home made tools and equipment...

firefox on the laptop and on the mobile resizes large pix to viewable screen area... i heart that option

 

Shop sized powdercoat oven to do small engine parts.
A oil pan would not fit, and had to do valve covers one at a time.. and I am impatient..

SO, I cut the back out of oven, extended it back 10 more inches, welded the old back onto the rear, now is "DEEP THROAT" enough to swallow a oil pan and ask for more.. or a set of valve covers, timing cover and pulleys.. I wrapped the box with "cer-wool" is what looks like comes in them ovens.. or buy two ovens and weld them together and put the insulation back on. I seem to do everything the hard way.

Powder coating for the uninitiated is like baking cookies.. you get the oven hot, pre heat up the parts, take them out, spray them with powder till they look like velvet, then put them back into the oven at (mostly 400 degrees) and "time" after the flow out, (gets wet and shiny) and the polymer sets to become a very hard coating you can't get off even if you want to easily. It just shoots clean with a water hose.. easy to take care of. Resists chips and scratches when done right.

Eastwood and other suppliers have cheap pc guns.. mine is a puffer, a fan, no air hose, and a cup to put the powder, a high voltage clip to "static cling" the dust to the part..

THIS is for a V8-sized parts.. if you got a six cylinder or tinker with them they are longer..

THANKS HAMB for the thread that I sat here and read for a hour now..

 

The Wooden Disc sander is neat.
Look under Popular Mechanics google books, the issues from the 40s,50s and 60s have all kinds of homemade power tools. You can sample the issues and see everything you need to know.




Ago

 

Nice work looks almost too good to use! only kidding!

I've just been lent the 1947 book "Popular Mechanics FARM mANUAL" it could have very easily appeared in those pages, by the way the book is a superb example of how to make do and mend and how to "recycle efficiently", (perhaps the buzz word in today's society, traditional rodders are the ultimate in recyclers! ).

 

Wooden Sander
Stumpjumper, you are correct, the plan was in SOSS as a reprint of a 1944 Popular Mechanics plan. I figured that the first one was built in 1942 maybe late, the plan was submitted to the magazine in 1943 and it found it way into the magizine by early 1944. Becides that I was born in 1942, my Dad made stuff like this, he was a millwright and always cobled this and that together.

Thank you to all for your kind comments, by Sat. evening it will have been raffled off.

 

What are those wheels from?? Nice and simple, the way I like it.

 

from the looks of it, those are just bearings

 

Yep. He said they were bearings.

 

We need part numbers for those bearings! (Or at least what they are and where someone might buy them?)

 

You are obviously no stranger to working with timber. Looks well constructed and solid. Really nice touch using slotted screws and keeping the heads in alignment. Also the linen coated power lead blends right in with your theme. If you can work sheetmetal like this, then you've got it made!
RodL

 

That wooden disk sander is beautiful. I'd put it on a shelf in my living room, not out in my dirty old garage.

 

Here's my effort. I like flake and after seeing quite a few folk have dry flaked i thought i'd give it a go with whats around and cheap. Using my 25ltr compressor to blast the flake and relying on rattle cans to do the paint and clear.

The gun is used from an old cheap sand blasting kit. Using the smallest nozzle (of 3 supplied) for this grade of flake. Just cut the rubber pipe off 3" from the end of the original hose and used the pick up pipe. An old pickle jar holds plenty of flake and has a hole drilled in the top with a rubber bunk tightly holding the pick-up.

After messing about with it and adjusting the pressure i can get a really good coat of flake out of the gun. Took some fine wet sanding and alot of clear but for a home job, hit with rattle cans i'm happy.

The said flake gun



Crap picture but gives you an idea

 

My top roller is just a "forged" caster from grainger.com. Was $119 when I bought it.. have to be careful here.. cause real good ones from Hoosier wheels are not much more than that. You can buy rollers one at a time if you like.
Rollers with flats versus rollers with true curve.. a home made frame that is not as stiff as a factory or professional made one has trouble with the flats, when the frame flexes, the flats come out of alignment and the flat edge creases the panel you are trying to shape. It is harder to use a roller with a true radius.. it wants to put ridges in the panel at higher pressures..

So keep that in mind as you build you one.. My 3rd one I built works. The other two got gave away.

A toy, a english wheel top roller made from a earth mover bearing, probably cost several thousand dollars.. but was gave to me by a biker buddy from new York,

Most used tool in shop
A C-frame press.. lower bed slides from end to end, has a e-wheel top adjustor on one end, has a yoke to put rollers on bottom.. makes a fair e-wheel.. has on the other end a Brake pod off a semi truck to push things.. and in the middle is the normal press area.. thou I have used the screw press-ewheel adjustor as a bushing press on a antique harley case.
The thing with the orange urethane wheel is a tipping roller, to break the edge on sheetmetal for a flange..
That tubing bender hanging there.. I think it has to move.. It pivots down out of the way, but I got a job that it will be in the way of..
(it's been painted since the photo)

Rock on..,.,,

 

nice.still working on my bargain bin e-wheel/bead roller setup.hopefully another month it will be up and running.

 

My Gingery Forge



Pulling out the "crucible"



Making the pour



A fresh (warm) casting and a finished piece thrown in for comparison.

It isn't billet. It's cast.

 

A couple of shots of the tubing bender I built:



I even painted it HF orange so it would feel at home with the rest of my tools.




I have used it to build one roll cage so far.

--louis

 

Louis, looks nice, where did you get the dies?

 

They are Pro Tool dies.

Thanks,

--louis

 

Great HAMB thread on casting and metal working:

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=464599

 

No pics (yet), but I just finished up an adaptor for using a harmonic balancer puller/installer to remove control arm bushings. Worked like a CHAMP. Pretty proud of this one!

I used some heavy wall 2 1/2" tubing and a 1/2" plate "cap" to make the "receiver" end. Just need to drill a hole big enough to get the puller arbor through so the thrust bearing rests on the plate. Then I used an old ARP 7/16 main stud to run through the hole in the bushing, and a thick crank bolt washer as the driver. Just tighten it up like you would pulling a balancer off , and wait for the BANG.

 

Here is one that I kind of forgot about until I was looking at pictures on my pc. I needed a die for my bender and could not wait until one was shipped to me. I made a simple radius cutter out of 97 Jeep Wrangler rear shock mount. You cant really see it well in the picture, but the aluminum used to be on old wheel that was melted down and poured into a coffee can.

 

I'll jump in and take the liberty of responding to this under the assumption that the OP might not see it:

The forge is one of several tools that David Gingery has designed for metalworking, and published booklets w/ detailed instructions for each of them. His "Metal Shop from Scrap" series includes:
1. The Charcoal Foundry
2. The Metal Lathe
3. The Metal Shaper
4. The Milling Machine
5. The Drill Press
6. The Dividing Head and Deluxe Accessories
7. The Sheet Metal Brake

They were originally published in the 70s and 80s. Not sure where you'd get 'em now, but I'd start searching online for anyone who might carry NOS books. I used to get a mailer every other month or so from an outfit that specialized in old publications -- I mean really old, as in from the turn of the last century (1900s), and I did pick up a lot of them, 'cause that stuff fascinates me. (I'm still blacksmithing using a coal forge, have a 50 yr old manual gear-change lathe, grind all my own tools bits, and own the trip hammer (25# Little Giant) that was the first one shipped west of the Mississippi in 1906, etc.)

Hope that helps a little,
Mike

 

waitin' to see those HF bead roller dies, amigo...

Mike

 

Appears they are all available on Amazon, most look to be available new, several other titles by him as well.

 

Actually you can still get them from

http://www.gingerybooks.com/

 

Yeah Gingery stuff is cool but the mother lode of this kind of stuff is here at Lindsay books:

http://www.lindsaybks.com/

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/index.html

 

Yep -- that's the outfit that had the mailer that I used to get years back. And you're right -- it is the mother lode!

 

Header flange die, for 304 SS 16g. tubing. I hope the photos explain most of it. machined a tapered die on a my lathe minus the the thickness of the tubing. Then milled the sides down, minus the thickness of tubing. Then sanded to blend the rest. works great doesn't split the tubing.


Ago

 

OK -- that's pretty slick. Assume you machined the header plate (not too familiar w/ CNC, but would think that such is req'd for a plate like that), and that you have a tubing bender to finish the rest of the job? Pretty sweet if you do!!!