Hello, I'm Chris, and welcome to the shop. Here on this channel, I post videos of my machine work, fabrication, welding, vintage tool restoration, and industrial history, produced in my 1930s-themed home machine shop. Through building and working in this vintage-inspired space, I hope to conduct a little bit of experimental archaeology by using tools, equipment, and methods found in pre-war American manufacturing. Along the way, I also show some clips from my side projects and day job too.
For more than what's here on the channel, check out my work on the rest of the internet. I post short clips, and pictures from the shop and the rest of my life on Instagram, and keep a shop build log over at the Garage Journal forums.
Very nice. I’m surprised more rebuilds do not include thrust bearings on the lead screw. It looks like this significantly improves clamping force. I really like the color.
I think you're spot on. It probably was brought within the 125 tons of rocket machinery and manufacturing equipment. Most Germans leaving for America around those times aren't gonna lug their trusty vise around the world. I enjoy your channel thanx for sharing
would have been a better idea to place the bearing before you place the spring on the inside of the spindle. The way you did it doesn't relieve the friction.
Fabulous vise! You didn't need the rear needle bearing (but it won't hurt) - the front bearing works when you tighten the vise, the rear bearing only does anything when you're opening the vise. Very light forces so you don't really need a proper bearing. You might want to consider a shorter handle - since you've reduced the friction between the screw and the vise (with your needle bearing) you can now apply more force, possibly to the extent of breaking the vise. And a shorter handle is also easier to turn and spin! When tuning between centres, the tailstock centre is normally the hardened one, but the drive end centre is normally soft. It will not wear out, because there's no relative motion between the part and the centre. Moreover, a soft centre can be turned to a point (using the compound set at 60 degrees) which guarantees perfect concentricity, even if the spindle has runout.
I’ve replaced the lead screw, power diodes and power cable on my Econotwin. When a diode goes bad you will hear it and probably trip the breaker. I used 200 amp stud 14:49 diodes from Ali Express ( @$50 for a set of four, two plus and two negative.) The diode stud thread size was oddball 19mm and I retreaded them to a very close 5/8” NC. They have been running good for at least four years.
Yo bud I have a stock tank and a European snorkel fire from a wood hot tub and my plan was to combine the 2. I didn't realize the fire would be so boyant it floats....I struggle to lift it but 3 people couldn't hold it to the bottom. Normally they are bolted onto the side the the wood hot tub through the slats. Do you think the stock tank would take the force if I were to drill wholes in it and use bolts with rubber washers or is drilling the wholes going to weaken it to much? Any thoughts or advice is appreciated. Also the boiler your welding up for yours is looking pretty bling.
A friend showed me this video. Very well made video. i watched with pleasure. I have to point out you are about a decade wrong with manufactury date.😳 This is the latest version of Primus Brockhaus made. It has the edged spindle guard. It fits on the modern swivel base. The latest version is introduced in the summer of 1957. Your Heuer Primus is end fifties or the sixties. I am not shure if the production year is already forged in the dent of the slide under the dynamic jaw. About the rough surface. It is possible the forging molds were starting to wear out and Brockhaus never replaced them when these got out of specs due to too low demand of this model. The last version had only the 150 6" and 175 7" models.
Bisecting any chord of the circle would give you a line perpendicular to the chord as well as help you find the center. You can further bisect the circle with intersecting arcs, or additional chords; if you draw lines through the intersections... much faster than and more precise than trial and error expanding the compass/divider
Neat, what model YW torch did you end up getting for the EconoTwin? I’ve got the same unit and looking to replace the torch on it, not sure if I should go with water cooled or not. Nice attention to detail.
terriffic video. The only comment i Have is that you really should grind a "V" into those Butt welds. I am the mainternance Blacksmith at Colonial Williamsburg.I do a lot of different types of fabrication. I've seen that type of weld fail that wasn't V'd out.
yikes, "Only 30 psi" translates to about 2500 lbs of force trying to push that end plate out based on my surface area estimate. Most pressure vessels are designed with a factor of safety of 5 or more so those welds need to be able to hold about 12,500 lbs. I don't think I want to be anywhere near this thing when it's operational, probably wont fail catastrophically though, it'll just spray hot water on everyone which might be fun. Fire tube boilers flange the ends of the tubes, they don't rely on just welds, of course they run at 160psi too.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to comment and to run some calculations. You were pretty close to the number that I got for a back-of-the-envelope calculation, so it prompted me to run a simulation in Solidworks to see what my factor of safety would look like. What I found is that using estimated yield strength values for the steel and weld metal, I was well within a safety factor of 5x in all parts of the boiler core. I think the reason that this works out is that the 2,500lbs of force is not being exerted on each weld, rather, the load is being shared by the 13 fire tubes and the boiler shell. The whole simulation is a bit too long to write up in a RU-vid comment, so I posted it over on the Duluth Machine Works website here: projects.duluthmachineworks.com/wood-fired-hot-tub-boiler-simulation.html. Feel free to take a look and tell me what you think. As far as failure modes, since there wouldn't be very much stored energy in the system due to the non-compressible nature of water, I bet you're right that a failure would look like a jet of hot water spraying from the failure point until the pressure equalizes. Since all of the welds in question will be inside either the firebox or smoke dome, a failure has "secondary containment" in a sense, making it hopefully unlikely that someone would get injured. I'm also going to do a hydrostatic pressure test up to 90psi (3x safety factor) before firing it for the first time. I do really appreciate your comment- it definitely got me thinking and pushed me to do a simulation that I should have done from the beginning. I'll also be talking through it in the next video, which will be covering the "Hot Tub Engineering".
Interesting to see the whole process, from picking up the equipment- pretty drive!- to making that rough-looking equipment work. The lift was a great score too.
You’re doing a really great job. As a suggestion bevel the ends of your tube. About half the thickness. This will ensure you get good penetration and help with the profile of the weld. Another suggestion is you could hire me to weld that for you 😉. Great craftsmanship guy. Looking forward to the next video. Be easy.
Thanks! I did bevel the tubes off camera, but somewhere along the line I lost a 1/16th of an inch somewhere and needed to grind them down flush. Definitely would have worked better though had the bevels still been there when I welded.
I do have a question do both ends of your tubes have to be flush? Say the ash pan side. Does it have to be flush? Another option is beveling the hole in your plate especially if the the lower plate is thicker. It will take more heat. Maybe that would account for any differences in measurement? I really appreciate you taking the time to reply back. I don’t have a lot of craftsman in my neck of the woods to talk about these kinds of things with
The only reason I wanted the tubes flush is so it’ll be easier to clean soot and other buildup off of them, but it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference and might have welded up better. If I was doing it all over again I’d definitely make sure that there were good bevels on the tubes or on the plate, and probably tig weld everything for better quality. Once I started getting the boiler tacked together and realized that it wasn’t a perfect fit, it kind of became a “better done than perfect” situation.
I bought a wood stove/boiler for $250. Looked great inside, so I lined it with fire brick. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. However, your welding and fab work is incredible. Wish you were my neighbor :)
