Different homemade dies from 7/8 x 14 bolts ?

[littlejack]

Randy, Thanks for the thread lesson. I understand what you are saying. It is the bearing surfaces of the threads (male and female) that decide what quality the thread is, correct? The closer the fit, the better the thread. I have a long way to go, but I love playing with steel.
I found a store in town today that will probably have most of what I need in the way of tools etc.
I went there today to get a couple of metric drill bits to make me a set of 45 acp birdshot dies. While I was standing there waiting for the fella to get the bits , I looked around and low and behold, there was a whole rack of 01 rods, 3' long. This is lookin better all the time. I did have a couple more of the 7/8 x 14 bolts, so I decided to make the dies out of them. I will get me a 7/8 x 14 thread cutting tool, propably next week. I think this is going to get expensive.
Jack

[MtGun44]

Just to clarify, that is O1 - the letter O for oil hardening and the number 1. A standard tool steel and a really
good steel to use for stuff that has to be hard at the end. Just a clarification be for you go looking for 01 (zero - one)
steel and have difficulty finding it, it looked like you typed 01 - although I may be wrong, some fonts have very little
difference between O and 0. After machining, you heat it up and quench in oil to harden it.

I recommend you to listen to Keith - he knows his stuff.

Bill

[littlejack]

Thanks Bill for the clarification. Yes, I pushed the wrong button.
I am trying to absorb all this education my little pea brain will soak up. On this thread alone, I have learned an enormous
amount.
Jack

[meshugunner]

4140 is designed for toughness rather than hardness. The 40 denotes 40pts of carbon i.e. 0.4% which is a medium steel. It's used in car axles, torsion bars, jackhammer bits etc all of which have to absorb shock and impact without cracking. It won't get extremely hard and wont hold a sharp edge for long.

01 is a tool steel designed to harden enough to take a fine cutting edge. It has 90pts of carbon. It can be quenched glassy hard and glassy brittle.

If you harden either of these steels by quenching in oil, they will need to be tempered, (partly softened) by heating to somewhere around 500F otherwise they are likely to crack. Quenching is a rather brutal thing to do to steel since it creates very high internal stress and the piece can crack just sitting there waiting to be tempered. That nasty 'click'. If you plan to do this yourself, I recommend making several pieces.

Machinists usually buy their steel new and pay top dollar for it. They are probably right to do so. Blacksmiths like me often reuse scrap. You can pick up axles and torsion bars for free from garages. They will need to be annealed before they can be machined.

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

This Lee case neck flaring tool can be used to make any number of dies. I made neck expanders plugs like the Lyman M die. You can also use a Lyman M die body to make a black powder compression plug tool. I did just that with a Lyman M die body.

You're in western Oregon. I'm in Yreka, NorCal. If you ever want a day long machine shop tutorial come on down. I have a Birmingham 12x36 lathe, two vertical mills, South Bend 7" shaper.



Dutch

BRILLIANT!!
thanks for the idea dutchman

[oldred]

4140 is designed for toughness rather than hardness. The 40 denotes 40pts of carbon i.e. 0.4% which is a medium steel. It's used in car axles, torsion bars, jackhammer bits etc all of which have to absorb shock and impact without cracking. It won't get extremely hard and wont hold a sharp edge for long.

Actually 4140 can be quite hard and can be hardened to as much as 50 to 55 RC, 4140 is normally sold in one of either two conditions, annealed or heat treated, usually designated as 4140HT or 4140 prehard in the hardened condition which is about 28 to 32 RC at which it still retains it's strength. Annealed 4140 is quite a bit softer and machines easily after which it can easily be hardened to as high as RC 50 to 55 but at these hardness levels it gives up some of it's ductility. Even the 4140 HT in the pre-hard condition has excellent machinability and wear properties, there is more to wear resistance than hardness but 4140 can be made quite hard if need be and maximum ductility is not needed. As one other poster mentioned 4140 is probably one of, if not the, most useful and versatile alloys ever produced.


If even more hardness and toughness is desired then 4150 is another excellent choice that is used extensively in firearms where strength, hardness and wearability is needed but strength must be maintained, 4150 in the hardened or Q/T (Quenched and tempered) state can be somewhat challenging to machine so unlike 4140 HT that can be machined easily 4150 is usually worked in the annealed state and then hardened.

[littlejack]

Thank you fellas for the information.
It will come in very handy, iff'n I decide to make any kind of items that may need the maching, hardening, tempering treatment.
Any and all of this information is well appreciated fellas. Although, I did some hardening and tempering of items in my fabrication trade, there was not any certain metals used. I used scrap steels that were known to be of good quality and that would work for tools, i.e. A steering shaft from and old grader to make some fine shop pry bars. I cut to lenght, drew them to the shape on the anvil, ground and polished, quenched and tempered. ETC; ETC. for 37 years.
Jack

[robroy]

Man, I gotta get the apron back on my lathe. Good thread littlejack, thanks for asking the question.

[littlejack]

Yes sir, I hope all of this information is helping others besides me.

[Dutchman]

BRILLIANT!!
thanks for the idea dutchman

It's a great idea. But it's not my idea. I got the idea in this forum. I'm just passing it on.

Dutch

[dverna]

great thread

Don

[dlamp]

this would be another good starting point
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/444...cm_vc=wishList

[meshugunner]

Actually 4140 can be quite hard and can be hardened to as much as 50 to 55 RC...

Can you give an example of an application where 4140 is tempered that hard? I'm not being contentious. Just curious.

As someone mentioned above, 4140 is an extremely useful alloy not only because of it's material properties but also because it can be heat treated by simple, shade tree methods. Some modern alloys require a complex schedule and therefore special equipment.

I don't mean to hijack the thread into steel alloy land. It's been a very informative for me too.

[oldred]

I tried to scan some spec sheets for some tooling we used at work, I have had these in my tool box for the several years since I retired and they were just too rough to copy well enough. I did a quick Google search for some info and this is the first site I came upon which has some pretty good information on 4140 in it's various states.

http://www.easterntoolsteel.com/data/4140-HT.htm


We used the hardened (50 to 55 RC) 4140 quite a bit on some of our mining equipment in some special applications where the hardness was required due to high pressure contact with even harder steel but it still required strength the harder more brittle alloys could not provide.

[theperfessor]

If I didn't have any O1 and I had 4140 I've made form tools for cutting aluminum with it. Made sure it was fully austenitized and then a good oil quench to about 200F and then temper at 400F. Don't remember the Brinell # but it was up there and the tensile tests on lab samples treated that way go over 200,000 lb/in^2 tensile strength. As long as you don't heat it up past that tempering temperature you will never lose any hardness. But it is a little more brittle than if it were tempered at 500 or so.

Reasonable speeds and feeds, proper cutting angles, and good coolant will yield a surprising long life when used on aluminum, brass, and mild steel.

Made a 1-1/4" star drill (for concrete) out of 4140. Heated it all up but only oil quenched the lower two-thirds. Then I pulled it out and checked it and when the tip wouldn't sizzle spit I left it out. The residual heat from the handle tempered the tip but left it very hard and the other end that cooled slowly was soft and wouldn't shatter when you hit it with a sledge. Drove it through 18" of concrete and the end was barely blunted.

[uscra112]

Show and tell: This is a derimming die for making jackets from .22 cases. Not the first time I've made a die this way by a long shot. Not even the fifth or sixth. The pole on the left is O1, made to be a drag fit into the 44 Magnum sizing die on the right. In this die the punch goes all the way through and is lifted out the top to be stripped of the swaged case and readied for the next cycle, so the insert didn't need to be tight. If I need to be able to yank a case back out of one of these home-brew dies, I make the insert a tighter press fit. Straight-case pistol dies are cheap, it saves me all the threading work, and I can start with a much smaller (and cheaper) piece of raw stock. Bodies of Lee powder-through expander dies work great, too. Color me lazy, but there it is.

[W.R.Buchanan]

Other good sources for info on materials are the Earl M Jorgensen Metals, and Castle Metals websites (google)

The Jorgensen catalog/book has been the goto source for metals properties for ever.

Their website now has all the same information.

Machinery's Handbook also has this information. A Machinery's Handbook is kind of a must have source of info for all individuals persuing the metal working crafts. So much so, that all machinist's tool boxes have a drawer dedicated to it's use.

Randy

[meshugunner]

.... A Machinery's Handbook is kind of a must have source of info for all individuals persuing the metal working crafts. So much so, that all machinist's tool boxes have a drawer dedicated to it's use.
Randy

Absolutely a must have. You can pick up older copies quite cheaply. I prefer the 12th edition which still has a lot of info on simple heat treating of steels like 4140

[TXGunNut]

Wow, had no idea. Fascinating.

[smokeywolf]

Lots of great tips and knowledge on these pages. When I went through my apprenticeship, the joke in the shop was that I was learning machining on antique machinery, from antique machinists. Much of our machinery was of WW I vintage. Three of our drill presses were old Avey flat leather belt drive. Point is, it is the old timers that frequently offer the most valuable information.
No offense meant with regard to age to theperfessor, W.R.Buchanan or the others.

Much of the time, in the MGM Studio Machine Shop, cutting threads 3/8 or larger with a split die was looked down upon. Threads were single pointed, and as long as it was only a few pieces, a die was used to take the final couple of thousandths.

I too like the versatility of 4140, O-1, W-1 and A-2 and as W.R.Buchanan related, we also used the Jorgensen book as our main source for general info on the common metals used in the shop.

smokeywolf