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.

Your off to a good start. I just made one last spring. Swedish barrel knife thread.

Over on the Primal Fires forum I did a mini-tutorial on making a basic short bowie with just hand tools and a drill press. One of the videos is how I use JB weld along with swaging on the guard. To clean up the excess I use Q-tips with the heads cut off at an angle. It makes a great micro squeegee. After it cures for 30 mins you can use WD-40 to clean all the rest of the excess. It's set up enough to resist the WD-40 but still can be cleaned with it. There are many ways to do it and the only way to find out what works for you is to try them all. A year from now I might be dong it differently. It's a journey, enjoy the ride and don't get frustrated. If you do then drop it and do something else for a little while. I almost always have 2-3 projects going at one time. And they are not always a knife. And quick little tip for wrought iron guards. etch them before slotting. You'll be amazed at how much metal gets eaten by the FC. I learned that the hard way.:(src="http://forums.dfoggknives.com/public/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif"> Your perfect slot will enlarge both in height and width. Forked swaging stick. Here's the tutorial I posted. Nothing electrical needed except a drill press. Tutorial link.

Getting a tight fit on guards is a journey for sure. It took me two years before I was happy with mine. If you have gaps on the sides of the guards you can sometime peen the sides of the guard to drift it closed. Then you have a little mess to clean up on each side of the guard. I never solder mine, I use JB weld which will act as a lube while swaging that last 1/2" and then when dry a seal to keep out moisture. It also blends in with the steel good with the color.

You can upload them to Photbucket and have a place to host the pics and be able to easily re-size them. I use DZSoft photo resizing, it speeds up the upload speed to photobucket, mail attatchments and lets you make thumbnail pics. And best of all it's extremely easy to use. Drag and drop the pic then drag it back to where you want it stored. You still have the original and a re-sized copy. You can really shave off a huge amount of pixels w/o losing any resolution. That allows you to post good sized pics here and have them load fast for the viewers. DZSoft photo resizer It gives you a 30 trial.

The BB would get red hot but the rest of the pipe assuming there wasn't any metal would stay room temp. You could also use a 1' rod touching into the tobacco. like an inductive match. There endless weird/cool things to do with induction.

As mentioned above about the materials for charcloth it's made by heating in no oxygen environment. So you would wrap it up in foil in several tight sealed layers and heat it over a flame or in the oven. Or re-sealable cans like paint come in. Lots of cheap easy options. Charcoal is made the same way. The process also liberates methanol (wood alcohol ie Sterno). You also want a row of very fine jagged edges on the striker so you get a shower of sparks and not just one. The frizzen on a flintlock rifle is a slightly cupped surface with a rough texture so the flint scrapes along it.

This works out pretty good for me to start my forge. Also a bit excessive but no facial hair issues to date. I can also do a pipe lighting demo with a BB in the bowl.

Rolls of corrugated cardboard rolled up into paper towel or TP tubes soaked in paraffin also work really well. I always take several of them when I hike for emergency fire starters. They also work well in my Kelly kettle. I have some with a sparkler and small canister of rifle powder for windy starts. Forum link I use Dixie cups filled with wood shaving and then parafin to start fires in my wood stove. Lots of good ideas and I love reading about new ones. One small cardboard paraffin roll will boil a liter of water in my Kelly kettle in 5-7 minutes.

I keep a trail cam by our larger pond just to keep an eye out for what is hanging around. So far no cougs or bears. The pond is very clean spring fed water so most the critters around here use it. It also has a constant wild duck population and also works as bait for our coyotes. Capturing a pick of either would be cool but then again also not cool. I wouldn't be too concerned if it was a bear but a coug would be a serious problem for people and pets. I think "Santa" will be getting me a WiFi cam this christmas so I don't have to keep snagging the card to review the pics.

I have a 2 Lbs hammer I forged from some rebar that is quickly becoming one of two of my most used hammers. 1" rebar is also great for hawks since it still has a .4 C content and forges nicely.