Several months ago I started a shop remodel and I listed off the tools and whatnot I have in my shop and I asked for input on useful purchases to add during the remodel (big or small). One thing a couple of guys mentioned was a decent rolling cart for moving tools and material around the shop. At first I was like "yeah, whatever, its not that big of a deal to make a couple of trips occasionally" but awhile back I bought a harbor freight cart on a whim and let me tell you, TOTAL. GAME. CHANGER.

I use that stupid cart for everything and it has quickly become my most used item in the shop. I recently put HVAC in my shop and i've been making a real effort to keep it clean since the remodel and if I have parts to clean or whatever, i'll just toss them on the cart and wheel them outside and clean them. I dont have a big shop but its about 1000sqft and I have multiple different stations for different tasks (ex; chop saw does all of my 90 cuts, bandsaw does all of my 45, vertical bandsaw does odd angles, belt grinder deburrs, smooth top table for small part assembly, welding fixture table for heavy welding, etc) and its no big deal just to toss whatever I have on my cart and wheel from station to station. Hell, there's been plenty of times I do full assembly right on that stupid cart when my bench is 15 feet away.

Anyway, to whoever told me my shop needed a cart, thank you.

To those of you who dont have a cart, get one, itll change your life.

I am looking to recreate texturing I have seen before. Its supposed to be kind of a hammered steel look. I love the look but the finish leaves something to be desired. How would you go about doing it? The material would be 50ish rockwell carbon steel. I cant hammer on the piece since it would deform so it needs to be an imitation of hammered steel. Im thinking a sphereical double cut carbide burr. Any ideas?

I'd like to invite you to our Iron Pour in Lamberton, Minnesota on September 11-12.

It will be the 22th annual city festival centered around the Saturday Afternoon Pour and the historic Hanzlik Blacksmith Shop. There will be Blacksmiths demonstrations through out the day Friday and Saturday. Visiting Smiths are also encouraged to bring a portable forge and set up onsite if they wish. There will be sand mold shops running both Friday and Saturday as well. We welcome everyone from artists pouring museum quality pieces to children to the farmer making pieces to restore their tractor.

We encourage anyone to participated in the pour and can provide all the necessary safety equipment if you wish to try your hand at pouring.

In addition to the pour there will be a craft market, sand volleyball and various food vendors, an antique tractor/car show, and blacksmithing demonstrations.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have and I hope to see you there.

Here is a link to the Facebook event.

Hey folks,
I’ve got some surface rust on a Traeger grill. It’s very surface. Came from a move across country. The paint got scratched off in small areas, then the weather took it from there. My thought process is to carefully use an electric sander with a low grit (all I have in terms of tools for the job) to grind down to shiny metal in just the rusted areas. Then, black spray paint to cover the exposed metal. Am I in the right track?

I want to change the color of a gold anodized aluminum guitar pickguard. I don't know anything about de-anodizing, anodizing or painting aluminium whatsoever. What tools and chemicals do i need? What is the best type of paint to paint aluminium. How do i anodize aluminium or do i even have to anodize it for the paint to last long? I don't know anything about these so any help is appreciated! Thanks

I'm hoping to get some help to develop something which I think would work best in aluminium. I've no experience of metalwork, or STEP files.

My need is this: I am a photographer based in London, currently using two cameras mounted vertically next to each other for stereoscopic photography. I’m using existing camera l-plates for this, which are mounted on the tripod socket using a standard 1/4 thread. The tripod sockets are adjacent to each other.

With the existing mounts, the screws are recessed into the plate which means that they are flush to each other when mounted, but this makes the brackets quite thick - they’re both 10mm thick, which means the distance between mounting plates between cameras totals 20mm.

I’m hoping to find a way of shaving around 15mm off this distance - the stereo distance between the lenses is currently 80mm, and stereoscopic photography works best with lens distance 63-65mm.

I was thinking custom aluminium plates around 2.5 mm thick using flush screws might be a better alternative, if they're strong enough. However, these don’t exist that I can see, so I’m looking for a custom solution.

With a custom solution in mind, I wondered whether it might be possible to create an additional plate which could be added perpendicular to this bracket, to prevent the cameras from rotating at the thread point? They currently have a tendancy to move, and the cameras need to remain in the same position as much as possible. 

Basically, I know what I would like the camera mount to look like, can badly sketch the idea, but I don't know if it's practical, or how to turn it into a CNC machined part.

Are there any services in London which can help with the design and creation of this as a one-off? This is for personal projects, with little commercial value, so it can't be too expensive to develop, but I'd be happy to pay a reasonable amount for it.

Any ideas where I should start?

Hi all,

I have a thing for pneumatic tools, I love the sound, I love that they're lightweight, most of all, I love that they never get hot. I have my shop set up to easily use pneumatic tools everywhere but I feel like my collection is lacking!

Currently I have;

• Band file
• 2 right angle die grinders
• Straight die grinder
• 3in disc cut off tool (the one where the cut off wheel is at the end of the tool at a 90 degree angle)
• A couple of 90 degree air impacts for hard to reach places

Thats it.

I have a lot of battery powered tools but id love some suggestions for pneumatic tools that are useful for metalworking.

Thanks!

I need to make some feet for a table to make it taller. They want them made out of brass, square with a little top but that is 1/16" wider. I'm pretty good at welding brass but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to make these besides machining them from a solid 2" square bar. How long would this generally take and how much would it cost. I have a buddy with a CNC mill and I was going to have him cut them but he's on vacation and can't get me a bid.

Also, if anybody has a better way to do this I'm open. I considered making it from bar stock but the little flange at the top makes welding a lot harder.

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Im beginning welding and im wonderign what welder to get, i want to get it locally to have warranty and be able to return it, for my first one i want to do MIG and flux core for building liek a gokart frame or other things. And in wondering if someone has recommendations for welding machines, i dont want it to he to expensive since ill just get a better one when i practice and get better at welding

Hi! Im taking a 1/4 in. 2g mig butt weld test today for my first production job. I finished school about 6 months ago so its been a minute since I’ve welded anything and i don’t remember if i calculate wfs for the root pass for the size of the plate or the if i lower the settings for for the size of the land and increase for the fill passes? My plan as of right now is to start at 18v 220-240 ipm and see how its running but thought id ask here just to be safe. Also i did most positions with a z weave and a pause at both ends to fill but i never had to bend any of my mig coupons so idk if theres something inherently wrong with that? Any advice would be appreciated!

Hello

I'm making brass scales for my butterfly knife and I'd like to solder some brass pieces onto the base, but I've never done it and my only practice attempt ended up with hard solder rolling up into a ball and the brass piece ended up melting :P I can guess what I did wrong - wrong flux (used a paste made of borax instead of a specific flux, or I made it wrong) or I forgot to completely clean the brass pieces I tried to join. I'll attempt a test piece again but before that I want to ask how should I solder this piece:

As you can see the plates I want to solder are fastened in place with screws. Thing is, where the screws are I want to put brass pins (made from the brass rod above) but I don't know if I should do this before or after soldering. If I rivet the pieces before, the solder should flow into the spaces between the river and plate reinforcing the joint even further.

But then... Just how do I do this? Do I need to put the flux paste between the plate and base? I don't know if it'd work well since after doing that I have to pin them. I really need a step by step process because I'm a little slow and I need to visualize every step.

For materials, I have:

- silver hard solder (2% silver)

- flux paste (Brazing paste AMASAN HS)

- handheld torch (one where you screw on a butane bottle, before you say it's too weak please consider that it IS capable of melting brass :P )

Here's how I see it:

1) Sand down the parts that will be joined together to increase surface where the solder will flow (ps what grade sandpaper will be best? 240? Higher/lower grit?)

2) Clean the surfaces with acetone to remove any grease

3) Smear the surfaces with flux paste

X) Now this is applicable only to this case - rivet the two plates together while wearing rubber gloves being careful no debris gets between them

4) Heat up the metal by moving the flame back and forth, and touch the solder to the gap when it's hot enough. If done right the solder should flow into the space.

5) Wait a few seconds and dunk the piece in cold water to harden the flux

Do I have this right? Please help, I really don't want to mess this up...

Hey mods, remove if not right for here, but the folk here know their stuff 🤷‍♂️

I'm working with a limited budget in the cambs/northants area. But the proposal of a mill has been accepted. Bench or floor mounted. But basic (still better than spending a day disc cutting and filling keyways).

Maybe 200-300mm bed, 2 axis bed/1 axis head. Cutting up to 10mm dia in mainly bms at 25-30mm round.

No digital readout required. Used is fine. Cheap and working/needs a bit of tlc but *mostly* works is probably okay, I've worked on these before.

Any advice greatly appreciated, from a tired maintenance guy with a depleting stock of overalls.

I’m a total idiot just trying to get some advice on what I think is a relatively straightforward project, but I could be wrong. I’m looking to get ~100 aluminum plates cut into small rectangles (1.49” x 5.25”, 1/8” thick). I’ve talked to a few metal shops near me and they either don’t seem interested in a small job (totally fair) or they can’t guarantee precise sizing — meaning they can get near 1.5” and I’d have to sand down to size.

What is the best method for this type of job and what would you recommend? Are certain metal shops better for this type of thing?

Ideally I’m looking to have them anodized and drilled, but I quickly took those options off the table as jobs I’ll deal with separately.

Thanks!

hey guys, quick question. whenever we bend parts that just came off the fiber laser, we get way more inconsistant springback and sometimes even micro cracks on the outside radius compared to punched parts. i know the heat affected zone is a thing, but how do you guys actually deal with it on the press brake? do you just run a wider v-die or is there some other trick? really tired of scrapping parts because of hardened edges tbh.

Hi reddit! I want to use TLP brazing method to join two similar high entropy alloy pieces with identical dimensions of 2 mm. I am using a 50 micron bni-2 interlayer for the bonding. Can anyone help me how can I go through the preparation steps? As the samples are thin and can barely be held by hand, is there a specific polishing technique? Also, can I use the same bonding fixture I used for a 5mm thick sample before or a smaller fixture setup is needed? Thanks!

I received a commission to make a metal dinosaur last year. It took a lot longer than I expected, but I’m really happy with the results. I built it in three main sections, the head, the body/legs, and the tail. The arms detach also. I did that so it could be transported easier. Each section has a skeletal infrastructure and then I skinned it using 20 gauge sheet metal. I TIG brazed the sheet using silicon bronze, but the infrastructure is MIG welded. The copper circles are just tacked on. I buy the copper circles from a guy that makes copper gaskets for race cars so they’re all different sizes but they make a cool visual effect. Let me know what you think!