Metalworking Badge Oddball Thread

Some PEP badges allow for oddball points.  This was introduced in this thread.

When submitting something in the official Oddball badge, you get points based on the time it would take a professional to do the same task if they have a bit of luck.

When submitting something within a badge that allows oddball points (Homesteading, Metalworking, etc), they are based on the time it would take a talented newbie to do the same task.

When you did something that should be in a badge but there isn't a BB for it, post about it in that badge and maybe it will become a BB.  If that badge allows oddball points, you can submit it there, otherwise it has to go into Oddball badge.

Some examples:
You welded up a 20 foot unicorn - put it into the Metalworking Oddball thread
You made a candle - put it in the regular Oddball thread since it isn't a clear fit for an existing badge
You build a pump house - post it in Homesteading since it should be a BB there and/or put it in Homesteading Oddball

Otis wants to hang things on walls with confidence they will not fall off, and to do it without glue or paint or an Amazon purchase, right?  The wall clock I made using the end of a used wine barrel was apparently too heavy for the store bought picture hanging bracket and it bent and broke.  Luckily I noticed before it fell off the wall and did some damage.  So I decided it was time to fabricate a beefy steel hanger for it that I guarantee won't fail!

Recently a design flaw was discovered on the dump trailer when it got a flat tire. The person I had loaned it to went to install the spare tire and found that the sidewall of the spare was significantly worn, to the point of being dangerous to use. This was caused by the spare tire storage location, which is a metal rack on the neck of the gooseneck. The spare tire rested on this rack and was held in place only by gravity, so every bump and turn would cause the tire to shift position enough that over time it wore the tire sidewall rubber thin.  It also wore through the paint of the trailer in the contact points which allowed rust to start to take hold.

I decided this called for a permanent fix to this design flaw.  I used an angle grinder to grind off the rust and flaking paint. I fabricated a spare tire mount bracket by cutting down a store bought spare tire mount to the right length, and cutting a piece of 2"x1" channel steel to the right length, welded them together, painted them, and welded this to the trailer, then wire brushed and painted the remaining exposed steel.

Now the spare tire is securely held in place with two lug nuts making it harder to steal the spare and suspending it about 2" in the air so the rubber is not in contact with anything.

A neighbor had a gate with unusual integral hinges, but it was missing one of the two hinges so it wasn't able to be used.  They had a need for the gate so I volunteered to fabricate a hinge for it using scrap metal from my boneyard.

Had to fix a chainsaw. The plastic worm gear on the oiler stripped out. I couldn't find a replacement, and prefer metal anyway. I didn't have a piece of brass or bronze, so went with 6061-T6 aluminum.

Today I finished making a curved card scraper from an old saw blade.

I generally avoid metalworking because it's really noisy and it terrifies me... but I suited up with my respirator, heavy leather gloves and goggles and had a go at it.

starting metal


removing handle


removing saw teeth


marking up


using disc grinder to remove bulk of waste


Short aside. I have no training in metalworking, but I quickly realized a danger and addressed it with extra caution. When you grind to sever metal, it could theoretically shoot off as a high velocity projectile. Once I realized this (thankfully before it happened) I made sure not to grind all the way through at any point, and snapped off the pieces with my heavy leather gloves or pliers as need be. I also picked up any metal shards and larger fragments with some U magnets and collected them in my metal scrap jar.

cut to shape with grinder


smoothed with a file


For sharpening I watched three different famous youtubers videos, compared the main points, and decided it was easier than I had always assumed because they all left out or did slightly different things with a similar overarching theme.


I don't have a burnisher. I do have a hardened steel screwdriver though. It worked well.


The resultant burr/hook is obvious, I can feel it with my fingertips around the edges. Using it is pretty easy. I get nice shavings. Now I can avoid huge amounts of sanding. I hate sanding even more than metalworking, I guess that's why this project happened!!!


It took me about 3 hours. I'm a newbie. I don't know if I'm talented or not. You tell me!

It's a little bit permie because I upcycled an old saw that had been rusting for ages into something quite useful.

I built a top-lit updraft gasifier (TLUD) from a metal barrel.
Before


Marking for the top cut and cutting wheel.



Top removed


Before and after cleaning up the edge with a grinding wheel.



Marking for bottom holes.


Drilling holes for that draft. Smaller bit for pilot holes, larger bit. Water to cool off the bits.




Installation of chimney into lid.







Finished

I meant to post this some time back but it slipped through the cracks.  One of the things I do as a metalsmith artist is teach workshops in the techniques I specialize in.  One of these techniques is angle raising, or in everyday language, how to hammer a flat piece of metal up into a bowl/vessel form.  The problem I constantly run into with these workshops is tooling.  For the raising class the issue is the raising stakes we hammer over.  There just aren't too many facilities that have enough stakes for a class of 12 students to all be working at once.  To compound things even more, in my approach I tend to use a larger range of stake sizes than is normal.  In short, my solution is to manufacture the stakes myself for the class (and offer them for sale afterward to pay for all the added labor involved).

This past year I redesigned my stakes to make them easier to make and easier to secure in a vise for working.  I made 14 sets of 5 stakes for a workshop which then filled up in about a day.  Once the waiting list got long enough the host studio asked if I'd do a second section of the class.  I agreed and then made another 14 sets.  So in total that was 140 stakes!  I only documented one of the batches of 14 which is what I'm submitting here for consideration as a metalworking oddball BB.

This batch took me about 2 weeks of work, say 60 to 80 hours, to manufacture.  I was working mostly with a 4.5 inch angle grinding for the laborious shaping work.  If these were being manufactured on a regular basis it would probably make more sense to invest the capital into other equipment like a mill or CNC machine, which would cut the time down I expect.  If this BB is approved you can figure the point value however you wish.  To be honest I'm not too concerned about that as I'm closer to being an Otis than someone hoping to appeal to an Otis.

Finally, here is a link to a post I made on my website with far more detail about these stakes and how they can be mounted in a vise if anyone is interested.  If anyone is looking to do the bb for raising a small bowl these are the sort of tools you'll need.  It's nice to be able to make them yourself!

So after submitting a big major metalworking oddball project above here is a very minor one!  I'm preparing to do some darning of socks and sweaters for textile BBs and really just to have the holes repaired in my socks and sweaters.  Then I realized I don't have a darning needle!  While I could go to the store and pay a whole 99 cents for the two pack I'm going to instead make my own with scrap material that cost even more and will take more time to do.    While this project might not make economic sense I feel like I've got a way cooler darning needle.  It's also always empowering to realize you can make your own tools.

I decided to raid my silver scrap bin for an end cut of silver round wire that was too short for my normal work.  It seemed like a good gauge to start with and I won't ever need to worry about it rusting, just tarnishing.  I didn't check for sure, but I believe it was 12 gauge wire.  First I hammered it straight and flat, work hardening it in the process.  Then I forged the one end a bit to make a wider flat spot to make the eye of the needle in.  I contemplated splitting this with punches, but decided to just drill a small hole and saw out the opening with my jewelers saw.  Then it was a process of filing and sanding to smooth it all out, esp. the edges of the eye so it won't be cutting the fibers of the yarn/thread that will go in it.

In the end I took a bit over an hour to make this, which is really ridiculous for what it is.  Now that I have an approach to this worked out I'm sure it could go WAY quicker.  My guess would be a half hour if I'm being leisurely about it.

Here's another small project that I'm guessing would fit best in metalworking oddball.  My home is an old 60's mobile home that has undergone lots of changes over its life.  At some point prior to me owning this there was a gas water heater in one of the little storage spaces with a vent pipe going up and out.  The part going out the roof has long since been covered over, but there was still an opening where it came out of the storage space up into the ceiling.  Not really an issue it's in an enclosed space you don't really see.  However, varmints are a perpetual problem with a mobile home in a lovely rural ecosystem ideal for breeding mice.  When I started storing extra jigsaw puzzles in the space I seem to have made a nice ladder for them turning this into a popular entry and exit point!  So it seems worth sealing up.

Digging around I found some old thinner gauge sheet copper I haven't had a use for in years.  As an extra bonus it still had some protective plastic sheeting on it.  (This is often put on sheet copper to keep one side scratch free.)  I'm leaving it on because I plan to use some steel screws from my large stash of salvage screws rather than purchasing brass ones.  I'm not really that concerned about galvanic corrosion happening here.  It would probably take decades before enough metal was corroded away for the screws to fail holding the plate, and then the only thing that happens is the plate falls.  Still, since an easy solution was already in place I left the plastic to form an electrical barrier between the two types of metal.

Anyway, I cut a section of the sheet copper to fit over and beyond the hole, filed the edges and corners down to remove burs and sharp points.  Then I got to play with my new toy/tool, a hand hole punch.  It was way nicer to use to make my screw holes instead of getting out a drill!  With the plate made I then just screwed it in place.  The ceiling material was soft enough to easily screw into by hand with a screwdriver.  My fear was that it would be too soft to hold, but it seemed to be fine, and as another bonus I found that the last bit of the screw length seemed to bite into something (wood?) with more resistance that held very secure.

Between making the plate and installing it I spent about an hour on this project.

Hopefully this deters mouse activity in this zone at least so my puzzles are in safer storage.  Side note:  It would be even nice to sell off my extra stock.  I've got some jigsaw puzzles for sale if anyone is interested!  

One of my goals in this coming year is to really get a handle on harvesting, processing, cooking, and eating foods grown around me, whether from a garden or even better, growing wild on their own.  The challenge with wild harvesting is often getting calorie dense foods.  One that does grow around me is Shagbark Hickory.  I have tubs of the nuts I've collected but then realize I don't really have good systems or tools in place to crack and process them to get the nut meats out.  They are hard shelled nuts.  I've tried it with just a hammer as well as cranking them down in a vise.  Both methods work but tended to be inefficient and/or result in shell fragments flying all over the place.

So I tried to imagine something fairly simple I could make that would allow me to better process hickory nuts on a home scale.  Certainly this tool is not going to be effective for commercial operations, but I'm happy with the results.

I started with a section of copper pipe that seemed a good size for the general size of nuts that grow in my region.  The idea was to be able to crack them inside the pipe with a steel rod and hammer, thus containing any flying shell fragments.  So I cut a section of the pipe and found a hunk of hex steel rod that was a good size for this and first did a test run to see if this would even work.  It worked pretty well so I then proceeded to make the whole tool as I envisioned it.

The idea is that the tube assembly slides up and down on a couple brass rods allowing me to load nuts and remove the cracked ones.  The steel bar goes inside the tube and is struck with a hammer to do the cracking.  It's all mounted on an ash wood block with a small divot carved into it that helps the nuts sit in a good position for cracking.  I added a screw at the bottom of the divot to give a metal bit on the back side hoping this helps the nut cracking.

I used threaded brass inserts hammered into the wood block to screw the two brass rods into.  I also had to thread the ends of those rods.  The biggest pain in the butt ended up being the soldering job to attach the heavy brass tubing to the sides of the copper tube.  I thought that would be an easy solder job, but for heat reflection reasons I won't get into here I couldn't get the heat where I needed it most as easily as I anticipated.  I have ideas now for a different approach which I'll try if I ever make another.  Basically though, this should have gone much faster if I had that part figured out ahead of time.

I did finish the wood block with oil and wax.  I also spent the extra time to clean up my solder mess and put a basic patina on the copper tube assembly.  It's not a work of art, but I wanted it to look decent as I expect it to be a functional tool I'll use for many years to come.

Oh, I also forged and filed out a couple nut picks geared toward the specifics of picking the meats out of shagbark hickory nuts.

All told I think I spent about 4 hours or so on crafting this project.  That should be cut in half I'd think if I had the soldering operation better figured out, as there would have been much less time involved in both soldering and clean up.

I submit this for consideration as an oddball metalwork BB.

David Huang wrote:
So I tried to imagine something fairly simple I could make that would allow me to better process hickory nuts on a home scale.  Certainly this tool is not going to be effective for commercial operations, but I'm happy with the results.

Coolest nutcracker ever!

L. Johnson wrote:

David Huang wrote:
So I tried to imagine something fairly simple I could make that would allow me to better process hickory nuts on a home scale.  Certainly this tool is not going to be effective for commercial operations, but I'm happy with the results.

Coolest nutcracker ever!

Thanks!  I'm pretty happy with it myself.  

I'll be traveling to Wheaton Labs bootcamp this weekend and decided to pay for the fuel to travel there by hauling UShip cargo on the way and on the way back home. I chose to tow a lighter weight car hauler style flatbed trailer to expand the options for potential cargo. This trailer has a set of metal ramps for loading wheeled cargo, and has racks under the deck to stow the ramps when not in use, however, the previous owner of the trailer apparently broke off the hinged doors that prevent the ramps from falling out while driving.  So I fabricated a new set of hinged doors, since the ramps are going to be required for at least two of the items I'm transporting.

Howdy, Permies!  I have been working on a termite eaten house that required a few floor joists to be replaced.  The plumber brought everything up to code and took up what real estate was necessary, but it left me to come up with a creative framing solution to get the floor joists around his pipe work.  I reinforced the joist (which was in two pieces) with channel steel and some flat bar.  I nailed it all to the wood and bolted all steel pieces together.  The joist behind the featured one also was reinforced with two pieces of flat bar.  All of it took this steel working noob about an hour with all the luck in the world.

I took a welding class and made a k-tube portable rocket stove. This was the conclusion of a 2x3h workshop, including instruction on safety and welding basics.

Keep in mind that the pieces were partially precut to fit an existing design. Work involved making final cuts (three openings to be exact), welding the entire assembly and grinding it smooth.

It took me a total of two hours of active time, including lots of back and forth between the welding and grinding station to get an esthetic weld (instructor was picky )

First time using a grinder! Hurray for firsts! Probably the hardest part too, since grinders are made for much larger hands than mine.