4th annual BLF/ O-L build competition -hand made- thread for Tru3s1lv3r (Update 9/29)

I’ve got a few ideas tinkering around in the ol’ noggin. Not gonna be too out there or crazy, but hoping it will look nice when completed.

7/19/2016: Portion of the materials are ordered and should be here tomorrow. BTW, anyone know where I can get my hands on some fire brick?

7/21/2016: Okay, so I have all the parts now to start making the main billet to forge the light from.

7/23/2016: Well, couldn’t find any firebricks to suit my needs, so I just started making my own. Probably just gonna build the whole furnace like this. A little mortar, a little perlite, and a little water, and viola!

7/26/2016
Well, finally got some more time to build my furnace. Scrapped the brick idea and just went for building the whole thing. Almost finished, just waiting on the top slab to dry then cementing it all together and drilling my torch hole. Gonna be at least the weekend or later before I can fire it up. Gotta make sure this thing is super dry.

Meanwhile, it’s off to school… Got finals for summer semester tonight!

7/29/2016: Not much of an update, just got the metal cut into strips for forge welding. I need to do a lot of prep work when I go to actually stick them all together. I’ll have to hammer flat and sand every face with a fine sandpaper to get an absolutely clean and spotless surface. Definitely going to be using gloves for this process. The small chunk of copper there on the side will probably be the led shelf?? Still undecided on how to use it.

7/31/2016: So I got a fair bit done today. Finished up the furnace, just have to wait for it to dry and cure. It will probably take a few days, just to be on the safe side. It is lined with furnace cement to keep it from crumbling in when I turn up the heat. Now on to building the torch for it. All the pieces of copper/bronze/nickel that I cut out had some bad burrs and dents from cutting them out with a pair of metal shears. I hammered them down as flat as I could. This week I’m going to make the press to forge them in. It’s nothing special, just two pieces of steel and four bolts. All in all I am pleased with the progress for today.


The forge with the black cement on the inside. It has a little door so I can focus the heat inside. It looks terrible, but it’s solid!


This is how I had to get the pieces flat, one at a time on the anvil.


The completed stack of metal. It will have to be sanded perfectly clean and stacked in the press for forging. Going to coat the outside of the stack with borax to prevent oxidation and hopefully get a good weld. A lot of work for just one silly piece of metal!!

8/15/2016: Okay, so I finally got around to making the torch for the furnace. It consists of some brass fittings and some black iron pipe.

Drilled the hole for the propane to flow through, tiny #57 bit! I had to wrap it in tape to get it to fit in my drill it was so small!

FIYAH!!! (Don’t worry about all that junk in the background, it was far enough away for safety)

I also got the face of my shelf sanded smooth, gonna polish it up before it is all said and done. I’ll also cut it down to size once I know how big to make it for the light.

Before

After

8/26/2016: Okay, so I finally got some free time top work on the stack. I had to take each individual sheet and sand it smooth, flat, and clean. All 24 some odd layers… This is gonna take a while!!

If I don’t return in a few hours, send help!

Tomorrow I am gonna get some bolts and make the press. I’ll get some acetone as well and let the pieces soak and get super clean. Hopefully I will be able to start forging tomorrow!

8/27/2016: Forging day!! I got the bolts to make the press and some extra sandpaper, hammer, etc…

Here is the press made where all the sheets are stacked in between two pieces of stainless steel. I wanted to use stainless as it wouldn’t want to bond to the other layers and makes for a clean separation of the billet and the press.

Here’s the whole shoot-n-match in the furnace. Fits nicely.

FIYAH!!! 2.0 Got the furnace set up with a brick as the door.

And boy does this thing get HOT!!! After about 10 minutes, everything in there was screamin’ hot! Just how I like it.

After about 15 minutres of heat, I pulled the assembly out and set on the anvil. I hit the top plate a few times with the 4lb hammer to get everything nice and welded together. Now to let it cool down and see if it all stuck together like it is supposed to…

And…

SUCCESS!!! WOOT!!! I was sooo stinkin’ excited when the whole thing fell out from the plates. It is a solid chunk instead of a bunch of pieces of copper/brass/nickle. Time to start grinding to show those beautiful layers!

After another 15 mins of grinding and sanding, here is one of the finished sides. Man does it look pretty! I wish I would have used thicker pieces of copper to make it show more, but I think it still looks good. I’m gonna take this billet to work and use the saw to cut each side smooth to save me a fair amount of sanding. Once the billet is cleaned up I can begin forging a tube!
All in all I am very pleased with the results at this point.

8/29/2016: Well, I couldn’t wait and ended up just using the hacksaw at the house and the grinding wheel to clean up the other sides. Only problem is when I was sawing, there was a bit of separation of the layers. I’m hoping that when I go to forge it all out that they will re-adhere with a bit of tlc and borax. Anywho, here’s some pics.





And a bit of sanding too.

Finished up, but I won’t be able to do much else until later this week.

9/1/2016: So I ordered a piece of carpenter 158 steel in 3/4” diameter. My idea is to use it as a punch and a mandrel for forming the body of the light. I knew that a mild steel might deform as I’m pounding away on it, so I wanted a good tool steel to work with, something I can harden. Going away on vacation this week, so no updates for a bit.

It’s very close to the same size of an 18650, just a few thousandths bigger. I guess this is a definitive answer to about what size the light is gonna be!

9/29/16: I have been dreading making this post. This update is about 2 weeks late. I wasn’t sure how to proceed, but it appears I won’t be able to proceed with the contest. OK, so here goes…

I started grinding away at the steel rod to get a good taper on it to punch through the billet.

After about 10 minutes, I thought to myself… “Self… you know you have a furnace… it gets hot enough to forge steel… why not just draw the tip to a point and just finish it up on the grinder…” So… time to light it up!!

(Didn’t have a good pic of the finished punch.)

Now on to heating, cutting and folding the stack to get more layers for the finished product.


I didn’t get any pics of the next part cause it require two hands, but I took the red hot stack out of the furnace, set it on the anvil, grabbed my chisel to hot cu it… and… the worst thing happened, de-lamination!! I panicked! I tried everything I could think of to get the layers stuck back together.
After several minutes of pounding and flux and heat and pounding, etc… I finally got some of the pieces to stick back together. I decided to try and punch through it so I would have something to hold the shape and form the billet to. This didn’t work and ended up making the de-lamination worse.

This is now what is left of my once beautiful mokume gane billet. These pieces here are just about unusable without a crap-ton of work to get the pieces all straight and prepped again, assuming they could be straightened. I thought about getting some more pieces to start over, but I wont be able to in time for the contest end.

I hate to say it, but I’m going to have to withdraw. Sorry guys, but this has been a tough decision to make. I have learned a lot in this process and I really want to make this light! I will probably just shelve this project for the time being and come back to it later on at my own pace. I will make a light using this stuff, even if it ends up just being accent pieces.
Thanks everyone for your support through this project and good luck to the other competitors!

-Tru3s1lv3r

Reserved

I’m looking forward to what you bring to the table. :slight_smile:

Could I borrow one of those ideas, as I currently have none :slight_smile:

Oh please, do tell. :wink:

Well, the only hint I’m giving is that I’m gonna try something utilizing an ancient Japanese method of metal work. It’s probably going to make me wish I had chosen the machine made, but I’m gonna embrace the challenge.

I hope you use English translation on the proceedings. :blush:

Sounds like your really going to challenge yourself on this build. Best wishes and look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Sounds Very unique and interesting. I hope it works out well for you and thereby, well for us viewers.

Thanks guys. Oh, does anyone know a good cheap supplier of firebricks? I really don’t want to use the charcoal forge if I can avoid it. It’s really messy!

Do you have a Craig’s List? There might be someone local with some used kiln brick. Or even one they might share, make a new friend. Social media has pretty much replaced the want adds.

Sub-ed and looking forward to the nice work.

a flashlight with a Damascus tube ? interesting

A curved flashlight with a hamon?

I tried to make some mokumé gane from some old pennies and nickels. I was able to fuse and shape my piece, the turning on the lathe afterward revealed flaws in my process. You should have better luck. Forge > torch…

OP Edit: Got the main body parts in today. Turningbluechips got it right. Gonna try my hand at a mokume gane light.

I had to Google this, mokume gane, I hope you can pull this one of. it will be one good looking light.

Wow, cool looking stuff!

Update in OP.

Just gonna make my own furnace. Maybe some day I’ll start actually making flashlight related stuff!

You the Man! I always wanted to make a small forge for heating metal and such. Actually, really want to make a wood burning pizza oven someday. Very interested and hoping this goes well for you.

You probably are all over this, but just in case. I think you have to make sure you get all the moisture out of that material before your take that forge up to temp.