MAKING A GIANT VISE 3 of 4

welcome back to the shop everybody today i'm going to continue working on the blacksmith vice the first thing i need to do is get this blacksmith vise all welded out so we can get it sent to powder coat so let's tackle that right now [Music] i'm going to be welding with 1 16 diameter dual shield wire this is going to lay a big nice fat bead and hopefully get this project done and over with rather quickly i really like using dual shield wire because it's three times faster than stick welding and it's easy to weld in all positions all the metal needs to be blemish free if you want a good looking powder coat if you think the powder will hide scratches or defects it just won't do it it actually makes them more visible i really like the melted metal look so i round all the corners and it also keeps the coating from chipping off well guys i am so happy that that vice is on the trailer finished and ready to go to powder coat because i need a little bit of time to make some finishing components on this vise so the first thing on that list is going to be finishing the screw that we started in part two so let's start with the screw and get it ready to accept a handle so i want to keep my options open when it comes to the handle so i'm machining a universal attachment point that'll allow me to make changes later you never know what could be attached to the screw maybe a gear a gearbox a chain sprocket or even something hydraulic could be attached [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] well we have our screw all finished up so we have a universal end all machined into this spindle with a screw a key way now we can pretty much attach anything we want to the end of this but let's talk about handle design for a minute this is the fireball vise that we made last year around thanksgiving and it has a really comfortable center of screw to floor height of 37 inches that's easy to turn operate it's comfortable you don't have to reach so let's take a look at the big gigantic vise for a moment even though it's huge it has a much lower centerline screw height than a traditional bench does this sits at about 27 inches instead of the 37 inches which makes it really hard to operate because now i have to bend over to grab a traditional style handle and you have this weird rowing motion that just does not feel comfortable especially if you have to hold something in the end of the vise so you have this weird awkward movement the ergonomics of the vise are a little bit strange but i have a solution that i'd like to try that i think i can solve all of this at one time so let me show you what i'm looking for so where i'd like to start first is making a machined hub that's going to attach to our existing screw and then i'd like to put some spokes that's going to come off that hub to hold a ring i'd like to make them have an offset kind of like a cast part and then to really go over the top i'd like to find some wood i'd like the ring to look like a custom knife handle with some segmented pieces i think i'll give it a really elegant look take a look at this wheel well it's not the real wheel this is a prototype that i made out of wood i actually cut some spokes out of some two by fours on the water jet in that cool s-curve style that i'm looking for and i also made a walnut ring to kind of get the overall shape and feel and see if this is something that i'm looking for but i'm glad i made a wood prototype because this is going to be extremely challenging to build out of metal first things first the amount of wood that this wheel uses is a lot so choosing the wood carefully that i'm going to use that's going to be something i need to take into consideration so the other problem i noticed was getting all these spokes in the correct orientation and how i'm going to hold them there when i go to weld them to the hub on the real deal gluing wood to wood is one thing but when you're welding i need to figure out a good solution for that so that's going to be a little bit tricky and also how am i going to polish because i want these spokes to be really shiny this is gonna be a big project to build this wheel but in order to make this happen we're gonna have to start cutting some parts on the water jet so let's do that now [Music] take a look at how cool this ring is at the water jet cut for us now it's still cutting the spokes out so we'll check in with that when it's all done but we're going to make the most important decision on this whole project and that's selecting the wood that i'd like to wrap this ring with so let's check it out so this is a 16 inch diameter wheel and as you can see i don't have a piece of wood big enough to make a one piece solid wood grip around this whole piece so the challenge is how do i get smaller pieces to wrap around this and make it all look good so this is what i came up with and this is a termination block or a beauty piece of metal that are going to slip around the perimeter making now five sections on each side of the wheel as you guys know cutting anything arched or circular is a big waste of material because they just don't nest very well and having smaller pieces is really going to save on that material or this exotic wood that's pretty special and hard to come by so i have 25 contestants from all around the world and only one can be paired with the wheel so it's time for the birchler [Music] let's meet the contestants the first contestant is lignum vitae all the way from the caribbean it's known for being one of the hardest woods in the world which makes it perfect for turning into a wood wheel another wood that's beautiful is black palm all the way from tropical asia it's very straight grain and lack of growth rings will really make the curved scales hard to match up and look like one piece but it is a stunning looker the next contestant is desert ironwood native to the state of arizona and also one of the hardest woods found in the united states its wild fine grain structure makes this ideal but the small trunk size that the tree grows in makes it really hard to find large enough pieces making the trip all the way from texas is osage orange this is one tough hedge and is also really common for making bow staves so we know it can hold up to the abuse to be put on a wheel but the color is just a little bit too wild from the land down under is the rare red melee burl the random grain structure of the burl along with the hardness and the color makes this a fantastic choice last but not least catalogs from mexico with this beautiful reddish brown and almost black color make it a real looker also one of the hardest woods with this jenker rating of 3660 but it's just barely big enough to cut a knife scale out of and i'd hate to destroy this whole beautiful block for just a couple scales which would be a waste so with all of that out of the way who's the one that's gonna get married with the wheel red melee pearl [Music] [Applause] we're gonna have to wait a little bit for the vacuum chamber to do its thing and pull all the air out but in the meantime let's go work on the spokes that the water jet cut out for us these spokes have some really cool shape to them all the way from the s curve to the taper that i ground in with the go-kart grinder and in order to really see the contours i'd like to have them chrome or nickel plated and to get the best shine out of it they need to be smooth and scratch free i found this really cool abrasive assortment kit that ferd makes that makes these little polishing projects a breeze i threw the spokes into the tumbler to smooth out all the edges and curves [Music] let me show you what we got going on here this is kind of a tricky little thing to fabricate and keep perfect so i have the outside ring which is held in place by these inserted clamps with swivel bases to nail this divider ring for the wood so this outside ring is secure the next thing inside that is this machined water jet cut plate that's holding this pin centered so that this hub stays where it needs to be and all the spokes are at the correct height the hub's out the correct height because we have magnetic shims that are varying thickness if you guys don't know what magnetic shims are i'll put a link in the description below so everything's held in place at the correct height it's secure it's time to weld [Music] i really like the way this wheel has been fabricated it turned out awfully straight so i'm glad i really fixtured it nice and tight and it's looking well very wheel like now but what i do want to do is get this wood on here because i'm really anxious to see what it's going to look like so let's pull it out of the oven because it should be cured by now and get it installed on the wheel this wheel is like building five knife handles all at the same time i really didn't have to stabilize the wood but it gives me a peace of mind that they're gonna last a lifetime and i know it can take the abuse if i accidentally hit it with a hammer [Music] [Music] oh [Music] so i got the wheel all fabricated up and it looks amazing but i think to take it up that notch i want to have it nickel plated and i did some phone calling around and my local plater here is about three weeks out and that's just not gonna cut it so i put together this diy home brew nickel plating the first thing you do is pour vinegar into a large container and then you sprinkle in some salt to help with the electricity basically you want to saturate the solution with nickel and that takes about a day or two to make this and then when you're ready to start nickel plating apart you need to clean it really well in some soap and water add it to the solution i added a little bit of heat with a engine block heater from auto parts store and then added some aquarium bubblers to help mix the whole solution together and keep things turning and then i added about two and a half to five volts of power coming in through the nickel anode and then negatively charging the part and attracting all the nickel in the solution hopefully this should take about an hour we'll see and hopefully have a nickel plated part and it's going to be a really thin coating probably only about less than a thousandth of an inch thick but i think it's going to add some brightness to the overall part and hopefully maybe even give it some rust protection so as we're waiting for this nickel plating to do its thing i say we make a cool handle for the jack [Music] i think it'd be fun to make a knob using the shaper chips that came off of the machining of the jaw so i mixed up some two-part epoxy through my shaper chips into a silicone mold and then inserted into a pressure pot that way the resin turns out crystal clear this usually takes about two hours to demold and now i have a blank ready to be turned whenever i'm ready to go so let's turn it on the lathe and see what we can do to make this thing look [Music] amazing [Music] i find it easier to turn the knob when it's glued to the shaft so some uv resin helps glue it into place [Music] and then the key to getting a crystal clear finished product is sand through the grits 400 all the way up to 1200 and then a really good polishing on a buffing wheel i know a lot of you guys love the shaper chips so i've made them available on the fireball tool website that way you guys could have a souvenir from the big vise project or use them in your own castings or maker [Music] projects i'd like to replace this valve with something a little bit nicer looking and a little bit easier to use so let's do that too [Music] [Music] i want the handle to look like it grew right out of the side of the valve so i'm hiding the threads with a counter bore to make it look nice and clean and [Music] simple [Music] [Applause] so we got one knob that looks really classy i like that and then we have our pusher stick that looks pretty cool i made it a little bit longer to give me a little more leverage that looks pretty cool in there too so in order to get this lever here to end right where i wanted to i just took the end of it and i filed this little nipple to where it stopped and all this nipple is doing is pushing on a ball that's allowing the fluid to come back and the fluid goes around the ball and around the stem so by changing the length of this you have enough threads here to do that so that's how you control the orientation of the lever arm being that there's only one hole in it so now that we have both handles done it turned out amazing i think the only thing left to do is finish up that wheel so let's get it out of nickel plating [Music] so i'm using this cool epoxy from 3m that i use to assemble golf clubs if it can hold up to that kind of abuse it will definitely work on a wheel when it sees vibration from the hammering and any kind of other abuse that i throw at it look how wild this wheel turned out this thing is just off the charts ridiculous who would ever put something this nice on a big giant blacksmith vise it looks like it belongs on a luxury yacht but overall i'm so happy with the way this turned out it exceeds all my expectations the nickel plating whoa what do i even start about that for what kind of results we got on this wheel with a diy set up here in this shop it's fabulous it polishes up beautifully it looks great combined with the red melee burl wood that we have on here and the brass screws that hold everything together it just looks really wild this thing is heavy it's going to perform like a flywheel when we mount it on the vise going to look fabulous with the powder coat when we get the vise back and i cannot wait to see it on there so hopefully you guys will join me when we mount this wheel on the vise and we start crushing stuff and i'll see you guys there the pressure pro the pressure plot uh the pressure pro of the pressure proc so after some careful thought into rusty rusty krusty

Channel: Fireball Tool

Views: 545,189

Keywords: fireball, tool, Fireball tool, Welding, Hand wheel, handwheel, burl wood, burl, lignum vitae, katalox, osage orange, desert ironwood, red mallee burl, black palm, exotic wood, wood working, knife scales, resin casting, shaper chips, nickel plating, crome plating, diy nickel plating, lathe, milling maching, bandsaw, hardwood, vise design, best vise, huge vise, vise crusher, blacksmith vise

Id: Ro59_0WlGM8

Length: 20min 48sec (1248 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020