Winged Dividers 2 - DF In The Shop

hi and welcome back today I'm going to be finishing up the wing dividers that I started last time the last bit of forging that I need to do to the legs is to forge weld a piece of hardenable Steel to the inside faces of each leg this is not absolutely necessary if you're just planning on using the dividers to measure things but if you plan on scribing lines onto steel then a hard tip is really necessary because otherwise you'll be sharpening the tips all the time I've already prepped everything and as you can see the piece that I'm laminating to the dividers is just sitting on top of the leg and I've managed to knock it a little bit as I was taking it out of the fire this isn't a problem if you've taken the time to heat up everything properly you will have the time to get the two pieces to stick you're not going to be able to do any heavy hammering but you will be able to get them to behave themselves until you can get them back in the fire and properly continue the forge welding process I found over the years that it's really important to just take your time and relax while your forage welding if the conditions are right and you've prepped everything correctly it's going to weld if you've missed something and something is not right then rushing it isn't going to solve anything it the Two Pieces Just are not going to weld so the first heat and this goes especially when I'm doing a drop Tong weld the first heat is always just to get the two pieces to stick together put them back in the fire and then continue forged welding I don't try to get everything done in one Heat and as you've just witnessed if the surfaces are clean and the flux is still active you can get the two pieces to stick at some pretty incredibly low temperatures at the end of each forged welding heat I will wire brush off all of the old flux that isn't active anymore and apply more flux you don't have to apply a lot once the two pieces are stuck together because you're at this point you're basically just trying to create a neat looking Weld and have everything close up around the edges so just apply a little bit of flux put it back in the fire and just repeat the process the next step is to pin both halves of the dividers together I start by drilling a hole that's slightly smaller than the pin that I'm going to be using and then I prep the pin by grinding a slight taper to the tip and I use that as a drift to make the hole exactly the right size the final step while the hinge area is still hot is to have a look and correct any Distortion that might have happened while you're drifting the hole on this pair of dividers the rivet head is actually going to be made of two pieces the pin is going to be riveted over a heavy washer that's going to be forming the bulk of the rivet head I usually make these washers by drilling a hole in the end of a round bar that's you know the right size for the hinge area that I'm working with but I don't have a bar that's big enough so I have one that's slightly smaller and I'm thinking I'm going to be able to just forge them flat and get them to spread out wide enough to cover the full width of the divider hinge area I have drilled a smaller hole in the end of the bar before cutting off the washers and I'm going to be using this hole basically just to keep the washer even as I'm forging it out I don't want to spread one side of the washer more than the other so if I keep that hole basically in the center of the washer everything is going to work out fine the last thing that I'll do is drill out the the hole to the final size here you can see that I'm ready to set the rivet so I've hammered the washers onto the end of the pin and I've also cut away the piece of metal that was joining the double leg side of the dividers the rivet's going to be holding everything together now so I don't need that link anymore so here you can clear really see that I have three separate legs and they're starting to look like a pair of dividers [Music] foreign the final shape of the rivet head is done by filing or grinding I prefer to file because you can get into tighter spaces and you can see what you're doing but if you're comfortable with a grinder you can certainly use it to take away 90 percent of the material that you need to remove to shape the rivet head once all the shaping is done to the rivet you will need to reheat the ends of the dividers to free up the hinge joint the riveting process would have locked everything together and by heating it and then slowly working the joint loose you'll be able to create a very smooth working hinge joint here I have a drawing that shows me the exact shape of the curved arm that I need to add to one of the divider legs the cross at the lower right is the actual center of the rivet and the center line of the three curved line is the middle of the slot that I'm going to be cutting out into the legs of the dividers so I need to shape a bar that fits in between these two outside lines I'm going to be using a piece of round bar to forge this leg so the first thing that I did was just bent it cold as closely as I can to match the pattern I just bent it at the Vise nothing complicated and then I'll be hammering the piece flat if I'm careful to hammer very evenly the overall shape of the piece won't change hardly at all this is a much simpler process than forging the piece flat first and then trying to bend it on edge to conform to the pattern [Music] foreign now that I have the forging done I can cool the piece off and go back to doing the final shaping cold so at this point your shape should be almost there and it's just a process of comparing it to the drawing and identifying areas that need to be corrected if the curve needs to be tightened up support the outside edges of the curve and hammer on the inside here I'm hammering into the dish of a swage block but you can support the outside edges with anything you can use the jaws of your Vise the open end of a large piece of pipe or you know a large chain link you know anything that supports the outside edges and gives you the room to hammer in the center if you need to open up the curve then you need to do the opposite you need to support the outside edges of the inside of the curve and Hammer the outside of the curved section to open it up then go back to the drawing see if there's another area that needs to be corrected and you just repeat the process as often as you need to get the curve as close as you can to the pattern it doesn't have to be machine Precision the basic Arc of the curve just has to be right this curve section needs to pass through both of the divider legs and I have that location marked out here and I'm just going to be drilling out and cutting away the material the way I always do and the final fitting will be done with a file so here I'm a little bit further along I have the curved section so it fits inside the dividers but now I need to make sure that it's in the correct location in the dividers so I have a smaller set of dividers set from the exact center of the pivot point to the exact center of the center line of this curved section if the curve section is in the correct location this set of dividers as I swing it out should follow the center line exactly if the dividers drift off of the center line of the curve section that I need to move the curve section over so that it aligns up with the dividers once I have these two arcs matching up perfectly I'm going to use a Sharpie to Mark the exact location of where this curve section needs to be in the dividers next I'm going to be using a pair of locking pliers to make sure that the curved section stays in the correct position next I'm going to clamp the pliers in the Vise so this allows me to work the dividers and make the final adjustments to the shape by opening and closing the legs I'm going to be able to identify areas that are binding against the curved section in these areas I may need to adjust the thickness of the curved section or I may need to adjust the outside edges of the curved section you should be able to see fine scratch lines on the surface of the metal that give you the location of where to file if those are hard to see you can use a marker pen and you know that'll help Define the location as well the important thing as always is to take your time don't remove too much material at once remember this is metal you know one thousandth of an inch might seem like a quarter of an inch so take your time and just remove what you need to to get the arms to work smoothly now that I'm done adjusting the curved section and I know that it's going to work in the dividers I'm ready to pin the curve section to one of the divider legs it's quite common in these type of dividers to have a large decorative nail head forged into the end of the curved section and that's what I'm working on here I'm actually forging down that short section of metal that I was hanging onto with the locking pliers the line that I had marked with a sharpie has been replaced with a couple of deep center punch marks that I can find when the metal is hot and I'm lining that up at the top of the Jaws and just upsetting the metal down into a huge mass that I could use to forge that nail head when I feel that I have enough material I slide the curve section back into the dividers and I use the actual dividers as a nail header to shape the head the final step is to actually pin the curve section to the dividers with a flush rivet [Music] I'm going to be making the screw that locks the divider settings out of a thicker piece of bar stock I'm going to start by cutting in a square pin that's a little bit larger than I need for the screw that I'm after I'm going to be using a pair of dial calipers that are locked into the setting that I need for the outside diameter of the stock for the thread that I'm cutting so I'm going to start by making sure that the square pin is exactly the right size and then from there I'm going to start knocking off the Four Corners to start creating an octagon and I'm going to make sure that those flat faces are also the exact right size and then from there it's pretty simple to just create a round pin that's very very close to what you need now that I have the pin threaded I'm going to go ahead and shape the rest of the screw I'm going to be leaving the screw on the bar for as long as possible that extra material really makes it easier to hang on to while it's in the vise I should be able to shape the entire profile of the screw with just a little tiny attachment point that I'm going to need to clean up when all is said and done so that's usually the best way to approach a small project like this this piece of sheet metal was just inserted under the piece to keep it from spinning around in the vice Jaws it can be anything this just happened to be what was handy I apologize for this shot it's a little confusing it does look like I'm threading the divider leg as well as the end of the curved section but I'm not the curve section just happens to be sitting just outside the divider leg but at this angle it does look like I'm threading both of them together foreign now that I have everything assembled and it's all working the way that it should I am going to take the time to grind everything to the final shape put a file finish on everything and then I'm going to throw it back in the fire to blacken the entire surface I'm going to be leaving the forged finish on the final piece but you will be able to see the distinctive file you know finish underneath the forge scale so when it's oiled up it'll look really great so at this point it's just a matter of systematically heating it up from one end to the other I am starting at the hinge end because I want to finish with the divider points because I need to heat treat those so they're going to be the last things out of the fire I'm using canola oil as quench when you're quenching an oil you have to be careful it cools things down so much slower than water you really have to leave it in the oil 10 times longer than you would with water to make sure that it's really cold and the heat treat is set once the points are fully hardened you'll see me turn the dividers around and quench the other end this is not part of the Heat Treating this is just to provide the oil finish that I want over the entire piece after I've wiped everything down I throw the dividers in an oven that's set to 440 degrees Fahrenheit that's my oven you you know yours may differ but basically you're looking for this ready Brown transferring to a peacock blue purple color that'll soften the tips enough to make them flexible so they'll take a lot of abuse but they're still going to hold up very well when you're scribing metal so the dividers I just finished are done they're totally ready to use this is just a little add-on that I've included to answer a couple of questions that I received from people who are wondering what stock size to use to make the smaller dividers that I used as a pattern for the larger dividers that I just finished so as usual I started off by doing the math and this time the math was too close to call uh you know a half inch bar which is what I assumed I would use to forge the smaller dividers was was right it was just the right amount of material if I could get all of the material but I know that as I'm cross painting I'm going to lose some to the length and I'm not going to have any practical way of gaining that back pushing it back where it belongs so I decided to just run a couple of test pieces to see if that was right or not and this is basically the results I don't need to forge out the entire you know set of dividers to be able to figure this out I just need to forge the two areas of concern so I'm forging the hinge area and the boss that I'm going to be using to Anchor the curved section by looking at those finished Dimensions it'll be obvious which bar I need to use so here are the two samples that I made up the one on the bottom is made with the half inch square bar and it's undersized I had to thin down the thickness of the material far too much to get the width that I needed for the hinge area so it's not going to work you would have enough material to make a simple pair of dividers using a lap joint but to create a three leafed design the way the original was it would be extremely difficult to cut that into this thin profile the other sample I made is with a 5 8 round bar which is from a volume point of view The Next Step Up in terms of common bar sizes that are available and the overall dimensions of this sample match up exactly with the measurements that you need to forge the sample pair dividers that I used as a model for this project so hopefully that answers your questions for now um I do plan on making a lot more dividers I really like dividers as I've probably mentioned before and this is a a pair that I needed right now so I just decided to film it as I was forging it it's not really a a a pattern video that you can go out and use to make an exact copy of what I made today it just basically gives you an idea of how I work through the process because this is the first pair of wing dividers that I've made so there were a few questions I needed to answer for myself I do plan on making other videos on making dividers and they will be more complete with dimensions and more specific instructions but this just gives you an idea of you know how I work through the process foreign hi I'm Dennis and thanks for watching if you have any questions you can contact me by using the email address that I have shown here if you like the channel and the work that I'm doing please consider becoming a patron every dollar you contribute will bring me one step closer to being able to produce videos full time

Channel: DF - In The Shop

Views: 2,997

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Id: 4whV7AwcsO0

Length: 26min 36sec (1596 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2022