Any hobby machinists or blacksmiths? (page 3)

greenhornet

On the north cascade hi way there is a town called Wintrop, there is a real black smith. He has a small shop that sells his works of art.

SixofNine

I've built accessories for motion picture, video, and still cameras and photographic motion control systems.

We once purchased an oooold geared tripod head (think back to images from the turn of the last century you've seen of the cameraman cranking a big winder to move the camera side-to-side or tilt up/down), from the back lot of a production rental/sales company in LA. The plan was to machine it to accept stepper motors in place of hand cranks, to facilitate stop motion photography. When we started cleaning up the head, we found a tiny stamping on one of the cast surfaces: C.B. DeMille.

I couldn't believe my bosses went ahead and had me machine that piece of motion picture history.

BrentR

Wow! I would have never touched that or done anything to it except find a museum to put it in. I aquire alot of very old iron and steel scraps but I would never alter or use anything with any historic value.

Sixofnine, there's still a few people around the country that are keeping the craft alive and it's great for people to see and learn how it was done "old school".

Stephanus

Heh, heh! I was thinking this was going to be the perfect "girl free zone" thread, and I was almost right. Good to see that your daughter is not growing up to be a "machine snob", Brent!

I did my apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, and have a hankerin' to get back into the machining side of things as a hobby, now that time hangs heavily on my hands. It's all about money, of course. I was going to try and build a Gingery lathe at one stage, but I can't even afford the basics to make that, unfortunately. Presuming I ever have a windfall, like a lottery win, or some such, I'd like to build a home shop and build live steam engines or working model internal combustion engines. I have an acquaintance in New Zealand who builds pulse jets in his home shop. That would be kind of interesting, too.

There's nothing like the inner fiery glow of hot steel, is there, Brent!!

moomanchu

Machinist for 27 years. I now work for a foundry that casts iron pipe products. I work in the R&D department and do prototype models using CAD/CAM and whatever to make whatever the engineers want.

Is your avatar a knife that you made?

Looks like you do some nice work.

BrentR

Thanks! And yes that is one I forged.

Stephanus I built a small turbine engine from a used semi truck turbo charger. There are alot of plans on the net for various types of home built jet engines using different turbo chargers. This one is extremely loud and fairly dangerous to run. The intake compressor on the turbo will spin at 110 to 120,000 RPMs and I could only imagine if a piece of that cast aluminum decided come off at full throttle. I have never attempted to mount it on anything and it's total run time is less then ten minutes. But it was fun and challenging to buildand did not require any fancy tooloing.

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Stephanus

Now you've proven your identity as a hobby engineer, Brent: building something powerful and dangerous "just because you can"! LOL

Yes, I've seen various websites about jet engines made from turbochargers. One guy (also from New Zealand - must be something in the water) uses his jet engine to power his beer cooler!

I'm afraid I have to live my engineering hobby vicariously through others for now. I get various hobby engineering magazines (British and Australian - no newsagents here seem to carry the American magazines), surf the hobby engineering websites and watch the How To Channel. Sometimes the craft shows will show people who make stuff from metal. Otherwise it's mainly woodworking type shows.

BrentR

I hope you get a chance some day soon to get some metal shop machinery and start designing and building. For me it's not a hobby it is how I keep my sanity and it's my only creative outlet. I sell some specialized tooling to make some spare change sometimes but I never want to ruin a hobby by turning it into a business.

BrentR

I just finished my iron shot glass. The iron is from a pre-Civil War tall ship anchor chain. The chunk had a bit of curve to it so I had to forge it into a better cylinder shape to get it into the lathe chuck. After it was machined and polished I etched it in ferric chloride and then in acetic acid. Back then they were not able to refine all of the silicas out of the iron ore so acid etching will disolve some of the iron but not touch the silicas. This results in the iron having a grain somewhat like wood.

Now I have to test it for leaks by filling it up and emptying it several times. Some single malt scotch should have just the right specific gravity to make the tests as accurate as possible.

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BrentR

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Any hobby machinists or blacksmiths?

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