Curves!

I am tired.

I just got done assembling my new planishing hammer, which is a tool I did not need until Harbor Freight put it on sale. After that, I needed it. Real bad.

I shelled out about $68 for a stand, a planishing hammer frame, a control pedal, several anvils, and an air hammer. Put it all together, and you get a thing that can turn a flat piece of metal into a dog dish in 10 or 15 minutes. Can’t touch it anywhere else for under $185.

For a long time, I’ve wanted an English wheel and a planishing hammer. I can weld stuff, sort of, and I can cut stuff, but making flat stuff into curved stuff…can’t do that. I am also unable to turn flat stuff into stuff with neat corners, such as boxes. I need a finger brake.

Harbor Freight sells a lot of real junk, but here and there, they score. Their 20-ton press is okay, so I got one. I’ve seen excellent Harbor Freight screwdrivers that were a lot tougher than Craftsmans. The planishing hammer gets mixed reviews, but most people agree it does function. Some complain about the air hammer wearing out in a hurry. My private suspicion: no one told them to oil it.

Just a guess.

I don’t have much interest in using a planishing hammer right now. I would have preferred to leave it in the box and take it out after the move to northern Florida. The problem with that is that Harbor Freight tools have to be assembled and operated before you can be sure you want to keep them. That’s true of any tool, but it’s really, seriously true of Harbor Freight tools. You never know which parts will be missing or which vital component won’t fit even after you hit it with a big hammer.

Harbor Freight does not provide the bolts to attach the planishing hammer to the stand. That seems petty of them. I dug out some bolts of my own, and in doing so, I saw one of the great truths of the tool hobby in action.

A while back I dismantled a treadmill to get free steel and a motor. I had to take out some sturdy bolts with nice black locknuts. They have been lying around the garage for several months. The other day, I threw one of the four bolts out. Guess what I needed today? Four matching bolts.

As soon as you throw a piece of junk out, it will become vital to your survival. It never fails. If you have a piece of junk in your garage, and you can’t remember why you kept it, throw it out. Tomorrow, you will remember, and you’ll have to spend at least fifty bucks to replace it.

The planishing hammer is attached to the stand with three bolts.

I think tomorrow I’ll fire it up. I have some crappy aluminum sheet. I just want to see if the hammer functions and hits the work where it’s supposed to. If the air hammer isn’t aligned with the anvil, you get half-moons instead of round hammer dents.

Once I know it works, I’ll probably put it back in the boxes.

Then the next day I’ll need to use it.

The planishing hammer looks very nice. I was shocked. Everything lines up. The steel is heavy. I don’t think American manufacturing is ever coming back, except in my garage. The Chinese are getting too good.

I was hoping I could eventually make a motorcycle fender or two with the planishing hammer, but I don’t know if that’s possible. I believe the English wheel is more appropriate. But Harbor Freight hasn’t put those on sale.

I looked around on the web to find out where I could get a cheap English wheel. For some reason, you never see used ones on Ebay any more. I feel so stupid for passing them by in years past.

Guess what I found out? Harbor Freight’s English wheel gets fantastic reviews. Who’d have thunk it? As I understand it, they used to make a crappy one, and then a couple of years back they modified it, and now everyone loves it. I checked the usual list of Chinese suspects. Grizzly. Eastwood. Harbor Freight came out on top. Big surprise.

Real men shape metal with mallets and hammers, using high-tech accessories like stumps and bags of sand. I am not interested in that. I’ve seen people using the planishing hammer and English wheel, and their experience looked a lot more appealing than pounding a stump.

It would be nice to have an anvil, though. A lot of sheet metal doodads get dented, and it would be convenient to be able to tap dents out on an anvil. It’s not the same as wearing yourself out, planishing flat metal and turning it into ashtrays and hubcaps. It’s quick.

I just saw a video of a guy using an air hammer to beat a bend out of 1/8″ metal with an air hammer. His name is Kevin Caron. He makes a lot of welding videos. He had a sculpture component that needed to be beaten into line, and he got out the air hammer and went to the anvil. Whacked it right out. Neat.

Getting an anvil should be easy, right? I mean, they’re cheap. They’re just lumps of steel.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. How wrong you are. A good anvil costs hundreds of dollars. Don’t ask me why.

I read that some anvils are made of cast iron. You couldn’t get me near one of those. Cast iron breaks, and when you break a metal object with a hammer, little bits of it can fly off like bullets. I saw one go through my cousin’s jeans, into his skin, and a couple of inches upward after it hit his shin bone. Well, I didn’t actually see it. I saw him fall on the ground for no apparent reason, complaining about the pain in his leg.

Real anvils have hardened steel tops.

In other news, I’m about to make a strop. This is a sort of leather whetstone. You take a piece of cowhide, glue it to a board, and impregnate it with an abrasive such as chromium oxide. I got the leather and the abrasive, and I’m about to make the wood part.

You can make a plain old rectangle for the base of your strop, but I wanted to put a handle on mine, so I am thinking I’ll carve one out. Problem: I would have to make convex curves with radiused corners. I can do that with a coping saw and a rasp, but that’s the caveman way. I would rather use a spokeshave. This is a weird little plane that whittles wood. You can take a square object like a two-by-two and turn it into a rounded object like a club or an axe handle.

Naturally, I ordered a couple of spokeshaves. This is what I do. I am waiting for them now. I got a flat-bottomed one (Stanley 151) for relatively straight things, and I got one with a round bottom (Stanley 51R) for concave curves. The 51R is what I’ll need for the strop. I’ll still need the coping saw, but I’ll be finishing the strop off by cutting, not by filing.

I could have just made a rectangular base, but if you’re going to be a tool guy, be a tool guy. That’s what I say.

Just don’t get bogged down with stumps and sand bags.

I learned interesting things about chromium oxide. You can get it cheap from China and Russia, but you don’t want to do that. The particles are too big. you want sub-micron particles. I got a product made by Formax, a company I already knew of because I had bought its abrasive belt grease. It would have been cool to get a pound for under ten bucks from overseas, but the particles would have been huge, and big particles mean big scratches.

I’m sorry if my life is too cool for you. I wish everyone could have a planishing hammer.

I feel my strength coming back. Time to talk to Marvin and Maynard. Maybe I’ll post a photo if I planish anything.