Shop hazzards
So tonight I went out to Home Depot in search of some abrasives which could take off forge scale a little faster and more economically than the flap wheels and gator wheels I've been using. I can get a mirror polish out of what I'm doing as you can see here:
but the right leg alone took about 2.5 hours to polish, and the whole deal cost me about $20 in abrasives to do. You can see what the forge scale looks like in some of the darker gray pieces here, in contrast to the polished pieces next to them:
So I got a new brand of flap wheel I hadn't tried before that claims 20x the performance. I'm not sure how they measure that, but it sounded good at the time. I also picked up a coarse abrasive stripping wheel that looked interesting and a twisted-wire wire wheel for my angle grinder, which is the one I tried out first. here are the pros and cons I found with it:
Pros:
1. Does an OK job on the forge scale
2. Doesn't scratch the surface in an obvious way
3. Doesn't heat up the plates very quickly (which is important because over heating can kill the temper)
4. Should last a very long time
Cons:
1. Cost $17
2. While it doesn't dig through forge scale quickly, it eats any human flesh it touches like a starving zombie.
but the right leg alone took about 2.5 hours to polish, and the whole deal cost me about $20 in abrasives to do. You can see what the forge scale looks like in some of the darker gray pieces here, in contrast to the polished pieces next to them:
So I got a new brand of flap wheel I hadn't tried before that claims 20x the performance. I'm not sure how they measure that, but it sounded good at the time. I also picked up a coarse abrasive stripping wheel that looked interesting and a twisted-wire wire wheel for my angle grinder, which is the one I tried out first. here are the pros and cons I found with it:
Pros:
1. Does an OK job on the forge scale
2. Doesn't scratch the surface in an obvious way
3. Doesn't heat up the plates very quickly (which is important because over heating can kill the temper)
4. Should last a very long time
Cons:
1. Cost $17
2. While it doesn't dig through forge scale quickly, it eats any human flesh it touches like a starving zombie.
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