick you have messed up it will shatter like glass I made a bunch of cable guide thimbles out of 1045 then just heated them to medium cherry and oil quenched them since they were being pressed into another assembly we didn't bother annealing them but I got 1 too hot almost white so I just tossed in outside in a bucket of water that was just barely thawed out from the night before's freeze Clanance the Blacksmith went out and brought it back in to show me what happens when you over heat metal and super quench it he dropped it on a piece of steel on the floor pieces of it went everywhere He said the higher the grades go the more attention you have to pay to the metal and the color sometimes you quench it then re heat it to around 400° then let it cool naturally keeping out of a cold breeze
A tape measure to my projects I'll try on some kind of hard to use 2 hands to hold a tape and 2 hands to take pictures with the smart a** phone I don;t have a lot of digit dexterity sometimes it is a real challenge to 1 hand the thing, it would much easier for me to just crush it like a beer can

Thanks for the post. Those are some nice welds Frank. Is that dual shield or stick? After you make a weld like that is it hard to machine? We weld flanges for excavator bucket pins with dual shield but I still have problems with out of position welds. Thanks again.

the weld is made with Esab 71 .045 gas shielded flux core wire run on a Millermatic 210 #7 setting and 37 for the wire speed not sure of the amps or voltage as my machine doesn't have gauges I use it for welding teeth on buckets as well
Attachment 19358 Attachment 19359 Attachment 19360
I have 3 favorite wires that I use all are very similar in weld characteristic Hobart Excell 550 Trimark 777 and the Esab above
I find that they have better wetting of the puddle more even penetration low splatter and free'r flux release than many other wires particularly Lincoln weld and Alloy rods of the same grade as the above.also all have a tensile nearing the 90K range when propperly applied the sharpie is down around -30° elongation and reduction of area will beat out 7018 or 8018 hands down and in many cases hold as well as 11018
For machine-ability when preheating to the base metals is done prior to welding you will notice no difference between the weld or the base metal but that holds true even when someone welds with bare wire and an argon Co2 mix straight CO2 with bare wire needs to be post heated or annealed before machining because the surface freezes a little too quickly

Make chunks not chips now where have I heard that before? OH yes TM51 said it
after welding the pivots shafts the next step was to machine them
after turning I put them in the mill to form the tang
after a couple of passes I decided this is going no where fast
Attachment 19361
I didn't want to take it to the band saw so I brought my porta band to do the job
Attachment 19362
after removing the chunks it only took a single pass down the sides to get to this point
one more pass to get the size I need

Attachment 19363

Frank S, sounds like you've had quite the experience!
Any pictures of the shop you used to work in? I'd be curious to see these jigs you made.
What do you have for a current shop setup?

Kent I hardly have any pictures from before 2013 and completely lost all of 2014 as well in a couple of hard drive crashes those few older pictures that I have were located in multiple forums I have posted on over the years
My current set up is 16 acres with a most of the time blue sky ceiling a 45 ft House hold goods moving van several dry box trailers a couple of 53 ft intermodal shipping containers, and a 24 by 28 tarp tent set up next to the van I am waiting on 2 of my dry vans and 1 of the intermodals to be delivered hopefully in the next month or so before starting on construction of my shop which will incorporate the 2 containers the HHG van/ machine shop one of the dry vans? tool van
I have enough materials to build a 80 by 80 18 ft wall shop if I decide top go that big

So are have you recently moved onto the acreage? sounds like you're in a bit of transition period with stuff in van body trailers.
If you build a shop, go big! 80x80 with 18' sidewalls sounds like a good start!

we (my brother & I) built a 50x96 w/ 16' side wall shop back in 2000 on the home place, and I'm glad we went as big as we did, as it's fairly full now. my only regret is that it's 120 miles from where I currently live so I can work a corporate job. But we're also currently living on a small acreage (5 acres), so that helps!

Kent we started preparing for our move in early 2015 first the place had been vacant for several years so the house needed a lot and still needs some attention then every time I could make the 200+ mile drive I brought out some stuff and mowed areas that had not been mowed in years this took a lot of time out of the 3 or 4 days at a time I could spend here some months we couldn't come out so yes it has and still is a transition period and probably will be for a long time. I dug way too deeply into my retirement funds initially and for a couple years previous in anticipation of one day locating a place that was remote by remote we had planned on being located about 60 miles from the nearest town but this place came up only 13 miles to the nearest town which happens to be the only town in the county with a heavy farming and ranching community about the county the deal that clenched it was the town supports a fairly well equipped hospital and EMT even has a heli pad a good forestry service style VFD no police department at all just the county Sheriff and 2 deputies which more than enough law enforcement for a county of under 2000 with 900 of those living in or near town Pretty much the ideal place to retire the property is long and irregular shaped with close to 2600 ft of paved road frontage

Frank,
sounds like a great place to retire! And no shortage of projects to keep you busy so boredom doesn't set in. It's good to have projects, I have more than enough right now. I keep telling the wife that I need early retirement so I can focus more on my projects!

Kent once you retire you will wonder how you ever had time for a job. Them main radiance between a project and a job is you have the option of walking away from it for a while and it will still be there when you return. A job not so likely.

This project is soon to become a tool in progress I just about have enough parts made
here is the swing beam pivot shaft after completion.
After I had fir it in place to determine the locations of the holes I realized this is going to be one of those impossible to remove parts si I decided to drill and tap to jack holes also I have a deep issue with parts that have jack holes that are of a different size than the bolts used to mount them. Hence my jack holes are threaded for 5/8-11 since the part will be mounted with that size
Attachment 19369

the part that started this thread is finally completely mounted now to finish the other side I'll have to borrow some of the bolts to fit up the other side as I have used up my entire inventory or 5/8 11 by 2" grade 8 bolts and these are actually borrowed from another project. so next time I go to tractor supply I will have to buy another 5 pounds of these
Attachment 19383
I have to tell you though drilling and taping in 3/4" thick caterpillar steel is a day's work in it self
the steel is the same as that which I used to make my fork carriage out of
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/f...70-3#post84156