Laying out a steady rest ring

Ha, ha. No steel toes. Also these crocs melt pretty easily, but they are great for just puttering around. I wear work boots when I'm forging. Interestingly enough, shoes like clogs and crocs are safer than boots if you don't make sure to pull your pants legs over the open tops of the boots, especially when working on small fiddly bits. Dropping a hot bit into your shoe can be a life changing experience, especially if you have diabetes.
I learned to pull my Levis over my boots when cutting with an O/A torch. Previously, I wore them tuckled into my boots to keep them from getting full of mud. Dropping some molten slag into my boot was a turning point. To this day, some forty years later, I never tuck my Levis into my boots.
 
I am making a simple steady rest. It was forged from a 3/4" pipe nipple. There was something I learned about forging pipe. Of course, never quench it. If making a square cross section, do not go all the way to square until the scrolling is nearly complete, else the sides will collapse and cannot be fixed.

An interesting choice of starting materials. Why pipe rather than bar stock?

I am fortunate to have a good supply of heavy iron and probably would have elected to cut the piece from 3/4" or 1" plate.
 
An interesting choice of starting materials. Why pipe rather than bar stock?

I am fortunate to have a good supply of heavy iron and probably would have elected to cut the piece from 3/4" or 1" plate.

After my experience, as well as consultation with experts (Megan Crowley demoing at the California Blacksmith Association spring conference), solid would have been a better choice. I thought that it would have saved material, since this pipe has pretty good strength, but the problem is that the pipe always wants to collapse. It is essentially impossible to keep it open, and Megan told me that it is even harder hot. A better choice would have been beefy flat bar, bent the hard way. Or, if you want to economize, a fabricated square tube made from rings and semi circular bands of flat bar. Full coverage welding would be unnecessary.
 
I'd love to see photos of that too!
-brino

It's a sad looking, makeshift tool. I put it together mainly for demos where I cannot use a real guillotine tool . I'll get a couple photos of both. The "knurling" that these tools produce is not up to the standards of a modern lathe knurling tool, but they give the piece an old timey look. I made a fully forged jeweler's saw, and it looked the part with guillotine forged thumbscrews.
 
After my experience, as well as consultation with experts (Megan Crowley demoing at the California Blacksmith Association spring conference), solid would have been a better choice. I thought that it would have saved material, since this pipe has pretty good strength, but the problem is that the pipe always wants to collapse. It is essentially impossible to keep it open, and Megan told me that it is even harder hot. A better choice would have been beefy flat bar, bent the hard way. Or, if you want to economize, a fabricated square tube made from rings and semi circular bands of flat bar. Full coverage welding would be unnecessary.
To prevent co;;apse when using pipe or tubing with transverse mounting holes. I will weld in a bushing. In the case of my trailer hitch, a bushing machined to fit inside the square tube and tack welded to secure in place. I can torque a 5/8" grade 8 bolt to over 300 lb-ft with no fear. I used the same approach on the transome on my boat when I rebuilt it. In that case, the wood compresses over time and water seeps in causing rot. I machined stainless steel bushings for the motor mount and aluminum bushings for all the other through holes. No concerns about the fasteners loosening.

In your case, since you can't insert a bushing from the inside, I would bore the holes oversize and machine bushings to fit and weld them in.

Regarding alternative starting materials. 1/2"x1" flat stock shouldn't be too bad to work. It is essentially the material used to make draft horse shoes and the geometry isn't to much different. The leg vise and bending fork would be my weapons of choice with corrections for twist at the anvil. Once the basic shape was roughed out, some tweaking on the anvil horn or cone should get you close to a finished form.
 
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Regarding alternative starting materials. 1/2"x1" flat stock shouldn't be too bad to work. It is essentially the material used to make draft horse shoes and the geometry isn't to much different. The leg vise and bending fork would be my weapons of choice with corrections for twist at the anvil. Once the basic shape was roughed out, some tweaking on the anvil horn or cone should get you close to a finished form.

Hi RJ. This is exactly how I would do it now, after the previous experience. 1/2 x 1 would be done in about a third the time required to bend that dumb pipe.
 
Experience is a good teacher. Your bending the pipe reminded me of a workshop we hosted with Francis Whittaker in the late seventies. Francis was showing us how to bend angle iron into a curve using bending forks. The problem with angle iron is if you try to bend it with one leg flat, it curves due to stretching. So first you bend the other leg in the opposite direction and when you bend your desired bend, the first curve straightens out to flat.
 
I'd love to see photos of that too!
-brino

Here are some photos next to coins for size comparison. This tool handles maximum 5/8" stock and will fit a 3/4" hardy hole or vise.
 

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I finally had a chance to use the steady rest. Someone gave me an angle grinder handle, but it had the wrong size screw thread. I had to turn it down to press it into the next size up. It needed to be a slightly smaller diameter because the larger screw didn't have enough meat to bore it out too much. The angle grinder handle could not be chucked any closer to the cutter because of the flange and the narrow SB spindle bore. It was too floppy to turn it with that much stickout. There were some Internet warnings about needing to really make the steady rest beefy. There were also warnings about difficulties in adjusting the slotted fingers. No such problems. It was solid and the forged thumbscrews worked beautifully.
 

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