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Old 01-26-2016, 08:58 PM
LCooper LCooper is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 23
Making a complex spring?

Years ago I bought a 1/6th sheet Ryobi palm sander. Absolutely love that sander as it's sanded lots of knife handles and also recurve bows I make. It's small size works great. I have a mouse sander and hate it along with Velcro sand paper. Problem is one of the springs that holds down the sand paper broke. They or no one else I can find make a 1/6th sheet palm sander.

So to make a long story short I got some flat stock spring steel metal (annealed from Brownells) have cut it down on my band saw and made a 9" long 5/64" round stock spring steel rod. I have one spring that I can use for a bend template. It's basically a U shaped spring with two additional 90 degree bends at each end. In fact all bends are extremely tight 90 degree bends and almost back to back on each end.
Questions are:
1. Should I be able to bend these tight 90 degree bends in the annealed rod cold?
2. If not cold should I heat it up to cherry red make the bends and then let them slowly warm to room temp.
3. After hopefully making said spring should I bring it up to nonmagnetic (1475) should I quench in warm oil or water? One local old timer told me spring steel should be quenched in water but I'm worried of steal of this size diameter.
4. After hardening what temper should I do to keep at optimum level for a spring?

FYI I do have a electric PID controlled kiln and a electric PID controlled tempering oven.

Last edited by LCooper; 01-26-2016 at 09:06 PM.
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