Rugged As Iron Works

Making the Mark 2 surface grinder arm, during Week 2 of down to -22C

It’s been so cold the last few week, that working in the shop isn’t all that productive, and trying to use sub-zero metal tools makes one’s fingers very numb, even with gloves on!

So I had the idea of plumbing in a propane BBQ tank outlet into my forge supply, and picked up a 38K BTU propane heater to help heat the shop.

Well that worked well until it got down to -22 Celsius (-7.5F), and then I was only able to create a little bubble of heat, which was just big enough to work on improving my surface grinder attachment.

I realized after making it that that it would be a lot more efficient (I.e lazy) if I didn’t have to do repetitive bicep curls every time I used the attachment, so I put on a side plate and rotated the sliding arm 80 degrees, and now it’s more of a rowing action. Much easier!

At the same time, I replaced the Y-axis sliding block because the screw that moved the stock into the grinding wheel was too weak and loosened easily so the surface tapered whether wanted or not. I replaced that with a better designed block, reground the vice and it is working great now.

Next up, using the surface grinder to flattery a Damascus knife…but on a warmer day!

Making a fullering tool with chilly fingers and questionable shortcuts.

It’s been between -14 and -27 this week, which is just too chilly to work in the garage for long, even with some heaters going. So I popped into the shop a few times this week and worked until my fingers got numb, and made a fullering attachment for the belt grinder. Effectively it’s a type of horizontal small wheel attachment, but with especially small bearings, which helps make the wheel really thin.

Unfortunately, it was thin enough that when When I shaped the wheel on my metal lathe and pressed in the bearings, the press distorted the wheel and it vibrated.

It’s really hard to turn a wheel true with bearings in both ends, and misshapen outer rim. The solution is to put a tapered rod in the lathe chuck and tail stock to hold the piece so it’s correctly aligned. This is called turning between two centres in machining terms, ur you need a lathe dog, I.e. clamp to stop the piece from rotating on its bearings.

Well my lathe dog is too small, and I didn’t want it to take more time in the chilly garage to make one, so…I put on more safety gear, used two clamps, prayed once and spun it for three seconds, which was just long enough true up the outer. After that I was able to clamp and finish it normally., and grind in the rough fillers on the military patten sword.

Normally I’d say something like it’s not stupid if it works, but in this case, I’m leaning more towards it still being stupid even though it worked.