Tool Talk
Blacksmith and Metal Working Forum => Blacksmith and Metalworking Forum => Topic started by: john k on July 07, 2015, 05:44:42 PM
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Did anyone watch the 4 bladesmith on tv this week? Were given a piece of coil spring from a RR car, had 3 hours to make a heavy knife with blade from 12-15 inches long. I thought it was reasonably well done, considering most iron pounders don't do real good against the clock. Also straightening a coil spring is one mean thing to do. Didn't see anyone using a bending fork. Anyone see it?
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I was wondering why they did not use a bending iron or the hardy hole, but then what do I know ok if you put red hot iron or steel in oil submerge it or look out for the flames! Guess everyone does it once.
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Didn't watch the program, but I'm wondering -- did they anneal the spring first? I certainly done so.
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No time to anneal, heat it and start pounding. The most professional looking knife, ( all said they were bladesmiths) broke when whacking a cocoanut. At least the guy that needed the money the worst, won the cash prize.
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I'm not an expert at all, but by the very act of making it glow, it is no longer hardened... Right? You would only need to anneal it if you were planning to work it cold for some reason... Unless I am mistaken?
I know when I was using a hardened steel drill bit as a punch the other day, it went from brittle hard to bent to hell in about 2 seconds of contact with hot steel... (wound up turning to my scratch awl, which worked, but was also near instantly reduced to soft malleable steel)
I've made a few knives out of automotive coil springs, and haven't had any trouble ^^; Granted, they weren't THAT big...
(http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q226/Midnight_Fenrir/Blacksmithing/IMG_20150531_180237_zpsieadtf2u.jpg)
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I'm not an expert at all, but by the very act of making it glow, it is no longer hardened... Right? You would only need to anneal it if you were planning to work it cold for some reason... Unless I am mistaken?
Annealing relieves stresses in previously worked steel. Those stresses are why that knife broke. The time it takes in slow cooling allows the steel's molecules to relax.
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it is hard to tell exactly what they are doing the editting jumps from smith to the next. I have not seen them temper the blades after hardening. blood red into oil. they the should be taking them up to blue or straw then to the oil. Is that cut out? or do they not temper?
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I saw the comerical for it but never watched it.
I would be interested to see how it does. Maybe it will get some people interested in the craft.
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I saw the comerical for it but never watched it.
I would be interested to see how it does. Maybe it will get some people interested in the craft.
There are many people interested in the craft Nola, but damn few of them are much interested in the work it takes to learn the craft. I just ran into a man and wife who got into the craft and took lessons from an old boy I know well. Now they're pounding hell out of every chunk of iron they can find. In my mind smithing is far more an art than a skill. Just like welding you have to see the metal move where you want it in your mind before you swing the hammer smithing.
The old boy went through a fire 5 years back that left his shop a heap on the concrete slab, he's still rebuilding the power hammers. It was a sad day watching the pretend firemen let that shop burn when they could have saved 90% of it.
Smithing today is a disappearing trade beyond fancy fences. 10 years ago my buddy was resharpening 200 chisels for air hammers a week for contractors. Today if he gets 10 a month it's a big month for chisels. Contractors have no work, chisels sit on the shelf and stay sharp. It's not a moneymaker in this area.
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Sad to hear of a shop burning. Maybe the owner stopped them from pouring on water because of the power hammers? I know an acquaintance did for his auto machine shop fire. Burned to the ground, but 3 of his machines were then rebuilt.
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Sad to hear of a shop burning. Maybe the owner stopped them from pouring on water because of the power hammers? I know an acquaintance did for his auto machine shop fire. Burned to the ground, but 3 of his machines were then rebuilt.
Owner didn't stop anything, PAID "Professional" "Firefighters" chose to stand off and watch the shop burn because they could.
Fire could have been knocked down with a 1½ hose poked through a hole in an overhead door set on fog was instead allowed to burn & grow while a ladder that requires a 5" supply was served with a single 2½, because a "Professional" made the wrong decision.
I have pictures of the fire in progress that tell the story.
Standard answer from IAFF members around here is "That's why you pay for Insurance."
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Sad to hear of a shop burning. Maybe the owner stopped them from pouring on water because of the power hammers? I know an acquaintance did for his auto machine shop fire. Burned to the ground, but 3 of his machines were then rebuilt.
Owner didn't stop anything, PAID "Professional" "Firefighters" chose to stand off and watch the shop burn because they could.
Fire could have been knocked down with a 1½ hose poked through a hole in an overhead door set on fog was instead allowed to burn & grow while a ladder that requires a 5" supply was served with a single 2½, because a "Professional" made the wrong decision.
I have pictures of the fire in progress that tell the story.
Standard answer from IAFF members around here is "That's why you pay for Insurance."
I don't know the very case in that you witnessed so I can only speculate. However with my experience of loosing our house they did there job. I am no scientist nor do I really know much about fire. However I know enough to know that firefighters ems an police are there to help us. Yes there are a few bad apples in the bunch as with any profession. No the system is not perfect. At the end of the day thoe they have a second to make a decisions that take many years an still debate. The most important thing thoe in any fire is people. In the grand scheme of things do physical possessions really matter?
Yes I lost my house but they did what they could to save it but more importantly they made sure everyone was out.
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I have watched two episodes and it looks very cool to me! They do edit out some pretty big chunks of time...
Jim
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They could sure cut out 99% of the time standing in front of the judges!
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I agree with Old Goaty And another 99 % of the talking heads and show more hot iron
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I am a fire protection engineer with 33 yrs experience.
Fire is always a preventable catastrophe. Things burn very fast. It is not like the movies, ever.
To let a fire burn out in order to rebuild machinery is not a good idea. Even though water would cool it quickly, if it was that hot it is too warped already. Temperatures can easily exceed 2500º, and flash the whole structure and blowing themself out.
The only thing unaffected structurally is un- burned wood structure.
Aunt Phil is absolutely correct. You would be surprised how many fires are extinguished with very little water, open the door a crack, open your fog nozzle in there for a few seconds, then close the door. The amount of energy expended turning that water to steam does the trick.
And don't get me started on much of the fire service. Its getting better, but a huge part of this country is still protected by volunteers - many good, but way too many under trained.
Chilly
(You set 'em, and we'll wet 'em! - right Phil?)
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Well Chili I always call sprinklers air conditioning for firemen. Gotta keep them boys cool while they play with the superdollar trucks you know.
Funny thing is, the more expensive the truck is, the less firefighting gets done around here. I can think of 2 Districts sporting multiple $250,000 trucks with IAFF members out the tailppipe, who couldn't put out a Boy Scout Ca,pfire without pulling a second alarm. They damn sure got no idea how to draft a stream either, so the pumpers carry no hard line.
Go 10 miles west to 100% vollie companies, and you find trucks that cost less than half, what the IAFF specials do, carrying hard line and strainers along with attic pipes and water curtains who put fires out. Most of the vollie companies also run with female firefighters, and those girls are every bit the equal of male IAFF members if not superior to them. Vol companies don't even have to hold a Union meeting on the way to the fire.
Making wewee on the roof doesn't stop much fire when the red stuff is inside the roof, and char patterns on plywood and 2x4s tell a hell of a lot of story to a skilled investigator. The place had red cedar siding, and that only charred above breakthrough points. Of course filling the cellar with water accomplished a lot.
1 real fireman with an ax to punch a fog line through the overhead door could have knocked it down in minutes.
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I agree about the volunteers, and female firefighters, too. But there is something to be said for size. I disagree with lowering the physical fitness standards, just to be more inclusive. The problem is still the 80%, not the 20% who are extraordinary. Volunteers are hard to come by, good or great firefighters are still rare.
I am specifically talking about front line firefighters, not emt's and other life safety types.
Sprinklers are more than cooling. Your chance of dying from fire in a fully sprinklered building is as close to never (it is currently unmeasureable) as you can get. Also, not very likely to damage anything. Even the water damage is less than if fought by firefighters alone.
That is why they have been installing water based fire protection since the stone age.
Chilly
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Comon Chili, enough with the advertising.
Did you really expect Og to install Halon in the cave? He had enough problems with stone buckets.
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Comon Chili, enough with the advertising.
Did you really expect Og to install Halon in the cave? He had enough problems with stone buckets.
Like I said, you set em, we'll wet em.
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Shutgun, the tool you need after Chili leaves the job.
https://static.squarespace.com/static/52dd94c7e4b032209174c4fe/t/5488ae0ce4b051e70e1561fd/1418243596169/Shutgun-brochure-Dec+2014final.pdf
SprinkOff with the extendable pole can be found in every Walmart store. They know about Chili's gang. Unfortunately, Chili didn't install enough sprinklers for Sprink Off to stay in business.
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I installed them - but not enough fires were set.
Probably not in business because a wood wedge is cheaper.
Chilly
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Come on Chillly. You know the level of destruction a Wallyworld Associate could create with a wedge and a ladder?
It would be worse than these UNION Professionals with half a million Dollars of tools who didn't stay awake for the whole class on which hose feeds which computer controlled truckiepoo.
Notice how effective the truck is waiting for the flacid 5" to be connected.
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Lol
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The 5 was hand humped across the lawn because the Quint carrys no supply, depends on the following pumper to lay supply to the Quint.
1st pumper in made the hydrant and laid a 3 up the driveway, leaving their 5" bunked.
The IAFF professionals from North Greece were second company dispatched- the primary arrived late, so the guys from N Greece who were 2 miles away watching the smoke grow decided to come to the party. 1st company finally showed up, but they could only pump because the driveway was filled with 3" hose.
The fire could have been knocked down with a 1½ using fog if somebody showed up with one on time.
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You're the best advertisement for my services, Phil.
Its been good trade for me - haven't had to look for a job or fill out a resume for 33 yrs. Always have had people knocking at the door if they thought I wasn't busy or happy. It's a good enough living. Even if owners would rather upgrade their carpet than have fire sprinklers installed. I've been able to have designed the systems on some of the mist recognizable buildings in town and even in some other areas of the country.
Chilly
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You're the best advertisement for my services, Phil.
Its been good trade for me - haven't had to look for a job or fill out a resume for 33 yrs. Always have had people knocking at the door if they thought I wasn't busy or happy. It's a good enough living. Even if owners would rather upgrade their carpet than have fire sprinklers installed. I've been able to have designed the systems on some of the mist recognizable buildings in town and even in some other areas of the country.
Chilly
Not me Chilly.
I'm a good little retarded boy, got paperwork that says so from a highly thought of boy's prison. I might be mute too.
Besides, I'm working on something that might scare you, and I'm conspiring with a man who got an award for building a contraption to fight aircraft fires at altitude.
Now I gotta decide if I want to introduce Co2 into a cylinder of water to cause the water to rapidly leave the cylinder on its way down the hose, or just use boring Nitrogen. My Co2 idea comes from ancient days of Chemical Fire Wagons where the Firemen swore the Co2 generated by dumping acid into the soda laden water in the tank had superior suppression qualities to plain water.
I tell ya, it's tough out here in the tin building without sprinklers except the experimentals on top of the roof that keep the place cool. If I only had that fancy City Water Line to play with, but I don't. I can't even have a well.
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I travelled to PA some 8 yrs or so ago to check out a new system that victaulic was working on. It didn't have a name at the time, but it was incredible to see in action.
After we toured the factory where they make Vic fittings we drove out to an old concrete building. The building had been built by Thomas Edison, he was going to pump concrete to the city from there or something.
There was this room, maybe a 30' x 30' x 20' tall. We looked in through a big open doorway, maybe 12' x12'. Inside the room was a pan of heptane, about 1 meter square x 10cm deep. They lit the heptane on fire, the flames were taller than me. After 20 seconds or so they set off the mist system. The room fikked up with a cloud, but the water droplets were so fine they didn't stick to anything. The fure just died down and went out.
It was amazing, and it only used a couple of gallons of water- propelled by nitrogen.
Now its called a Vortex system.
I think that whatever properties your friend thought he noticed wuth CO2 would be the same with nitrogen, only a little less expensive.
Chilly
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Chilly my man, look into the properties Nitrogen takes on at altitudes above 20,000 feet. Nitrogen acts in a completely different manner than on the ground. Co2 is blessed with some strange properties as well, especially given that it's stored as a liquid and must boil off. On the other side of the coin, Co2 offers maximum cubic feet of gas per pound of stored material. Then there's the old soda fountain foaming effect with Co2 you don't get with Nitrogen (the kids won't understand that).
Co2 also dissolves in water inside a tank very rapidly, and the dissolved Co2 expands fast when the restraining pressure of the containment vessel is no longer present. Just pop the cap on an old fashioned bottle of soda when it's hot, or run bulk soda through a dispenser that isn't chilled. FOAM CITY without adding foamite. Add Foamite and you got a party like a laundromat where somebody poured a bottle of Amway Super Sudz concentrate in the machine and walked away.
All I gotta do is make it all happen in a 2 gallon vessel, then I can expand it to a 100 gallon vessel.
Just think of the mess I can make playing with this idea.
Closest anybody ever let me to a test burn chamber was when somebody (who shall remain nameless) bought accidentally according to him the burn test chamber at the old BernzOmatic factory for 10 bucks. I was told I had a "truck body" to move, and it had to be moved in 2 weeks.
RIGHT!
That chamber was still sitting there 5 years ago when I drove past the place.
I don't get allowed around a bunch of fun places in Rochester.