Bellows update

I posted a bit on building bellows a while back, and had planned to get photos up of the build process.  Well, that tanked.  Something went awry and I seem to have lost all the photos, so I am in the process of trying to make a few drawings up to better explain the process, then when we build another set I will photograph the process and reshoot (hopefully we will also do video at the same time for our upcoming DVDs).  So, keep an eye open here for new bellows images - hopefully soon!

(see the orginal post here:  Bellows)
Until then, these pics will probably help:

In this pic, we see all three boards hanging in space, one over the other. This is how the bellows would be arranged if the nozzle (with hinges) and lung were mounted, and both chambers were fully open (ie, full of air). The valve boards are shown in violet (without their leather hinges in place), the top and bottom are shown as edge joined boards and the center as chip board. This is only done to make the image easier to understand, please see the main post on what to make these parts from.

This image shows the rough shape and proportions of the boards from the top. Yours does not have to be exact, roughly this shape and these ratios will work just fine.

This image shows the midboard, with the notch at the front for the nozzle to be mounted in, the hanging pins and the holes for the valves. The bottom board has the same valve holes, but does not have the hanging pins or notch at the front.

The top board is the same size and has no holes.

The lung of the bellows will wrap from the front (narrow) edge all the way around the curved rear of the bellows to the opposite front edge.

I will see about getting the nozzle image up asap.

Bad math steel weight estimation

Ok, here is a quick n dirty system we use at the steel yard to estimate the weight on a given bar of steel (this works for hot or cold roll as well as carbon steels). Since we often buy by the pound, not per piece, knowing about how much you have in the truck before you hit the scale helps to keep the sticker shock down to a minimum at check out. This system is really for getting random steel for playing with or so you have various stock on hand for what ever comes up, not for a given detailed project.

For those who have not purchased steel (or coal) in large quantity, I should explain quickly; You weigh your vehicle before you go get what you want, load it up and weigh it again on the way out and pay for the difference. Yes, you could fill your back seat with sand and pour it out before you load up to get more “free” stuff, but be advised if you get caught (and you will) its a whole lot of jail time.

Most steel weighs 489 pounds per cubic foot. All you have to figure out is what part of a cubic foot your bar weighs, right? Heck no! I am way to lazy for that. So some math later, we find that a cubic inch of steel weighs .28 pounds. This is a lot handier... round up just to make the numbers easier; a cubic inch guesstimated weight is .3 pounds. Therefore every 4” section of 1/2” square is .3 pounds, so 3 of those equals just under a pound. Remember, round up. Hey, if you are 20 pounds under at the scale, that's less you have to pay on the way out the door!

So 1 foot of 1/2” square weighs a pound. Ok, a “bad math pound”.

Therefore, if you have a 1” x 1/2” x 1 foot bar, it's going to weigh 2 pounds (since there is twice as much steel there) and a 1” square bar 1 foot long should weigh under 4 pounds. (It's actually more like 3.4 pounds per foot, but round up for bad math.)

you could round down to a quarter pound per cubic inch, but I would rather not accidentally overload the truck and break an axle or some dang thing, not to mention I often hit the steel yard with a given amount of money on hand and I want to be sure I come in under budget for random steel. On a given project, I tend to buy what I need plus 10% for screw ups, but this system is for random stuff to make what ever out of.

Buying thick plate is similar. A 12” by 12” section of 1/4” plate weighs almost exactly 10 pounds, so if you can do some quick math based on this you can guesstimate the weight of a given section of plate. 1/8” thick is half as heavy, 1/2” plate is twice as heavy. Simple! Ok, simplish. You may be able to envision the bar you are looking at as a section of plate, cut into strips and laid end to end to make up a bar or vice versa. It all depends on how you happen to think about volumetric objects, as different peoples brains work in different ways.

Ok, so that works for square or rectangular stock, what about rounds? Since a circle fills about 80% of the volume of a square that is the same width, you can take your formula above to figure out what a square bar that dia/across would weigh, then multiply that by .8 or just call it close enough and have a little money left over at the check out to go grab lunch. Again, this is already rounded up a bit, so your actual weight will be under the guesstimate.

Most other shapes can be though of as made up of parts that you can already easily figure out with the above formula. Angle iron is two sections of flat bar stuck together down one edge, channel is three sections. You can think of pipe as a flat bar that has been rolled into a tube, so here take the thickness then wrap the tape measure around the pipe to figure out what a given section of pipe would be as flat stock (unless you can do circumference of a circle in your head easily – some people can, some can't).

And there you have it, a lazy, bad math way to guesstimate the weight of a given bar of steel!

Or just write down 1/2” square is a pound a foot and 1/4” plate is 10 pounds per square foot and work off that.

Either way.

New Look

Hello all, just a quick post to let you know we aren't dead and we updated the look of the blog here.

A lot of changes in the home life since the last post... I won't go into details, but suffice to say it has kept us busy!  Some new posts are in the works; updating and completing some of the previous stuff (like the bellows pages) and a number of new projects as well.  Hopefully, we will get these up in the next few days.

Until then, stay warm!

Spring Vice ver 1.0

The spring vice is done, at least for the prototype stage. We had it with at Derbyshire, but the very low quality coal we got made almost anything a huge challenge. Jessie busted his butt just trying to keep it lit and trying to get enough heat to draw points.

The coal we had was not only low in quality, but was also about 30 percent driveway gravel. It also had some charcoal mixed in, just for fun. Charcoal burns well enough, but tends to spark and pop under high heat. This, mixed in with coal, makes for an ashy, spitty fire. Add rock to the mix, which acts as a heat sink, and it's just miserable to try to do anything with.

The early tests with the vice are promising. It holds fairly firmly, with about 100 lbs of downward pressure on the stock. A few minutes of clean up on the vice will bring it to presentable, so we should have pics up soon. Once it's ground clean and painted we will see about pics of it, and get some "action shots" to show how it can be used.

The helve is still in progress, so more info on that later.

A lot in the works

So it has been a while since I updated the lessons section.

Partly this is because I am writing ahead a fair bit, and partly because we have been busy. Mayfaire snuck up on us, went well enough (except for me getting really sick on the last day). We are making a lot of stock for the summer season, and have designed two new tools that I will detail here in coming posts as part of the lessons. These tools will make some of the future lessons easier, and should just be fun for others to have and use.

The first is a medium sized treadle powered helve hammer and the second is a new kind of spring vice.

The helve is an ancient form of power hammer, which was later reduced in size and adapted to be either motor powered or human powered. You don't see a lot of them in use in blacksmith shops any longer, even though they are easier to build than some other treadle hammers.

The spring vice we are working on and testing is actually going to be useful for more than just metal smiths. With a few simple modifications, it should also be a boon to wood carvers, or anyone else that needs a portable, versatile clamping system for reasonable sized stock. As usual, the big hang up is the art work. I may just resort to photographs for these articles.

They will also be up on our main site when the articles are done, and will probably be there before they show up here.