"Dhem's Random Projects"

[dhem]

Got some stuff done today. Of course no one around here had NPT weld bungs in stock so I just decided to make my own instead. Got a cast iron 1" NPT threaded pipe cap from Ace Hardware. I cut the top off via hacksaw and grinded all the ridges/letters of it so I could chuck it in my Taig lathe. Took a while to machine it true since it was so out of round and the Taig isn't a very rigid machine. Got it done though:











Next up was cutting the hole in the dome cap. I used an under sized hole saw and my Milwaukee magnum hand drill:





It took quite a bit of hand filing to get it out to the right diameter:







Since the bung is cast iron it's 100% brazed, no welding. I'm not really happy with the bead consistency, but it'll be underneath the stand out of view so meh. It was hard not to overheat since there's not much metal there:

[dhem]

Also took a pic today of something I did last summer. I use a Club in my truck, the type that locks under the brake/clutch arm. The stupid handle on the chrome shaft was always coming loose and would rotate around. So I grinded off as much chrome in the weld area as possible and laid a bead of 308L around it. Problem solved:

[dhem]

I've decided to enter this stand into the Miller Project Challenge under the moderate class. Gotta thank forum member soutthpaw for the heads up on this. The deadline is Aug 10th, so I need to hustle a bit if I'm going to finish in time.

On that note, I worked on it for a few hours today after class. First up was tacking the end cap onto the pipe. I hadn't realized just how much the 6-5/8" pipe had distorted when I welded the three legs on. Would probably have been better to weld the cap on first then weld the legs on. Either way, after grinding a bevel on the cap flange I centered it as best I could and spaced it out a bit using some wire feed wire for better penetration:







Next up was the brazing pass. Not going to lie, didn't really go as well as I would have liked. Running a bronze bead on a flat surface is a lot harder to control than on a fillet. It's also hard to start a new bead at the end of a previous one and have it be a seamless transition. You can see every place where I started brazing and went for about 2". Oh well, just need more practice:






After wire wheeling the whole thing I'm thinking about doing a fume bluing process. I need to read more about it, but it would be nice to have the steel become dark. The contrast of that against the brazing would be pretty cool looking I think.

[strube1369]

Where in the heck did ya get all those dimes? Really nice work man...

[dhem]

Thank you.

[DieselDon16]

Excellent Craftmenship. Your work looks great! Where do I sign up for a job like this? lol

[DieselDon16]

When it comes to TIG Welding, You are the best I ever seen. (Im looking at your pictures and smiling) Really! Really! Nice Work.

[Taiden]

Perfect practice makes perfect it seems!

[dhem]

Thanks guys, that made my day.

So I went and picked up some Perma Blue gun blueing paste today. The helpful guy at the store recommended the paste style since it's easier to control over large areas. I've never blued something before so of course I wanted to do a test run before doing the stand. So I grabbed the perfect test piece off my shelf that I did a while back, remember this:






And 45 minutes later here we go:






This is after just a single application of the paste. I polished it up a bit with 000 steel wool and applied a light coat of gun oil. I'd like to go a bit darker still honestly though. This weekend I want to braze up another tester piece and try for a much darker finish. So far so good.

[killdozerd11]

You are very good at what you are doing

A better bluing is

Force Formula 44-40 Bluing

I used that when i did touch up work on repairs / modification

[DieselDon16]

His Welds Are Better Than Sex!!

[dhem]

Thanks for the heads up. Force Formula 44-40 Bluing looks like a high quality product, but the price for the larger bottle size I'd need is a bit much for my budget right now. Do you have any experience with their Oxpho Blue line?

[killdozerd11]

I have heard of it but never tried it myself

A friend of mine another gunsmith gave me some of the force 44-40 he had left and i used it ever since

I had tried the casey's and was not happy with the results

[dhem]

I did some reading and it looks like the Oxpho Blue creme works rather well. Also the price is excellent so I just ordered a 16oz of it as well as a gallon of the Rust Release from www.brownells.com

[dhem]

Got some more blued steel brazing pics for you guys tonight. After lab I whipped up a new tester from scrap to see how dark I could get the Perma Blue to be. To give scale the plate is 1/4" thick. First is naked:






And this is after two complete Perma Blue application cycles:







I'm interested in seeing how different the Oxpho will be. I've read that it will actually be more of a blue instead of the charcoal gray that this stuff is. We shall see.

[killdozerd11]

I can tell you if you talked to the people at brownells

They wont steer you wrong i have dealt with them for years

I talked to a friend of mine and he says it's great stuff he uses it also

[dhem]

The Oxpho showed up on Tues but I was pretty busy due to finals at school. I now have a week off for summer break so I plan to get the stand completely done. Also a friend and I have finally gotten a private shop so I'll be moving into that over break as well.

I worked for 7 hours today and got quite a bit done. First up was to wire wheel the entire stand down to shinny metal. I went and got an aggressive wheel to help speed things up but it still took hours due to the very tough mill scale. Everything done except the top plate here:




I decided to start bluing at the bottom first. This is after only a single pass all the way around, hence the uneven color:




Here's after 3 applications with 0000 steel wool burnishing between each one:




The main column didn't take the bluing as well. I wiped it down four times with a Rust Release saturated cloth and got a bunch of rust off it even though it looked clean. Being more aggressive with the steel wool between applications seemed to help the blue to penetrate better. About halfway done here:





Got the column to a workable state after a bit of touching up. Did a single application under the top plate and two on its top and edges. I still need to so some spot treatments on the column, polish the braze beads and burnish the whole thing some more but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:

[Andyman]

The stand is beautiful.
Makes me wanna go out in the shop and find something to blue

[kmanwelder]

that looks amazing!!!

[killdozerd11]

For a large bluing project a gunsmith would usually do a hot tank blue which would give a more consistent color for rifles and shotguns but that takes room for the tanks and heaters and degreasing tanks ect

Only some guys who do a large amount of bluing have all that and if i wanted to do more than a small area i would just send it to one of them they do very nice work and i mainly did pistol work porting and polishing and sites and some people would want a total reblue but a lot opt for some of the newer coatings

And the fact that steel for a barrel and action are probably a more consistent steel than tubing would be

[FunnyDream]

Your my hero.

I'm new to bluing and not sure about it.

From what I'm reading its basically a ton of work to make steel look cool.

Does bluing keep the your steel from rusting? If not then do you lacquer it?

[killdozerd11]

Your my hero.

I'm new to bluing and not sure about it.

From what I'm reading its basically a ton of work to make steel look cool.

Does bluing keep the your steel from rusting? If not then do you lacquer it?

Bluing will rust you have to keep it oiled

There is Browning / Blackening and Bluing

[MikeGyver]

Nice work, are you just using ERCuSi-A bronze filler?

[dhem]

Thanks guys. Beyond functionality, making things look cool/nice is definitely a labor of love. At some point in time I'd like to start making money working with metal, but for now I'm just a hobbyist so I don't mind the extra work it takes. I've always liked for my stuff to deviate from the norm a bit.

As for coating it right now the stand is rubbed down with some gun oil. I do want to find something a bit more durable than just oil though. As an experiment I might have to braze up some testers, blue them and finish them with various clear coatings to see how they hold up.

The filler rod I'm currently using is Blue Demon Silicon Bronze. I've been thinking about ordering something different to try to see if I can get cleaner beads.

Got some more pics from the other day that I need to upload. I polished all the brazes, oiled everything, and finally machined up some feet from UHMWPE bar stock.

[dhem]

So the feet for the stand were made up from some 2" UHMWPE. Probably not the best material to use but it was the biggest diameter plastic rod I had. The main benefit of this material is that it can handle high amounts of abrasion so they should out last the stand itself. It is a rather slippery plastic though so I don't know if the whole thing will slide around now. The 150lbs of sand that's going inside will most likely prevent that though. I had to cut the three rough slugs with my hacksaw. That was fun. Here's a 2" slug chucked to get the faces trued up and a hole drilled/threaded:





Due to the size of the angle iron that forms the mount for the feet, a diameter of about 1.5" was ideal to cleanly fit underneath. So I had to machine off 0.25" from the sides. Since there was already a threaded hole for the mounting bolt it was rather easy to chuck it in a way that allowed machining the entire side at once. This plastic is pretty damn tough so this step took a while. I had to also use the tailstock to prevent deflection:





Last step was easy. Just machined a nice heavy chamfer on the bottom and cleaned up the top edge a bit:





End result of a few hours: