This episode on Blondihacks, I’m making a tool to emboss rivets! Exclusive videos, drawings, models & plans available on Patreon!
/ quinndunki
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That punch line was to die for, right?
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo just kidding the joke was brilliant😁
Such comments are only formed under the pressure of seeking to leave a lasting impression. 😁
@@oldfarthacks I think I might like that response better than the OP. They're both funny, though. :)
One thing I have learned from watching Quinn is that she is not ashamed to show us her mistakes and how they were fixed.
As a toolmakers apprentice, I'm learning that if you haven't broke it beyond the point of repair, you haven't broken anything. It's not always about being perfect. It's about knowing what you can, and cannot get away with.
Well said!
@@Mint_drakei worked for an auto fixture shop for a bit, and one of the builders said "If you want to be a FIXture builder, you need to know how to FIX things."
The minute I started watching I knew this was going to make an impression.
Very well done, Quinn. I always enjoy seeing you make incremental improvements to your fixtures and procedures.
Well done on the heat treat description. I'm a hobby blacksmith and your color description is what's been taught for centuries. And easily understandable. Well done!
@@markfergerson2145 ouch. :) Hopefully it got worked out, sooner or later. :)
No, tempering is supposed to be done at around 450 F (depending on alloy) for a couple hours (again, depending on alloy). No quenching -- only natural cooling.
@@ilikewaffles3689 1 hour per 1“ thickness is the typical soak time. But we are talking a hobby shop not a tool and die shop. Her description is sufficient for most hobbyists.
I think it’d be awesome to see your take on re-doing the depth stop on the drill press. Those are maddening.
also, CNC lathe machinist here. Sometimes I take a picture of what I'm working on so I can then blow it up on my phone to look it over and see what I need to fix instead of fiddling with a magnifying lens and a light
Bought a used Tormach and one of the things with it was the DinoLite USB scope in a Tormach holder. Can move by hand but get a better image mounted in the spindle. Useful little toy.
That's VERY smort. I have to do that.
I like the idea of the die being replaceable since it allows for different die forms to be inserted if the desired shape doesn't work as you'd like.
Yep, totally agree with that.
Totally- making tools adaptable for different needs is SO useful.
Ahh a video from Quinn, I'm already riveted...let's get it watched 🙂
I was waiting for the ", because shut up! That's why" and you had a real reason, and I learned two things at the same time. Thank you Quin.
The Clickspring channel has a good technique for tempering small parts like these. You put the part to be tempered in a bed of fine brass chips (chips collected while turning brass are perfect) and heat until you get the desired colour. Works a charm!
Quality Ralph Wiggum reference there.👏
22:37 This is the riveting content that we've all come to enjoy.
Quinn, take it from an old train geek. It is fairly common for a steam locomotive to have a rivet not quite perfectly aligned. Look at the engineer’s side of the tender on Pere Marquette 1225. You will spot a couple of rivets that are not perfectly in line with the rest of them.
12:17 - what a great Yahtzee sign!!! 😁
After watching it occurred to me that there would be one or two small benefits to a thru drilled anvil: cleanout, and different profiles (say, rounded/chamfered on one side).
Well done for staying away from precision woodworking this week 😂
I do love a bit of differential tempering.
Great job!! At least this won't or shouldn't be a one-time use tool. I used to be a patrion, but my shop was broken into while I was on vacation. I lost over $30k in tools and electronics. On the bright side of things, your stickers helped identify some of my tools like my mill. Once I get back up and running again, I'll be joining your team again. Love your channel.
Oh that sucks SO much- great that Blondihacks stickers are more than just for prestige LOL
Effin' effers should be effed! Seems like you are the one in need of patreons now... All the best for your recovery.
I love that you’ve used the word “detritus” in the last three videos(or more?). Outstanding work, as always!
Professional tool maker here with everything revolving around heat treating... your original temper was more than likely just fine and it just didn't properly harden the first time. When tempering springs we go for a full blue temper and springs deform and still return to their shape. Light straw is just the starting point and great for retaining fine cutting edges but more likely to chip. Wonderful work all around 😊
Ah, I wondered about that myself- good to hear it from someone who really knows what they're talking about ;)
I have a number of pin punches with replaceable pins in them. Perhaps, if the current one breaks, you might consider making one with interchangeable pins. Make the pins out of all those broken drill bits that most of us keep for no good reason... Another great video BTY.
That was a great re-use idea!
I got an idea! If you aneal a piece of shimstock, use this tool to punch a rivet in that, and bend it to the right shape and harden it again, you might end up with a nice little spring that can help with spacing the rivets out correctly by acting as a little springy dimple index that registers in the previous dimple
I made a couple of knurled nuts for my table top drill press quill stop and they have been a big improvement.
Nice! And, loved your opening humor!!
No complaints on your tempering tantrum 😊 Second cycle had a nice straw color, pretty much perfect. About those fancy ovens, i throw my knives in the regular houshold oven for tempering. The only thing to make sure of is that you do not want to bake an apple pie at the same time as the left over canola oil smell transfers to that apple pie 😂
Second hand laboratory ovens are a great and affordable alternative. I actually got one for free, but was working down the hall from the lab that was throwing it out so grabbed it for free. Especially if it is coming out of somewhere like a ISO-certified testing lab, they get rid of them as soon as they are being a little bit temperamental, but they are still MORE than accurate enough for this kind of work. Also, they are usually bench-top sized and have just about the exact amount of space inside as you need. As you said, you can even just use a normal home oven (though I would recommend getting a separate thermometer of course). Counter-top toaster ovens tend to have a bit more wild temperature swings as they cycle on and off, and bigger ovens are a bit inconveniently sized. One thing I would recommend with a household oven is whacking a great big piece of stone or steel in there, basically a pizza steel or stone, and for the same reason as with pizza; the oven will hold temperature much better. But if you can get an old lab oven for cheap or free...
just kept an eye on the color of the steel when it comes to simple O1 toolsteel tempering in a regular oven, not dark enough it needs to simmer a bit longer. I built my heat treatment oven for about 150 euros. PID temperature controler from china, couple of insulating bricks and kanthal wire to wind the heating element to spec. They are pretty easy to build but you do have to know what you are doing when it comes to mains powered devices. I went from simple map gas torch and house hold oven to heat treat oven, quench plates, specialized oils, dry ice setup and most importantly alot of different recipes. Lab oven might be a nice addition for me if I can get one for cheap as it takes a long time to cool down my oven to temper range.
Yeah, so does used engine oil 😥
@@Andrew_Fernie used engine oil is not suitable, can have alot of contaminants like water and heavy metals. It can even contain enough fuel residue to start a serious fire. Using canola oil is safe and has a known stable quench speed.
I am not a metal worker but I love watching your work!
As someone with a temper problem, I agree. It is very easy to over temper. What helped me is anger management classes... 😂
Would it be a good idea to send a punch to anger management classes? They sound incompatible LOL
My takeaway is: Clean the annealed brass before stamping.
When I was working in tooling, we used a LOT of aluminum for tool structure as most of the stuff we built was not all that critical. What we used to machine aluminum was just plain kerosene. It worked really well and it's a lot cheaper than "store-bought".
“I bent my wookie” A+ Simpsons ref 😂
I look forward to your videos every week.
What timing !! I was looking online to get an idea on how to duplicate rivot impressions for live steam locomotives. Like yours gauge locomotive , my loco is a 3.5 " Atlantic 4-4-2 . So your rivot tool will be scale for your locomotive. You're gonna love running your locomotive. Our club is Richmond Hill Live Steamers . We have a nice Highline for 3.5", 4.75" , and 7.25" on the ground line . * Embossing sure speeds up the look as to using installed rivots in holes . Very Nice Quinn 🙏
Looks like it's going to work fine. Another great video Quinn!
Lovely. That's going to look great on your model.
Beautiful rivet embossing jig, Quinn! You really out do yourself with these jigs! I just clamped a few pieces of metal together for the fence and base, but you really go all out! Very nice. One thing I do remember about that rivet embossing operation is that the 'fixed' spacing doesn't always work out across the width of the sheet. I had to make some adjustments in some of the rivet placements to make it look nice, especially as it got close to the end of a long line of rivets. For example, if you're spacing them 1/4" apart and there's only 7/8" left to the corner where there's already a rivet. It's better to slightly expand, or compress the rivet spacing so that it comes out pleasing rather than having the last one in the row only be 1/8" from the existing corner rivet. Beautiful job as always, Quinn. Well done!
That’s why I do the paper pattern- the spacing is slightly different on each edge as needed to look good. I’ll cover that in more detail in the video where I do the real panels
@@Blondihackssounds like an excellent method of making sure the rivets are all spaced appropriately! Can't wait to see it 😃
The tooling and the results both look great. I also like how you reflect on the iterative nature of design.
This riviting adds a great visual effect on plates!
That works very nicely. Great detail for the panels. Neatly done as usual! Thanks, and Meow to Sprocket.
Great discussion of heat treating. Nice balance of the thorough research we know Quinn will do followed by a reasonable, practical process we can actually do in the home shop. Bravo!
Neat tool! I’d be interested in seeing a depth stop upgrade, the one on my drill press is sloppy as, well, something really sloppy
I build model trains and have faced the issue of embossing on brass. I toyed, but never fully perfected another approach which was to use a gear shaped object attached to a cranked axle. The axle was adjustable in height and spring loaded to produce different levels of embossing. This obviously has draw backs in that you need a different "gear" for each desired feature. To offset rivet features on a seam, you could use two offset back to back gears on the axle. The brass sheet metal would slide under the gear as the crank is turned, with the brass sheets placed over a soft acrylic surface. The reason I never took it further is that it was cheaper for me to design the parts in AutoCAD and have them 3D printed, and then cast.
Hello Quin, I am really happy to see you using the tangential machining tool, good work. Cheers from me. 😷👍👍👍👍👍
You got me at "I bent my Wookiee"
I now have a much deeper appreciation for my NWSL riveting tool. Thanks for explain more on heat treating.
You should be very PROUD of what you accomplished in this video!
ugh, this comment certainly sticks out.
Yes she should, there is nothing depressing here, all looking up and no down side.
Yay!! It's Blondihacks time!!!
Very cool idea you have here. I’ve used your method for making small punches and dies, it also took me a few tries to get the temper right. Great result as always!
Hello from Brazil, I just wanna say that you are awesome! Thanks for all the videos! I'm a real fan of your work!
I’ve torch heat treated a LOT of shop built tooling. Then I built a PID controlled heat treating oven using a toaster oven from the thrift shop. Now when I make tooling, I still use the torch because it’s 100 times faster. 😂
EXACTLY. You COULD do it with ovens and thermometers and such, but a torch and the Mk I eyeball do it fast and perfectly serviceably; especially for one-offs, and when you're not making a ton of hardened tooling. Shop space is often at a premium, so extra things like heat-treat ovens that you use once in a blue moon aren't necessarily a great idea ;)
Truly enjoy your work Great job
Great build Quinn, the faux rivets look good. Looking forward to your upgrades for the drill press depth stop, I can't keep co-workers from take the double nut set ups off drill presses.
That description of heat treating was pretty much all you need to know. The only thing I have to add is something that will not really come up if you are machining. If the piece of steel has been shaped through bending or deforming, like in blacksmithing, then it is best to normalize it before the hardening by heating it to hardening temperature and letting it cool slowly. This releases built up stress in the metal. I think this is also less important the smaller the piece is, so yeah, of limited use for the stuff you are doing. Cool video, and a nice tool.
Bloody marvelous!
Another handy tool for the shop, thanks for sharing Cheers.
A great vlog Quinn as this just took me happily back a little over half a century, to the toolroom where I too learned how to make these kind of tools, that on completion would be handed over to the setter for all day use in the press shop. The hardening and tempering part was done in a draught free corner of the factory; well lit by natural light. The tempering process was done on a small 9" x 9" x1/4" mild steel 'table' over a gas ring with the tool to be tempered placed upright on it. As crude as the setup was, it gave very precise control for an even distribution of heat on the tool via moving the gas ring accordingly if the colour changing bands were not heading up parallel to the cutting edge, especially if it was an irregularly shaped punching tool. The hardest part of the whole process of learning to make a good serviceable tool like this for the novice I was back then? Without hesitation but with a chuckle harking back to the many initial failures, I'd say it was knowing when to turn that gas burner off.
…. And a very punchy delivery too…. 😎 Seriously though… what a great instructional video. The heat treating stuff was super interesting. Thanks, Robert
Very nice! I wonder if a dowel pin Loctited into a holder would have worked for the punch.
enjoyed the process
Thanks Quinn, helps a lot!
Oh very cool- I had been wondering how you'd handle the million or so rivets on things issue, and your tool is a brilliant solution. I just love that you make your own tooling- it's very satisfying to be able to make something you need as opposed to buying it, eh? ;) And it's REALLY wonderful how you can re heat treat steel like that- it's such a wonderful material. Iron and steel made we humans what we are.
Great tool. BTW looking forward to a video about that pesky depth stop as I have the same type on my drill press. 👍
I took a knife making class at a local university and they did tempering in a toaster oven. Set for 450-500F until the piece reached the temp, pull and let cool. The instructor said it was a pretty fool proof method for smaller pieces and only took about 5-10 minutes.
Your videos are always a nice way to wrap up a Saturday. Thanks. I am a patron and soon I will be increasing my patronage:)
Thank you!! ☺️
Hi! thanks for all the fun to watch vidieos. I have one of those drill presses with the double nut depth stop. I put a stiff spring between the nuts and tightened them to a 1/2 inch space between nuts. Now I can turn both nuts together by hand to adjust depth, but they stay in place as you drill multiple holes, not the best solution but it is quick to do.
Really cool to see how this is done! Fun to do something that's for aesthetics for a change too. Would absolutely love a video on a way to improve the two-nut depth stop on the drill press, I've looked for ways to solve this here and there for years and have never found a great solution. I don't have a mill but I'd happily buy a finished piece that if you came up with one!
I'm not a machinist but I feel like I can do it after listening to you explain it so clearly.
The next thing is to become a rivet counter to quite non model builders that critic that accuracy models by counting the number of rivets.
Hey Quinn, have you ever heard of using acetone to transfer ink from paper templates to your workpiece? Works just like temporary tattoos and is pretty handy. Used it for engraving a license/registry number on a boat once.
Thanks Quinn
I was curious what temperature straw was on O1 steel (e.g. if I want to temper in a toaster oven), so I searched on "o1 straw color." Now I know everything I could have ever wanted on what my urine color means. Thanks, internet!
Gauge plate? HUH! Never knew that was a thing. Thanks! 16:05 Give ATF (automatic transmission fluid) a try. I love it. It's made to keep steel from sticking to aluminum. Cheap too. Only a few bucks a quart. 25:19 Have you considered an adjustable height base for your drill press? Being hunched over while doing detail work gets old fast. 26:12 I'd try a wider MDF base for clamping to the drill press table. Mill a pocket for the jig to drop in to. I've found those line lasers to be really handy on a drill press. Just use scotch tape (the translucent stuff) on metal to make the line easily visible. You can also put scotch tape over a hole to see the laser line.
A bit of an overkill suggestion - would it be useful to machine a step at the bottom face of the guide to accept the sheet stock? It may help keep the sheet flat overall and make the process a little less fiddly (nature of working with small parts) Thanks for your vids Quinn, very inspiring stuff.
Es sencillamente fantástico. Llevaba tiempo buscando una solución para esto y agradezco que haya compartido su proyecto. Gracias, y le animo a seguir, es muy reconfortante ver su trabajo tan laborioso como efectivo. Saludos ¡¡👋👍
use a drilbit shank as the riveting tool. easy to replace when it breaks or bend and already hardend.
Nice tool and appears to work very well. You might use a piece (or pieces laid side by side if you are working with a larger metal piece) of 3/4" wide (or 1-1/2" wide) masking tape (the better quality automotive stuff) to stick onto the piece and then just use a ruler and a fine marker or pen to mark the hole locations. This way you can visualize the rivet locations to get an idea of how the end result will look before you start marking the piece. When using a Speedy Stitcher and doing free hand sewing on thick or large pieces of vinyl that won't fit in a sewing machine I often place a piece of masking tape along the edge of where I want the seam to be and just mark the locations on the masking tape where I want the needle to penetrate the vinyl to get evenly spaced straight line stitching - sew right at the edge of the masking tape so I don't go through the tape. Once you have the rivets created the masking tape will peel off nicely for minimum clean up of the piece afterwards. You might also use label paper to print the pattern using the computer and then just peel the back off and stick it onto the piece - might be a bit more work to clean up afterwards though. You might also make a long narrow flat piece of metal to attach to the bottom piece of the tool on the backside and then clamp to the narrow piece at the outer edges to secure it to the drill press platform. Just a couple of thoughts / suggestions.
Great video, I expect I'll be using the hardening advice on plane irons in the future. Also out of curiosity why aren't you using the zero flute chamfers any more?
Great look.
You can maintain concentricity by employing a bit of sacrificial material with a center hole. Works really well in a collet chuck.
Quinn! Look out! Your Dimples are showing! At the beginning, I thought you were making a punch to allow you to quickly and accurately make holes in sheet stock for rivets. Now I see that this is actually a dimpling tool. More tool me😊
Your vidoes inspire me, and bankrupt me at the same time. I am trying to keep up, but wow, machining is expensive. I am in Ontario, what province are you in now? I love your videos and have learned so much from you - thank you!
Very creative ! Thanks !
IMHO the paper template is the way to go... And the rivets look great!
I see what you did here....I've tried to blow that pesky insect off my computer monitor twice before I realised it is on the other side of the glass 🤣
Nice heat treating example Quinn. Small parts made from 01 using your method is what I have done for 40 or more years, 99% of the time It's all you need. However, more complex parts or high-grade (for lack of a better term) tool steels I use my small oven or send out as required. Small pieces of gauge plate from McMaster 👍 In my case they save a lot of time and money. Cheers
Trial and error. great job
Future Quinn is pretty smart, you should listen to her more often
you beat them to the punch!
another alternative to an oven for tempering, secondary heating, heat up a large peice of metal, then lay your part on that heated metal you will have very good control for small parts, though a torch is more then sufficient with practice
Great idea.
If you end up needing to heat treat a lot of small parts, Click Spring has a setup that allows you to gently and evenly sneak up on the temper you're looking for. It avoids directly heating the part with the torch, so you are always able to monitor the progression of the temper and maintain a steady heat so you know how fast that temper will change
Good job 😊
LoL yes, here's my tempering advice. Use your kitchen oven. It works pretty well 😁
Notch the fence. Make it have a shape like ||_____|| with the || being the wings for the fence bolts. then some amount of metal at the front, to be the actual fence, then cut everything else out, so you can clamp right to the bottom plate without having to remake the bottom plate. You could also make new slots on the top fence closer together, and cut the edges off, to give clamping room. But that would require 2 new slots, 2 new tapped holes, etc. The cutting the middle part out is the fastest/easiest by far
Maybe you could improve the clamping by making the upper fence piece narrower. By milling new slots next to the current ones and cutting pieces away from the end to the current slots. You can do it in a way that keeps the fence surface intact and looking that it was the intended design all along..
Excellent work! Would there be value to having a through hole on the die to clear out any sort of spalling or unwanted material? Also, and as you said, heat treating is a huge topic, twenty years ago I was in a science of materials course and learned that tempering is a function of time and temperature. We were making armor from SAE1050 and using home ovens for tempering. IIRC it was something like doubling the time for every 30 degrees Fahrenheit difference, and we had pretty solid success with multi-hour soaks to get the same hardness as significantly higher temperatures. Again, it's been twenty years, but it might be worth research if you or your viewers needed to temper something in an oven and didn't want to get a commercial oven for a small number of projects. Great job doing it the classic way, though. I only had middling success with a torch (although I was usually working with 0.035" - 0.0625" plate)
Only thing I'd add with heat treating is normalize your material at minimum. Annealing would be great, but 3 normalizing cycles (heat to around transformation temp and let air-cool completely for those unfamiliar). For super critical parts, this should be done before machining. It doesn't ever hurt anything, but not doing it definitely can. Im slightly assuming when she mentioned the material ships softened, a normalization has been done; however, "softened" and "dead soft" are actual classifications of materials. "Dead soft" usually refers to an actual annealment, and "softened" usually just means it was air-cooled after forming the stock at the mill. "Softened" materials can and will shift since the inner stresses haven't been completely eliminated, though have been reduced. Quenching will show these as warping.
Seems like you could get away with a good heavy bevel on the fence too. It doesn't need to be full thickness since this will only be used for thin brass. Would help with punch clearance too.
If you have access to a laser printer you can transfer the print to the plate using acetone and remove the backing paper with water. Or you could drill a template for different spacings and just transfer the dots with a felt tip pen
Quinn, or should we call you "Mighty Quinn" (theme song from Manfred Mann), you should mill out a storage area in between the top and bottom to store various dies and the punch. Keeping all the required parts together. The bolts in the slides will act as a lock to keep everything secure. Just a thought. Cheers from another crazy Canuck!
Mark Novak was doing some Luger parts on his channel, and in order to get the trigger a nice straw yellow, he chucked it in a deep fryer full of water. Apparently the temperature he needed for that was about 200°F, and that's also the boiling point of water. Not applicable here where you want a differential tempering effect, but it is a technique that could be useful if you know the specific temperature you want.