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Hi folks
A friend of mine gave me an old stick welder to look after for an undetermined length of time and by the jist of it, it'll be in my possession for quite awhile, but I still need to get few things before I start using it, the most essential being a decent welding mask.
My hobby budget has been redirected towards christmas for the time being, so I'll have to wait till after before I can get the mask and other accessories but I did have enough materials and parts on hand to put a first welding project together to make myself a chip hammer for removing the slag, which was prompted after finding the prong from my garden fork which had broken off while trying to remove a stubborn root last spring.
I chose to make the neck of the hammer from a short length of 9.5mm round bar stock and using my lathe, I faced and heavily chamfered the end to be welded to the "head".
The other end was simply faced and the edge lightly chamfered as my plan is to sink the neck shaft into a larger shoulder piece which connects the head and neck to the handle. The shortened neck should be less prone to bending under normal use as well.
The shoulder was made from a length of 22mm round bar stock. After facing one end, I cut a relatively shallow taper till the smaller diameter was a shade larger than the diameter of the neck shaft.
Once the taper was cut, I spotted and drilled the hole for the neck to sit in until the shaft went in about a third of its total length (no actaul measurements were taken or followed, I just judged things by eye). The other end was then faced and lightly chamfered to finish the part.
The handle was a tough one as I didn't have much in the way of round metal tubing and I didn't fancy having to wield a solid metal handle. However, I was given a couple of frame sections from a 5' trampoline a while back and when put together, they made up half a circle. My plan had been to use them as part of a camera dolly project but it was the only tubing on hand that had an ID close enough to the shoulder I'd made, so with limited options, I sacrificed one of the sections to make the handle.
Mocked up, it actually looks like it will make a decent chip hammer, though I must say, the irony of needing another chip hammer to knock the slag off the welds on this one isn't lost on me
I actually like the curve the handle has to it and it feels more ergonomic in the hand too. For aesthetic reasons, I'm going to plug the hole that the spring hooked into and then grind it back so I can paint it when the hammer is welded and prepped.
I'll update the thread with pics once it's done, until then I'll see you cats later
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