Monday, August 06, 2007

Upsetting



Upsetting metal is a lot harder than drawing it out. I needed to make the little spoon shaped levers for the thumb latch. The first step is to fatten up the end of the bar by heating it and either dumping it onto a solid surface like it was a pogo stick or hitting it with a hammer while it is in the vice or backed up against something. The oxy propane torch is great for this job as it allows you to heat up just the end of the bar, the greater the area of heat the easier it is for the upset part to start to wander about or for the strikes to lose their force in simply bending the bar into a swan neck behind the part you are trying to fatten up. Anyway, as with many of these procedures there are some things that have to be done before you can get to others. If you just go straight to flattening the bar at the end there is not enough volume of metal to make a nice spoon shape, so your efforts are doomed from the outset. Take a step back to move forward.