Thread: Assorted Basic Metal Working Problems

What he said. Gee I'd forgotten all that stuff. That is a really good and complete explanation. As I read it I knew what was comming next, almost word for word how we learned.

I don't have my block anymore, but I'm grateful they taught us how to do it. It's dug me out of quite a few holes over the years.

As I said once you learn how to do it properly the file and hacksaw can do a lot of work very quickly, and it can be satisfying on some level

Originally Posted by Woodlee

TS,

I spent the first 3 months of my apprenticeship filling a steel block cut from a piece of 2" square tool steel bar , fresh out of high school , I thought I was being tortured .

........


I had blisters on my blisters and would go home at night in so much pain that I almost cried.My feet ached and so did my back , I wasn't used to standing on my feet eight hours a day in the one spot filing a mongrel piece of steel .

Hohoho! The memories. I had to do something similar and I was in the electronics trades - figure that one out! Hahaha!



It was agony. We had to take bits of black steel and firstly use the "old" file to get through the scale before we could attack it with any of the other half dozen files that we had in our bench drawers. The smarties in the class just used to use the newer good files to cut through that scale but an obedient dill like me did what I was told and I took ten times longer than them to do it.

We would take those bits of harder-than-hell black steel and turn them into drill angle gauges, screw gauges, cable strippers and other bits and pieces with brilliantly fine tolerances on every surface as measured by micrometer.

As a learning experience, it was priceless; as a doing experience it was just so painful for a fifteen year old kid who had never done any metal work since doing a little sheet metal work in grade 8.


Oh the pain! Having bleeding, ingrown toenails at the time did not add to the joy one little bit! I had bleeding feet that I was standing on for hours at a time, a sore back at the end of each day, and red raw hands from holding file the correct way with very tender skin. (These days, I often wear gloves when I use a file but I still use it with the stance and positioning of the hands in the way that I was taught.) I remember the pain so much! Hahaha!

Would you believe I had a very rough nights sleep last night ,I was dreaming about blocks of steel and a little short ar*ed German guy leaning over my shoulder saying "Keveen you vill be da looser if you vill do it this vay" ,after writing that post.

Sheesh

Kev.

Woodlee , you didn't do you time at Newcastle, BHP training center and that german wasn't rudi was it , little boxhead ex toolmaker , or so he said , take a piece of 1/8" plate drill a 3/8" hole file the hole to become a 1/2" square hole , get rudi to check with test piece , when you pass that take 2" of 1/2" bar and file it to become a 1/2" square bar , take it rudi and he checks the square through the hole, don't get caught at the grinder, there was a heap of other stuff as well filing 60deg teeth along one edge of 1/8" plate and being checked against his test piece , 3 months of the little ...person... then onto the machines for the next 6 to 9 months depending on how well you did. hated it with a passion , now look back and realize what I was taught there was priceless , gave me the skills I still have today

Originally Posted by Ashore

Woodlee , you didn't do you time at Newcastle, BHP training center and that german wasn't rudi was it , little boxhead ex toolmaker , or so he said , take a piece of 1/8" plate drill a 3/8" hole file the hole to become a 1/2" square hole , get rudi to check with test piece , when you pass that take 2" of 1/2" bar and file it to become a 1/2" square bar , take it rudi and he checks the square through the hole, don't get caught at the grinder, there was a heap of other stuff as well filing 60deg teeth along one edge of 1/8" plate and being checked against his test piece , 3 months of the little ...person... then onto the machines for the next 6 to 9 months depending on how well you did. hated it with a passion , now look back and realize what I was taught there was priceless , gave me the skills I still have today

Ash ,
No it wasn't Newcastle BHP , but in Adelaide at Simpson Pope ,sounds like they had an apprentice training centre like BHP , we spent the first year in there learning ,how to file and fit ,also how to use the lathe , mill ,shaper ,grinders (surface and bench).We also did welding both arc and oxy , cutting and brazing and silver and soft lead soldering and sheet metal work.Every apprentice went through the same training for the first year ,no matter what your choice of trade.When we graduated from the training centre we were sent to differnt sections of the plant and rotated every three or six months.
The last six months of our time we went back to the training centre as a leading hand to help train the first year apprentices.
We did the block and plate first , then made a heap of projects like toolmakers clamps ,vices ,pin vices , a set of arch wad punches (machined and then hardened and tempered),dowel pullers and the last project was a big multi drawer tool box ,we even made the pull handles and drawer slides or the tool box drawers.
I still have most of the projects including the tool box ,the block , toolmakers clamps vice ,pin vice and dowel puller and a couple of c clamps and the wad punches.
Our apprentice master was named Victor , ("just call me Wik" he would say )he was German and during the war he was in the SS Armoured Panzer Division of the German army ( well that's what he told us ,but he did have black white pictures on his office wall of Tiger tanks and heap of group photos).
He could be a nice bloke at times and a real pig at other times .If you were doing something on a project he would stand behind you some times and look over your shoulder ,if you made a mistake ,(which was a common occurrence because he was spooking you by just being there) he would call out to the other apprentices to gather around your machine.
Every one would gather around and he would start his spiel about what you were supposed to be doing and what you did wrong , it was basically an exercise in humiliation for the person who stuffed up.
His favourite statement was "boysss you vill be da loosas" (German accent)
If he lost his temper he would raise his fist like a hammer and make it like he was going to dong you.
On the night I had my indentures presented to me at the end of my five years ,I thanked him for his efforts , he just smiled and nodded like "I told you so".

Kev.

When I were a lad we used to dreeeem of bleeding feet and ingrown toenails. Where _I_ wnet they'd cut off our feet and we'd stand on stumps of shins for 24 hours straight and file block with own teeth...and the German would be whippin us all along wit telecom cable...

Sorry, couldn't resist. It's was just sounding more and more like the 4 yorkshiremen...

I'm a mechanic. I own many hammers, and vice grips.

Luxury being left with the stumps of your shins - we had ours trimmed above the knee and broken glass for floor covering.

On a more serious note, you might think about keeping files for brass exclusively and using others for steel. My recollection from the distant past the rationale was that it is hard to clean out all the brass (or aluminium) and it impeeds the files cut in steel. Whether true or not I am not sure but in my fitting and machining clases in the 60's we had separate files for non ferrous metals.