Re: make - forge? - wedge for feathers-and-wedge rock-split

On 30/03/2024 22:50, Joe Gwinn wrote:

On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 16:37:50 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
<muratlanne@gmail.com> wrote:
>

"Joe Gwinn"  wrote in message
news:9fkg0j9s55p1vamdq8rq19lq3gaq6i7j34@4ax.com...
On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 12:25:20 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
<muratlanne@gmail.com> wrote:

"Peter Fairbrother"  wrote in message news:uu999l$128v0$1@dont-email.me...

Do we have any idea what kind of steel they use?
Joe Gwinn
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The feathers are soft and flexible, the wedge harder, such that it puts
scrape marks on the feathers but not vice versa. The wedge heads have become
slightly mushroomed. The feathers are all warped from use, I'd have to
carefully straighten some to reconstruct the original geometry.
>
The feathers for the 5x 1/2" set and the single 3/4" were all made from 3/8"
round rod. The large end is a half circle. I chose 1/2" after finding
several new 1/2" spline drive bits from an auction in a second hand tool
store (that's closing).
>
I suppose the feathers could be cut freehand endwise on an upright bandsaw
if the stock was tightly clamped in an inverted toolmakers vise to keep it
from twisting when the blade was off center, then beltsanded to smooth ridges. I bandsawed some oak slab scrap into a batch of wedges freehand to
pencil lines that came out straight and smooth enough for the carpenter
neighbor to think I bought them until sunshine revealed the saw marks.

If one can solder the wedge to something solid, all manner of
machining operations become easy.
>
Use eutectic tin-lead solder for lowest melting point.
>
Or just forge them.  My bet is that the commercial wedges are made of
1045 steel (EN9 in the UK), quenched and tempered, with wedges
tempered harder than the feathers.
>
Probably in Roman times, they were made of wrought iron.
>
Joe Gwinn

I was thinking along the lines of forging if I wanted to make a number of these. It would be fairly simple to make some forging dies for my flypress and them forge them down from square or round stock.