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The Folding Knife (& Switchblade) Forum The materials, techniques and the designing of folding knives.

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  #1  
Old 01-02-2013, 08:43 PM
rebglass rebglass is offline
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Head spinner from drill rod

I love domed pins and seem to go through head spinners quickly. I've seen that some make head spinners from drill rod. How do you do it? How do you make the dimple in the tip of the rod?
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Old 01-03-2013, 08:40 AM
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Don Robinson Don Robinson is offline
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I've made a few using my metal lathe with a tool bit, or grind a radius on the point of a drill.

Then I file a notch across the point to kind of give it two edges.
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Old 01-05-2013, 03:14 AM
Craigb Craigb is offline
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I make my own from drill rod because the ones you buy don?t last. I use a lathe like Don. I center drill the rod just a little (after facing) then use a #31 drill bit. I drill just until the taper of the bit (tip) cannot be seen. Then I chuck it in a cordless drill and grind the taper on my belt grinder. Just go slow and watch the edge thickness around the dimple you drilled and keep it even.

Make several of them about 2 -3 inches long and dimple and taper both ends. File the notches like Don said on one end and leave the other plain. Heat treat them and try them out.

Fine tune them when you use them. If they cut into the handle material too much before the pin is domed, grind a little off the end. I use a disc grinder with a tool rest but your belt grinder with a tool rest set at 90 will work with something like a 220 belt. Just grind it a little to shallow the dimple out a little and try it again. Might need to taper it a little also.

When you get one that works set it aside and keep it as a guide for the others when you make them. If one end gets bad just grind it off enough so you will not forget which end works. Use D2 if you can but O1 will work also. Start with nickel silver or brass pins until you get it working like you want. Stainless is hard on the spinners.

When you are spinning the pins put a little dab of grease on the pin. Start with the end that has the notches until the pin is rounded and change to the plain one.

You will need a backup pin for the other side I use nickel silver and make them the same way. Some folks use the same hardened spinners to back up with it just depends on how you want to do it. Practice with some scrap handle material and it will not take long to get working.

Don?t forget to polish the domed pins when you get them domed and holding correctly. I use a 3 mm craytex in a mandrel with a Dremel to polish. Use a Dremel burr to cut a dimple into the craytex and polish the pin. If you can?t keep the craytex on the pin cut the dimple in it again.

I get the mandrels and craytex from Rio Grande jewelry supply, they list them as polishing pins. Get a six pack of the mandrels and a 3 mm kit until you find out what color (grit) you like. I use the red, brown and grey the most with a blue once and a while.

http://www.riogrande.com/Search/polishing-pin

I will get some pictures for you on peening stainless bolsters and see if that helps. My shop is a mess now and it might take a week or so.


Craig
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Old 01-05-2013, 07:53 PM
rebglass rebglass is offline
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head spinners from drill rod

Thanks. I have been trying to use old drill bits. Too hard to drill dimple in. Don't have a lathe. I think I will try ordering some drill rod and see if I can make some headway with something not quite so hard.
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Old 01-06-2013, 07:57 AM
Imakethings Imakethings is offline
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Did you anneal the old drill bits before trying to use them for this purpose?
Stupid question, I know, but I wanna make sure that you covered all your bases.
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Old 01-06-2013, 09:40 AM
rebglass rebglass is offline
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Well, I'm embarrassed to say, no. I'm not sure what kind of steel they are and didn't know how to heat treat them again to get them hard. So I tried a little Dremel grinder and a couple of other things.
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Old 01-06-2013, 05:04 PM
Imakethings Imakethings is offline
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Well you can do the quick tests, I mean, after all they're already broken.
Here's the fast and dirty way to do it to get mediocre to good results.

Firstly anneal those suckers, have a bonfire, do some BBQ out in the back yard with charcoal, anything to get them up to a medium or high yellow heat with a nice long slow cool down. I'm a fan of the bonfire method myself, putting them in a metal container that is vented saves you a lot of hassle in finding them after the fire is out. For something that small I'd suggest a pipe nipple and two end caps with some small holes drilled in.

Once you dig em out, see if a file will 'bite' on them or if it skates. If it skates, you either didn't get it up to temperature, or it's some strange exotic that I'd suggest against messing with. See if they will bend or break at this point too, bending is good since you can use that as a litmus test later to see if they harden.

Now for the HT options, I'm assuming that these are probably around 1/8" - 1/4" so the HT should go pretty quick. Also I'd like to remind you that this is my own 'fast and dirty' method for ballparking what type of steel I'm looking at.

1. See if it's some flavor of air quench. Take it to bright yellow, set aside and let cool. Check with the file and see if it skates or not. See if it will bend or not.

2. Is it an oil quench? Do the same as above, but quench in your preferred oil (for tests I just use whatever I've drained out of my car recently for a quench, no reason to use the good stuff).

3. Still fairly soft and pliable? Try brine (I do 2 cups of salt to 1 gal of H2O, your mileage may vary), then try regular water.

4. No luck? Well, at this point I condemn it to one of two bins and assume it's mild steel. Short pieces in one, longer in the other.

Takes a bit to do the first step, but the other 4 are pretty quick to run though, most of the stuff I use is scrap anyway so I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what's what and I can land in the right ballpark.
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