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You Can't Call Me Shiftless any more!
July 27, 2010
4:03 am
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Grant
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I've been doing these after-market shifter handles for a good many years. Was I the low bidder? No, I was the highest! These, of course, end up being chrome plated. That means they have to be polished. Rather than looking at a forge job, it can often be worthwhile to look at the whole picture.

Many people were well able to throw a hot slug in a die and give the customer a forging from which their part could be found by grinding and polishing. I realized that the grinding and polishing was a major part of the expense. As the part had the usual shape and needed to be 1/4 X 1 or so at the bottom I could see that it could be made from a 5/8 round by flattened in a taper from one end to the other. I made them a sample "warm" forged from cold drawn material. Warm forging to me is a dull red (below scaling heat). They were blown away! No grinding and a minimum of polishing!

Pretty hard to grind and polish something like this any way other than by hand. With a rough forging it never comes out perfect and after chrome plating any imperfection shows up.

After I came up with this and had moved to the country they tried to get someone else to do it the same way. That sample is in some of the pictures.

[Image Can Not Be Found]
This is a couple hundred out of the 1000 I recently did. The last couple inches is scaled, but that's just where it bolts to the linkage. Before I had induction, I ran them in a gas forge with a yellow flame.

[Image Can Not Be Found]
The sample on the left was done by another shop.

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They even managed to burn the threads!

[Image Can Not Be Found]

Well, I gotta tell ya the details on this. I get $15.00 each for these. A hungry machine shop bought the material, sawed it, turned and threaded the end and delivered them to me for $4.85 each. For my $10.15 I bend them in the middle to 27 degrees and flatten them ( in a die that was paid for by the customer). Took 3 days to do this job start to finish. Over $10,000.00 in my pocket AND the customer is thrilled! AND I collected IN ADVANCE. Don't talk to me about "shop rate".

“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 ~

July 27, 2010
1:44 pm
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Larry L
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Thats a great job and your lucky to have it Grant... Thats more money than my shop has brought in in the last three months... At this point "shop rate" sounds pretty good to me:inlove:

Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

July 27, 2010
4:36 pm
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Grant
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"Lucky"? Depends on your definition of Luck. Best one I ever heard: "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity"!

“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 ~

July 27, 2010
6:18 pm
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JNewman
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Larry isn't lucky kind of like "I would give anything to have a shop like yours"

So Grant you made an original sample for your customer. Did you just make that using open dies and a flatter and or anvil? I am assuming the customer did not want to pay for tooling before they got a sample.

How do you find customers like this, or did they find you? I can understand them calling the drop forging shops, but what made them go to an open die shop, or were you doing drop forging as well at the time?

July 27, 2010
7:22 pm
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Grant
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Did the sample in a press with flat dies and stop blocks to get the angle. Yeah, I was listed under "forging" in the yellow pages. The customer was local and he was hoping he could get a "little" better finish to save on grinding was why he was shopping it. He was not prepared for the sort of finish I showed him. Probably would have paid more, it's just one small part in a package. It actually is called "warm forging" in industry, engineers like to call it "sub-critical plastic deformation".

I actually tried to do it cold, but my ancient 500 ton press was groaning getting it down to .300 on the end and it needs to be .250. That's when I went to "warm". With the 500 we ran them even cooler than I do now. They were effen gorgeous! I've always harbored some concerns that the blue area is actually splitting in the core.

Finding jobs like this can be hard, but over the course of 35 years I've had the good, bad and the ugly. Nowadays I can "cherry pick" and I know where the work can be found.

“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 ~

July 27, 2010
7:41 pm
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Grant
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I used to do a lot of copper-nickle forging for Alaskan Copper. A great deal of the fittings they had made were over my capacity. They had them forged by a number of large drop forge shop and they were usually so C & P (cooked and pitted) that they were desperate for a quality job. They ended up getting them forged in Tiawan. NOT for the price, but for the quality! That's when I knew we were screwed.

Many of their fitting were just machined from bar. But they couldn't carry every possible size for that purpose in horribly expensive material. For some of the fittings I could make a rather simple upset forging that saved them a lot of material and machining.

Sometimes they had a fitting that needed a portion that was 3-1/8 diameter and all they had was 3" and 4" in stock. It was a simple matter to make a hole in a block with a portion 3-3/16 diameter, drop a taller 3" slug in and whomp it down. I based my pricing on their material savings. And the time saved in machining made it worth their while. Sometimes I would punch some of the center to save even more material and machining. Like hot punching, but captive in a bolster so it grew in length. The more metal I could displace from where it wasn't needed to where it was just put more coins in my pocket and saved them machining. At today's prices, if I could save them 2 pounds that could easily sell for $20.00!

“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 ~

July 27, 2010
10:09 pm
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Grant
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Just a little "oh, by the way": The shop that did the machining on the copper-nickle parts also sawed the slugs. One night when he was staying late to cut a bunch of slugs, he broke his last bi-metal blade. Well, he had a couple old carbon steel blades so he thought he might get a few more parts cut for how ever long they lased. They cut like crazy! Way better than the bi-metal blades! I don't have a really good explanation, just thought it was interesting.

“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 ~

July 28, 2010
4:15 am
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JNewman
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Good to see jobs like that that where you can produce a better product than the customer was getting.

Grant;1498 wrote: I've always harbored some concerns that the blue area is actually splitting in the core.

Have you ever tried cutting a couple of them up to look for any cracking?

July 28, 2010
4:50 am
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Larry L
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Ok Lucky was a poor choice of words... What I should have said was dang Grant I wish I had that job

Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

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