Old car parts?

I've been working on an old Ford Model T. Actually it was way I took the plunge into metal casting. Now I find myself in need of a aux trans mount so I'm trying some apprentice level black smithing. Yes, I know it would be a trivial thing to plasma cut these parts out of a small sheet of 3/16" plate but I'm keeping the vibe of 2 guys in a garage in the 1940's ...so heat it an beat rules.

The Car


The bracket will be u shaped and sit in the u shape of the frame rails. The trans will be resting on a 2"x 1" rubber doughnut .

The drawing.


I started with 1 1/2" 3/16" bar stock a oxy torch and a bit of light/mine gauge rail track. Alot of work and didn't get too far.



I borrowed a proper anvil and massive stump from my father (the anvil is the light part!!)


A bit of work later.


I switched out the torch for my metal melting furnace turned back about as low as I could keep her running. But I'm having a bit of trouble fitting the ends into the furnace now that they are built. I might need to knock together a smallish forge to finish these off. I'm also going to see if I can knock out a pair of tongs to load ingots into the furnace. The rubber handle on my slip joint plies i have been using will thank me
I'm sure that a real smith could have this knocked out in an hour versus the 3-5 I already have into it .... but I'm no more a smith than I am a welder (I'm amazing with a grinder!!)
So let the flames burn.

CBB

 

Dang! You need a forge. But you're getting there.



I made these gosh awful tongs with the hinge point way back so I can pick up from zero to three inch material with one hand.



Sorry I thought it showed the handles but you can get the idea. I only have a coal forge.

 

Poor jeff got a fast lesson in heat loss. I thought you would drag your vise out to the stump seeing it's NOT BOLTED DOWN!

 

So my Furnace burner is a forced air propane style as it was easy to build. I'm thinking that the 2" burner is a bit of over kill for a forge. (I had the blower running as low as i could and keep it lite and it still got way too hot. I'm pretty sure I could have forge welded with 10-15 mins of soak). What's a good build of an NA burner in the 3/4" to 1" out there that I can look at? I'm guessing that style would be the most adjustable as it's what I've seen on most gas blacksmith forges.

Thanks,
CBB

 

2inch is overkill for a forge. There are lots of slick forge ideas over at iforgeiron.com, I've said this before somewhere, just do not mention that you melt metal to that gang.
I too had to use my furnace to bend some 1/4" stock to make a leg for my forge. This forge is a sweetheart and runs on household natural gas.
If I built another, I would do things differently. I would cast flat mizzou blocks 1" thick that could be changed out. I've thought about sticking
this thing up on craigslist, but selling this for a few hundred bucks isn't worth the liability.

 

Nice forge!!

If you need flat why not use fire brick, and coated with satanite for a hearth brick?

 

I have 10 or so Fire bricks and 10#s of satanite. Can I getaway with making a sheet metal shell and using the bricks covered in satanite? I think I'm going to try an NA burner like the one OCD built recently here.

CBB

 

Absolutely CBB.. That will work fine. Check out glens forge in Thailand. Basically what you are talking about.

 

The bricks I have are the hard kind that are 1/2 the thickness of the IFB Glen uses. Is that going to be an issue? I'm not sure how much you want a forge to insulate. In our furnaces we try to run that line of rugged but very insulated to turn the least amount of fuel into the most amount of heat. But forges seem to be mostly mass and a little heat.
CBB

 

I don't think it will matter much. If you have some kaowool, line it with an inch under your brick and I bet it will up your efficiency.
Mine is 2inches of kaowool with about an inch or so of mizzou. I was just trying to burn up some left over materials I had. So I pretty much have zero dollars in it after I built my furnace.

 

So I got this far knocking together a small forge out of stuff I had on hand.

I have kaowool under the bricks. But i didn't have a 1 1/4" holes saw. had I realized i didn't have the right hole saw I could have cut out the burner tube hole before I welded it all up. But oh well. Because I live in the middle of nowhere and it's 7:30PM on a Sunday nothing's open to pick one up. I'll grab one at lunch Monday and see if I can get a little further along this week. The forge has a 9" x9"x 4.5" interior hopefully that will do what I need.
CBB

 

Perfect! Glen would be proud!

Have ya got some way to stack some fire bricks at both ends to help keep the heat in? I used some 1/4" plate as doors on mine. Yeah it scales over and won't last forever, but helps keep the heat in and was free.

 

On Lunch yesterday I picked up a 1 1/2" hole saw... best fit i could find. Knocked a hole in the top for the burner. Also added some angle iron tabs with nuts to hold the burner in place. I also finished up some 2" x 2" angle iron shelves for the front and back. This way I can set bricks or bits of metal I need to preheat on them.


I gave the whole thing a quick non-chlorinated brake cleaner bath, followed by a quick few coats of BBQ grill paint.



I still need to satinite the inside and finish up a burner. But we're getting there. I think I'm busy every night and day for the next two weeks so this might be a hurry up and wait kind of project

CBB

 

It's looking like a proper forge complete with a porch on the front now!
My cheapest burner could work a treat for something like this. The downside is the airflow isn't adjustable. A simple washer spinning on a rod would solve that. There is a thousand easy burners you can bang together in an hour or two with 20bucks of parts from the homeless depot. Now is the time to use that shitty low pressure regulator that lowes sells for 24bucks. The regulator is fine for a forge, my burner not so much. http://forums.thehomefoundry.org/index.php?threads/cheapest-pot-burner.323/

 

I was away last week on a family vacation. I've gotta get slots cut in the sides of my burner tube this week so I can test the little forge out this weekend. I was looking at the burner tube last night thinking how do I cut 3/4" slots 3 1/2" long in it? grinder and cutoff wheel is too big, dremel and cutoff wheel will take all day.... Then I remembered I bought a mill!!! so I'm going to set it up on the old girl and give it a shot. First job on the mill since I brought it home! I'll get some pics and update when I get it done.

CBB

 

A 3/4" end mill might just work.

 

So after double checking OCD's build I found that it should be a 1/2" slot 3" long.

So I setup the old mill and got on it.

Turns out the only 1/2" mill I had was a bit dull. So fresh off the mill it looked like an angry beaver gnawed it's way out of the pipe 4 times
I'm not posting a picture of that disaster! It will give you all nightmares!!
But after a little massage with the grinder and a flap disc it came out pretty ok.

That's as far as I got on it. I need to get a adjustable cover made and finish drilling the rest of the holes in the burner tube. Hopefully I can get int together this weekend and get this part hammered out! My GF is out of town next week so maybe I will have some extra time to spend in the shop. This week all my extra time seems to have been spent fixing lawn mowers. For something that only runs a few hours a weeks they sure get beat up!

CBB

 

Is your cover going to be a sleeve? I made a sleeve with a lock screw and figured out I never need to lock it, even though my burner is angled down it never moves.