Modifying an old plane?

Re: Modifying an old plane?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Why not put it on the bay and find out? Two of them with cracked cheeks have recently sold for around $90, another for parts at about $110, one of your vintage for $190 or so. Hope you kept the tote and blade.

Pam

Mein Gott

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Makes me wonder whether I should use my $6 10-1/2 or sell it.

Re: Modifying an old plane?

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>Oh, yes, I kept the tote (missing the end of the horn) and blade (which it completely worn out - I might get one more sharpening out of it).

I don't do eBay, for several philosophical reasons. The most important are that it encourages snipers and that among Galoots and Neanderthals it is considered in bad taste or worse to discuss an auction before it has closed. I just refuse to sell to or through people who act that way.

If it sold for substantially less than replacement cost, then I would be without a tool that I need.

Re: Modifying an old plane?

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>You may want to (re)read a couple or three chapters of Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground", available for free at Project Gutenberg.

I tend to be more pragmatic, don't spend much time worrying about the motivations of others.

And only you can evaluate the replacement costs. I only pointed out that you could expect to get $n.

Pam

Re: The $6 10-1/2

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>No Bill, you have to keep it for moments just like this one.

Re: Mein Gott

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>Naw, you just slug the rest of us up the side of the head with your gloat.

Hypotheticla question: If I paid 10x that much for mine, and sold it at a 50% profit, wouldn't it be fair to expect to be able to turn around and buy yours at a 50% markup, to fill the resulting empty spot in my toolbox? That would get me off the horns of my dilemma, wouldn't it? and I wouldn't have to feel guilty either, because I gave you a nice profit, too :^)

What you paid for it is not the issue. What is important is what you need it for, and whether you can get something you need more with the proceeds.

Sell it Bill

Todd O. Cronkhite Native of Maine

>I'll give ya $12 for thus giving you a 100% profit, or if you'd like I'll trade ya my $3 #140.

William,

I dunno, maybe I'm a bit funny about this, but I couldn't bring myself to permanetly alter a 100+ year old tool.

Todd O.

Re: Use a #78?

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>I would hesitate to open the mouth on just about any iron plane, as there is no good way to close it back up. I'd probably use a #78 instead, which I often times find beside the road in ditches around here.

If it reduces the sting any...

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>it came with one cheek cracked completely through. I took it to a friend who welded - big mistake, as it came back with the side welded but the two halves of the sole, in front of and behind of the mouth, not in plane with each other (tried to avoid the pun, but can't think of how else to say it). My revered uncle then cut through the first weld, clamped it down on a dead flat surface, and rewelded it, doing his best -- still, that side looks like it would have if I'd tried to weld it.

Not as impressive as the No. 1 sold on eBay today, that Moses brought to our attention further up, but still fairly ugly.

Re: If it reduces the sting any...

William R. Duffield on the Cohansey

>If a plane isn't, what is it? If it were a tree, maybe it would be a sycaless. If it weren't plain, then it would be fancy.

Re: Modifying an old plane?

Rgordon U

>I have the same problem picked up a #10 for $10 with a crack in the right side. I have had no luck finding someone to weld it. One suggested JB Weld. The tote and front knob are nice, full blade and good cap and chip breaker. I have one that is welded already and it works excellent. I have almost decided to part it out.

Try an automotive engine rebuilder

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Automotive engine rebuilders commonly weld cast iron, though of thicker section than a plane, in repairing cast-iron heads and blocks. If you check around, you might be able to find an automotive machine shop or engine shop that could do it for you. You'll want to remove everything (knob, tote, frog), and emphasize that you need the sections clamped to a dead flat surface.

Re: Try an automotive engine rebuilder

Bob Hackett

>Welding cast is a tough row to hoe,especially on thin cross sections and relatively fragile things like hand planes.The welding has to be done using both pre and post heating otherwise you set up stresses that may cause the casting to crack again elsewhere.

An alternative is brazing.Brazing ramps up the heat slowly and then lets the part cool slowly.The filler rod used in brazing is also alittle more ductile than the nickel rods used for welding.The only drawback to brazing is that the joining surfaces must be very clean in order for the filler to flow and wet out completely.

Mainely,Bob

Re: Try an automotive engine rebuilder

Joe Rogers, Northern Virginia

>How about heliarc with nickle rod? I had the motor mount bosses fixed on a 6 cyl Chevy motor repaired that way once. If the plane body was jigged flat...the heat is more limited with heliarc. Just a thought.JR

There is a special tool..

Jonathan Ronnow, Sweden

>for welding cast iron, translated directly from swedish its a "flamesprayer". Its a gas welder (oxygen-acetylene) that has a small can of metalpowder mounted upside down on top of it. The gas flame heats up the workpiece until it starts melting, just as when gas welding, and then the metal powder is let into the nossle trough a valve, and mixed with the oxy-ac-mixture inside the nossle, then heated up in the flame and sprayed onto the workpiece as molten metal particles.

There are different metal powders for different purposes. The weld produced is stress-free if its done right. You can actually build up metal that has been cracked or chipped off something.

Jonathan

TIG?

Jonathan Ronnow, Sweden

>I might be on the edge of my knowledge here, but...

If you mean TIG welding with heliarc, I think you would definetly need pre- and afterheating. If you heat cast iron locally you build in tensions that could lead to cracks. One welder friend of mine did a cast iron fence that had been beaten into pieces. He preheated with a propane torch to about 300 degrees celcius, and then welded the pieces together with a rodwelder. I dont know the english term, but its the welder where you have a flux covered rod/electrode that you manually feed and that the current flows through. You clamp or stick it into the welding handle.

You should only weld short sections in cast iron with this method, and then immediately tap gently on them with a small hammer. Say weld one inch and the tap, tap, tap. That will reduce the stresses. Also, wrapping the workpiece in non-flammable insulation after preheating it will lessen the chance of building in stresses. It should not be unwrapped until almost cool.

I once cheated and rebuilt a section of a brake part in cast iron using my MIG welder. It was a flange that broke off, so I ground a groove for the weld, heated some with a prop.toch and the welded, and tapped gently all over the weld. It never failed on me. The weld was not of the same composition as the cast iron, that is why you have rods made specially for ci. But it didnt fail on me, perhaps because it was a small weld, about 1/2".

Jonathan

Jonathan

Re: There is a special tool..?

Mitchell

>So don't tease us. Show us how we can get this amazing product.

A short time ago I was excited to learn about a new product manufactured out by a california firm called lock-n-stitch. I was excited because so often I, like many of you out there, come across that great piece of iron something or else but for that crack or stripped threads, I'd take it home. Essentially, they make a breakaway bolt with threads of a profile I don't recall how to name, which compress the crack.

Anyway these devices would work great if you wanted to repair a locomotive engine or an iron trestle bridge. The smallest bolt is in the 3/8" range which limits its application. They might have some application for their thread inserts for what I do but only where there's enough metal to drill out.

I want to hear more about that Swedish technique!

Re: There is a special tool..? *LINK*

Jonathan Ronnow, Sweden

>Oh, Im not sure if we (the swedes)are the ones to take the credit for it. I suspect though (without knowing)that it is a product of AGA, one of the main gas and gas related product companys here in sweden.

I first read about it in Wheels Magazine, a swedish hotrod magazine. They repaired an exhaust header, I think, to prove that it was not impossible at all to rescue damaged cast iron.

I did a google and came up with the link below. While its not what I talked about, you get the idea somewhat. The metal that we want to transfer to the work piece(in the flamesprayer I was refering to its a bottle of metal powder) is heated tremendeously in the flame, and sprayed onto the workpiece. In the link below a cold surface is coated and the powder is carried by compressed air; in the case of a cracked casting you would have to grind out the crack leaving a groove where it was. Then you heat the workpiece to just below melting, and fill the groove by spraying molten metal into/onto it. You replace the rods in normal welding with a fine spray of molten metal.

There are flamesprayers with electric arcs as the heating medium that turns a gas into plasma which in turn heats the powder and workpiece, but the technique Im thinking of uses basically a normal gas welder with oxygen and acetylene, and a bottle of powder that mixes with the gases in the nozzle. Then the gas mixture carries the powder through the flame that melts it and blows it against the workpiece, which is also heated by the flame. The powder sinters onto the hot iron, and builds onto the surface.

Hope this makes sense...

//Jonathan


flamespraying a surface

Re: There is a special tool..? better link

Jonathan Ronnow, Sweden

>Seems that didnt work, here is a similar link:

Link 3rd time... sigh *LINK*

Jonathan Ronnow, Sweden

>well... hope it works. late here, quarter to one in the night...


http://www.campbellmachinery.ie/pages/metallisation.htm#flamespray

Brazing with TIG

Bob Hackett

>You can braze with TIG(Tungsten Inert Gas,also known as heliarc)too.There are less stresses to the part as it`s not brought up to a molten state and you can also control the flow of the braze filler better than with an oxy-acetylene torch.I`d still post heat with a propane torch though.

MB

Stick welding

Bob Hackett

>The process is properly called SMAW(Shielded Metal Arc Welding).I`ve heard it called manual arc welding or stick welding.The rod used is a nickel alloy.

In an pinch I`ve used plain old 7018 in AC mode to weld cast and as long as it`s good quality grey cast iron I`ve had alot of luck.The vise on my father`s old workbench was welded this way and it`s still going strong long after my dad`s gone.Now that I say this,one of my boys will take a hammer to something held in that vise and probably break it tomorrow.Never under estimate your power to jinx yourself.;^)

MB

Re: There is a special tool..?

Dan Donaldson

>One of the places where I used to work had a plasma torch that was used to spray chrome onto aircraft landing gear to increase the diameter so that it could be ground to size and refurbished. They created a plasma that was contained in a magnetic "bottle" just in front of the nozzle, which was about 1.5 inches in diameter, 1 inch thick, and made of solid tungsten. They created an electrical charge on the part and charged the spray the opposite. They then sprayed the powder through the plasma and basically painted on molten metal. Really cool to watch. (This was a big unit as some of the cylinders they were painting were about 16-18 inches in diameter and 8-10 feet long).

They had some nozzles they kept around that were on the machine when the magnetics failed. The safeties kick in very quickly, but that plasma melted the tungsten like an acetyline torch would melt wax, and just about as fast. It is incredible to see a piece of tungsten that looks like swiss cheese and got that way in a very small fraction of a second.

just for calibration

Dan Donaldson

>Tungsten melts at 6170 degrees F, while iron melts at about 2800.