Custom Shoe Anvils for Potter & Sons

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the shop we got a new project that we're starting on this is going to be a custom requested project for my friends trent and heath potter trenton and heath on youtube they are shoe cobblers had them in a couple of my videos where they have repaired my thorough good boots recently it was back in may my wife and i we took a trip up to ohio and along the way we stopped there and columbia tennessee and i paid a visit there with trenton and heath trent was not there that day it was the weekend but i i did get to meet heath spoke with him and when i was dropping my boots off he had a project which is kind of what you see in right here with these shoe anvils he asked me he says hey are you able to modify a couple of these guys here with a steel plate something a larger work surface instead of this actual work surface right here so we were checking it out and he says i just need some kind of steel plate that these you know the shank of it will fit down inside i don't know what you would call that you know the tube where this goes in it's got a taper and you know where they place the shoe or the boot on there to do their work on the soles they're doing their hammering so they seem to have a lot of applications where they're using these already because this is what they have you know these are available in a lot of places uh older antique type tools but they're just using the surface and they're putting soles such as a lot of they make a lot of sandals there so they're just using this as a flat work surface and that's what they would like is to have a couple of these i mean they have a lot of these so they would actually like to have a couple that instead of having this shoe pattern there they just wanted a nice flat work surface that they could work on so that's exactly what we're doing i had i had my uh the local welding shop cut these out for me these are eight inch by eight inch square and i chose 3 8 thick plate and all we're going to do is simply cut this off just right about in there we're just going to cut that off probably just going to use a cut off disc to uh or cut off wheel to cut these things off these are cast iron and once we cut them off we're going to put them on there i'm going to clean the plate get rid of the mill scale where we're going to bond it to there but we're going to i'm going to braise them on there okay since we're going with cast iron and steel a braise a good braise should have a very good strong bond and never have any worry of this thing coming off they're not going to be using this like a conventional animal so you know you don't have to don't don't sit there and think that they're going to be over here smashing this with hammers on the side they're just simply setting soles and whatever materials that they're using in the shop they just need a nice flat surface they can come up and do their work you know with their uh with their hammers there so decided that we're going to go ahead and make two of them right now i'm going to get these two made and send them down there and they're going to put them to work and see what they like and if they like these i've got two or more of these because i brought four of them home and if they if they work good we'll go ahead and make them two more so they'll have four of them in the shop there so that's the project that we're gonna get started on the day so it is time to go over there set these up in the vise or however we're gonna do it and get these guys cut off all right i think clamping in the vise is going to work we're going to use the six inch metabo and i thought since we've got quite a bit of cutting here to do i'm going to try two different wheels so i normally run these metabo cut-off discs i like them because they're really thin i think this is about as thin as you can get it they're 40 000 stick all right so a little bit a little bit less material that you're having to cut through whenever you're using this i've also got these osborne wheels this is the a60 they're a little bit thicker at 45 thousandths maybe a little bit newer than what these are right here i've had these for a long time but i don't know this one's also made in germany and i would just like to compare the cut quality or whatever and see if there's any difference so we'll use the metabo for one and use the osborne for the other one so all right there we go i got a little bit of a kerf on it so i'll just have to address it if i just go over the belt sander just try to square it up close as we can but that wasn't too bad at all that worked out pretty good probably can't hear me very well with the face shield down i'll try not to get so much of an angle on the next one there but go ahead and swap out this wheel we're going to take the metabo the matavo slicer off and we'll put the osborne on there we're going to use the osborne on this one here well all i got to say is both wheels worked and they both worked good so i don't know if one outperformed the other but they both get the job done [Music] we got these cleaned up good what you want to do anytime you're going to be welding some cast iron anything for that matter but especially cash is go ahead and clean the material good get rid of any oxidation or paint any crud that might be around the uh the weld zone the best thing to do is just take it down to bare metal either wire brush or use a grinder like i did flap disc to get sort of the scale off the outside of the cast iron there and get it down some clean fresh iron so and i just wanted to wire brush it to give it a nice clean look you know whenever we're done and i'll when we're done brazing you know i'll wire brush it to kind of get rid of any of the flux that's on there so we just scribed some center points on the plates right here so whenever we're done dressing the mill scale off i'll put those marks back on there so we can see where we need to go but we're also going to be marking these just kind of like so what i want to do is we're going to have to use an actual grinding wheel not the flap disc and i want to just cut the mill scale off that i don't want to grind into it remove a bunch of metal but that stuff is so hard that that a regular flap disc is going to have a hard time getting all that off because all you're really doing is polishing it so i'm just going to kind of do this right here just kind of get a general idea of where i want the mill scale to be removed from this isn't anything that's super critical and accurate but i don't want to be doing the whole thing so we'll just come in here and just kind of remove the mill scale from those areas using a grinding wheel so i'll put a used grinding wheel on here you already got a nice rounded edge on there this is where this is going to work better versus a brand new grinding ground wheel it's got a sharp corner on there i think that'll work good i'm going to go ahead and put the flat disc back on there now and just come in here and just polish that down a little bit that should be we're just about ready to get to our brazing so i'm set up over here on the positioner what i want to do is get it tacked in we're going to be using the tig welder there they everlast do a tig braise but only for tacking i want to get four tacks on there so that that thing will hold in place and not move around because i am going to braise it with the torch and a conventional brazing rod to finish it out i don't want to i don't want to tick braids the whole thing i'd rather do it with conventional methods because that's what i'm comfortable with i know it'll be a nice strong bond whenever we do that i'm not trying to fuse it like park welding we're just trying to melt every melt the brazing rod and it flow into both the steel and the cast iron this is what i'm doing here i'm just trying to get a little extra heat in there and let that grazing rod flow use the argon to help protect the coolant down there right at the end it should have very minimal lift on it yep very minimal so that's pretty good right there go on the back side and we'll do the two sides try to get a lot of the heat in the steel and then the brazing rod flows in there really well to it and then work it over against the cast iron once the cast iron gets hot that raisin rod flows over into it and bonds using the torch here to do the heating like you would with a with a settling torch just trying to get it hot [Applause] i've got the amperage range set so that i can engage it slowly and then press the pedal all the way down to be at my maximum heat that i want it to be at seems to be working pretty good like that [Applause] one reason to do that as well is so that you can just push it all the way down and fully support yourself instead of trying to stay on that balance position of that foot pedal i just put a piece of steel in the vise right there to get my heat range set the way i wanted and once i was there come over here and do this so there's our tig bray's tacked together part okay so i'm not concerned about whenever we braise this it's going to make this plate warp and draw that way not concerned about that because of the way this is being used it's not going to hurt one way or the other if it's completely flatter if it's got a little bit of a bow to it so we're just going to braise it let it do its thing because i want to set this up on some fire brick or some heat insulators there so that when i'm heating this up and doing the braze everything underneath it isn't sucking that heat directly out of it at the same time so i'm going to get it set up for brazing now bring it back when i'm ready all right we're ready to braise it i'm going to go ahead and braise it right here i actually like it up like this where i'm not having to like bend over to see it i don't have to bend over right here so we've got it on these insulating tiles right here so it should block the heat from going down what i'm going to do is go ahead and preheat this but i'm going to use the weed burner here the propane weed burner to try to get this thing nice and hot before we get in there start doing our brazing okay so here we go [Music] sometimes i don't want to light i guess you got to do it that way i was going to turn this on too we got our fume extractor we're going to be running that [Applause] so so so so i think we got her bonded in there good we've got our first one finished up i'm happy with the way it flowed in there i think that's going to be a nice strong bond on that i don't see that ever breaking loose i mean it's possible it could happen but i just don't think it's going to i think that's really good right there where it's at so i'm going to go ahead and just uh move this one off out of the way our little cheap weed burner did pretty good on heating that thing up all right so number two by the way these are heat insulating tiles that were used it was the same material the same tiles that were used on the uh spaceships for nasa pretty cool i had someone give me those i want to say i can't remember who it was now but there's one of them right there there's even some numbers some numbers on there uh sometimes i forget what it's called some type of uh silica is what it is but pretty cool it works great for stuff like this so all right we got number two done i think it uh it flowed in a little bit better for me i had a little bit better control over the filler rod on this one here but i've been looking at it all the way around i think we are bonded well both on the cast iron and the steel so those two guys are done other than cleaning it up i'm gonna let them cool and i want to knock all that flux off of there probably wire brush it make it look presentable other than that it's gonna be done all right guys this job is all finished up i went ahead and got them cleaned real well i used my needle scaler to help knock off all that glass like flux that dries up on onto the material there once it cools down so use a needle scaler to kind of get that cleaned up wire brush and wire brushed it all and that's where we're at right there okay i am happy with the results i i wish that i could have i wish that i would have made the uh you know the build up there a little bit prettier a little bit more uniform but that's a good job and it's going to hold it's going to do its job it's going to hold nice and strong and give them good service i i have no doubt there so now it's guaranteed that you you can go down to the comment section below especially after this video has been out for a little while and you're going to be reading or you will read a lot of the could have should have would have comments on other techniques that i should have used rather than brazing it's guaranteed it's going to be there because this any time i've i've learned doing youtube videos anytime you show brazing you have a lot of people that are a lot smarter than you and think that your technique that you're using your old school old world technique is uh is nowhere near superior as today's modern uh tig brazing techniques that some folks like to use so my opinion about brazing i believe that you get a superior bond whenever you're brazen like i showed you using an acetylene torch and a brazing rod and you do the proper cleaning of the material make sure you have no contaminants there you do your preheat and once you get in there and you start flowing this together you're going to get an excellent bond versus an arc weld that's what uh some people will say is that i should just use a nickel rod and weld it together it's just as strong well i i completely disagree with that a nickel rod if you if you're doing a nickel rod with arc welding it will hold and it would probably hold for what it is they're doing although i don't like the leverage this is going to be used as an anvil not a not a heavy duty anvil you're not over here like a blacksmith it's just going to be light duty leather work you know but with the leverage on there i believe that it's possible that if you arc welded it with a nickel rod you're going to have a potential of it cracking and breaking out of the cast iron when you're brazing that's different you're not you're not fusing into the metal you're only heating it up to a certain point where the material the brass the brazing material flows in there and bonds to both the cast and the steel so i just feel that brazing is going to give you a superior bond to dissimilar metals versus an arc welding procedure now you'll also have people that say you should have just uh you should have just tig braised it that's how we tacked it on there whenever if you might remember i have my tig torch there's going to be people thinking that i wasted my time doing this that should have just tick braced the whole thing that too i don't think is superior as superior as the true brazing method that i showed right here i think that um in today's day with social media and instagram there's a lot of hype out there and people feeling pressured that every single weld has to be absolutely beautiful that looks like stacked dimes and looks like a rainbow going across there and in reality this kind of work is performed every single day all over the world that you never see that that works it's tried and true and it gets the job done it gets people back in service that's the stuff that you don't see that's uh that's not out there on instagram but my opinion is that this is going to be a superior bonding procedure versus an arc weld whether you're going to use a tig a mig or a or a stick welder i wouldn't recommend mig anyway any way you look at it it's not going to hold very well it's not going to be near as strong so brazing it is for me that's what i like and you know what the proof is out there in the books if you pick up some books especially some of the older welding books and you read about this kind of stuff you'll you'll see for yourself now saying that i would love to see some testing you know somebody that has the equipment that you can actually put proper testing to uh somebody like maybe jason over a fireball tool you know maybe he can do something one day where he you know since he's a welder maybe he can do some brazing tig brazing and nickel rod welding for a piece of cast iron to steel and put it to a test and see what kind of pressure that it can withstand before it gets to a deal point you know that'd be an interesting test you'd like to see i i'd love to see proof of that you know rather than just people you know typing in a comment saying oh you should have done this it's stronger no i know it's strong and i know that this is going to work really well like i said this is not a this is not some heavy duty anvil that they're going gonna be hammering on with a ball-peen hammer and a piece of steel this is just simply a flat work surface is all it is so they can lay some leather up here um you know he showed me a sole for a sandal where they have to get in there and do some nailing on there and that's all they needed just a larger work surface for them to work on versus the other style like this right here this is what we cut off you know that's what he was showing me they just needed more work surface so what i had proposed when we talked about this is that uh he he said he'd like to have four of them i said well let's go ahead and make two and and prove it and make sure that it's going to work and that maybe you know this is the size that he told me he wanted eight inch by eight inch you know and i put some radiuses on there so i'm gonna send these up there so that they can uh put put some time on them and see if they like them and if they like that size if we need to modify it or whatever we certainly will and i've got two more of these we'll do the same thing i'll end up cutting them off and uh you know raising them to a piece of steel so y'all be sure to check out trenton and he's youtube channel potters and sons they are a couple of southern gentlemen really really good people and they do excellent work they have some great videos and we're all definitely learning a lot more about the shoe and boot repair business by watching some of their videos so i'm gonna get these boxed up and sent up there to tennessee and i hope you guys enjoyed the project and we'll see you later [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Abom79

Views: 98,679

Rating: 4.9000144 out of 5

Keywords: Abom79, collaboration, Trenton & heath, anvil, custom anvil, shoe anvil, brazing, preheating, weed burner, welding positioner, welding, Eutectic, AC Precision, Potter & Sons

Id: bXNh4XK4ucA

Length: 32min 55sec (1975 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021