B Finnigan

My commute vehicle is a Toyota 4Runner since I drive 60mi. a day. But I got this little sweety from my wife's uncle in a panic sale. For about what the sales tax would be for it. 2003 Ranger "Edge" 4 door extended cab, 4L V6, tow package,5th wheel hitch, LineX bed liner,5spd manual. The only mileage he had on it was a trip up to Fairbanks AK and back. I also built a 62 Gal reserve tank for it. (16 MPG:osrc="http://forums.dfoggknives.com/public/style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif">) I wanted the pink stripes off of it but my wife protested so they are still on.

On my profile to the left of the post.

I have a griz dovetail column drill/mill and it's exceeded all my expectations. Five years of almost daily use and it's still running like the day I bought it. I hope this one serves you just as well. The amount of things you can do are only limited by your imagination. And when it comes to knife making they can be used for much more then slotting guards. Get a very heavy vise for it and a set of parallel bars along with a few carbide ball nose and endmills and you'll be off to the races. I use the griz 80 Lbs 5" vise and it has been adequate for most projects. The R-8 spindle will let you use a vast variety of tooling that is available.

I snagged several feet of leaf spring bolts (2') which are 6150 and as Geoff mentioned it's very similar to 5160 in forging and heat treating. Finding mid-carbon steel in round bar can be challenging. It's great stuff for hawks, hatchets and hammers.

Speedy Metals will ship in USPS flat rate boxes if you call in the order and ask. Otherwise if you order online they will use UPS which can get spendy. That is if your steel/metal is under 12"-14" and will fit. They carry a few alloy steels and some drill rod steels (flat bar also).

With 12-21-12 come and gone the History channel has lost half of it's programming. All their doomsday, end of the world apocalypse yada yada shows are now in the comedy classification. Their "experts" are now just smoke blowers quietly digging up something else to sensationalize. This guy is probably now in a psych ward quietly chewing on a plastic fork and mumbling to himself "They're still coming for us, you gotta believe me".

Those old welders are certainly worth maintaining. My Powercraft 230 is 52 years old and still going strong. The metal strip with the power setting numbers wore away so I just put them back on with a Sharpie.

Thanks guys! I will end up enjoying it also, so far I have liked every cheese I've tried and a few have been pretty wild.

My wife wants to get into cheese making. Our friends have been doing it for years and have always offered to help. So I got her a cheese making kit for Christmas and built an 18th century style oak press. They retail from $150-$180 and the antique ones even more. But with $19 worth of fixtures I built one. I even machined the bearing/coupling on the pressure plate and it uses 14 BB's inside a collar. Sounds goofy but it works. And it's not exactly a high RPM component so BB's will be more then adequate. The are a lot of molds that can be used but I'll wait and see what kind she'll want and then make them also. All the metal parts have been bonded with a molybdenum disulfide heat cured coating for corrosion resistance. I didn't want the dark oak to have silver metal showing so the coating also gives it an aged iron look. Santa's workshop didn't have a lot of projects this year but I enjoyed they few I did. Nothing is glued so I can add or modify it down the road easily.

It might be easier to switch to copper or just drill out some round bar. I bored mine out on the lathe and then turned the wood handle down on each end to fit the end caps. I went with the thread lock system because the friction clip just didn't look tight enough for actually using it. It kept it from being a 100% accurate reproduction but I do carry and use it so function won out over form. They are a good challenge and a different concept to play with. Getting the blade assembly to fit just right into the slot was about a 2 hr process. And then when I brought it into the house the wood expanded and the blade assembly got stuck real bad inside the handle. There will be several occasions that will trigger some curse words.

When I worked in EMS I transported a couple skunk hits that triggered severe asthma attacks. Both times we had to put the rig out of service, go home change and shower. It took a couple days to get the unit air out and back in service. And that was not even a direct spray, just the fall out from the patient that was hit. Very bad stuff.

So where is the rest of it's face?:unsure:src="http://forums.dfoggknives.com/public/style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif">

My vids show me using two different sized ones. Leaf spring works great since it already has a nice radiused edge and moderately easy to drill if you go slow and use a coolant. They don't have to be welded together, but use lock nuts if you bolt them. The impacting will loosen the tightest bolts within minutes.

Great design! On smaller grooves I use a drill bit that is 1 or 2 sizes smaller then the inner radius. The sand paper thickness determines the lower size to use. I imagine that will work on wood just as well.

I have some video of drawing out and tapering a tang. When it comes to forging there are not a lot of "proper ways" but more what works for you. FF to 1:50 to where I start the tang with a guillotine swag. And no I don't forge in the white heat. I had a cheap camcorder back then that didn't filter the IR out so it records as visible light. This is just one way to do it. There are certainly many others to try also to see what works best for you. Hope it helps some.