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This Is Very Upsetting
May 20, 2010
3:46 am
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Grant
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Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away............I did "jobbing" forge work. Lots of industrial stuff mostly, rigging gear, hooks, shackles, big pear links formed from 4" 4140, all kind of cool stuff. Here's a series of pictures of the process we went through on some fairly big navy oval pin shackles.

These started out as 3" round 4140 and the middle was forged to 2-1/2 square and then the ends flattened.
[Image Can Not Be Found]

Next we upset the ends. This is my 125 ton hydraulic press that I designed to lay down for horizontal use. The grip dies are automatic, they slide on tapered ramps, later I installed stops so they could only slide so far.
[Image Can Not Be Found]
[Image Can Not Be Found]
[Image Can Not Be Found]
[Image Can Not Be Found]
Wow, that's a pretty cool sequence, eh?

The next picture shows the punch and die used to make the holes. That hole is 2-1/2 X 3". The two pins are for a 3/16 plate that goes on top of the eye to line up the punch for location and rotation.
[Image Can Not Be Found] The other piece is a just a bolster for barrel drifting the eyes.

[Image Can Not Be Found] Made pretty clean holes, didn't it? Maybe you can see that one eye is countersunk. This was done hot by pressing a tool into it, can't hardly use a drill-press for an oval countersink!

And here's a few of them all done. These were "non-fouling", that is, no pin sticking out to hang-up. Flush counter-sunk head and a 3/4 stainless taper pin cross-drilled in the other end.
[Image Can Not Be Found] Yeah, that's a Stanley 3/4" tape measure laying on there.

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

May 20, 2010
4:07 am
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Grant
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In the first picture above is a pin that I've just forged. It's a "dummy" pin for all the shackle pins. After a little finish shaping on the belt grinder, it was used to make the swage that produced all the pins. Then the dummy was cut in to three pieces. One was made into the punch by grinding a heavy bevel and welding it with H-13. Then it was hand ground to give a little back taper.

Another was heated and the ends quenched and it was upset down "a little" to make a slightly over-size barrel drift.

The last piece was used to make the counter-sink tool. After we had punched and drifted all the holes, I hand ground a counter sink into one part. Next I took that last piece of pin and cut it a little longer than the depth of the hole. I heated it and upset it inside the hole to make it the full size.This also upset a head that matched the countersink. Once it cooled it came right out of the hole.

That was then heat treated and used to hot counter-sink all the rest. I certainly thought it was all pretty cool.

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

May 20, 2010
11:05 am
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Danger
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Ok, now you done it, this has got to be my favorite site ever!!!

Michael Dillon
http://dillonforge.com/

May 20, 2010
3:25 pm
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David Browne
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Fascinating stuff Grant. I've wasted another 30 minutes gawking at these photos trying to wrap my brain around your madman contraptions. Thanks for opening up the vault.
-Dave

May 21, 2010
3:18 am
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Larry L
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How many of these did you build?

Do you still have one kicking around? You always make an extra right?

Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

May 21, 2010
3:04 pm
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JNewman
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Great pictures and description Grant. Did you have to get a lot of NDT work done on Rigging gear? Half the cost of 2 hooks I made about a year ago was getting NDT and destructive testing done, and extra charges from the heat treater for paperwork.

May 21, 2010
6:10 pm
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Grant
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My customers (two) for this kind of thing both had test pits that went several million pounds. ABS and USN certified. Usually test to 3X safe working load. Some things were X-ray some mag-particles. Everybody supplied certs, material, ME, heat treating, testing, etc. Yeah, I often supplied "forging certs" "forged in accordance with best shop practice and ABS procedures blah blah....". Nobody reads that stuff, just goes in a file, CYA stuff.

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

May 22, 2010
7:17 pm
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Grant
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Reminds me of a guy who was in the shop one time and was surprised that I was doing such things. His comment was, "Can't they just buy those"? Well actually, thats what they did. SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE still has to make them. And that somebody was me. Some people just don't understand how that stuff ends up on the shelf. They think everything is just on a shelf somewhere. Come to think of it, I know some purchasing agent who seem to believe that.

Knew a blacksmith who was a grown man before he knew milk really came from cows! He thought it was a manufactured product! I asked him if he had ever noticed the cows on the carton. He just said they put animals on all kinds of stuff and he figured it was the same. Easy for me I guess, I grew up on a farm.

“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot,
but then there are others who, with the help of their art and their intelligence,
transform a yellow spot into the sun.” ~ Pablo Picasso ~

May 23, 2010
1:06 am
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Paul Estes
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I saw an old video of what must have been early 20th century chain and anchor making. It was absolutely amazing to watch 50 + men working on it, i mean the boat must have been a huge naval vessel

June 22, 2010
2:58 am
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Randy
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Pretty incredible, Grant! I'd love to see a tour of your shop. Your knowledge of forging is truly precious.

Randy McDaniel
http://www.drgnfly4g.com

"We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing." Oliver Wendell Holmes

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