As I wait to see a machinist this week to assess a replacement
roller/shaft for my dead Pepe, I thought I’d scan and post some pix
of a few different textures I have tried with plates that I made
before Pepe’s untimely demise.
I am also waiting on more input about the strength and sturdiness of
the more expensive mills, their ability to hold up to a little more
abuse than the Pepe. Not that much, mind you, but some ; I’d like to
get a 3" wide piece of tool steel to pick up the full hammer texture
of a master plate. I did get some very useful info from Pete at ajs
tools dot com. But I still want to find out about differences in
toughness between hand and powered mills from Durston.
I did find several interesting textures that work well as treatments
I could give to a (tool)steel plate, the idea being to create a
hardened, permanent plate to either roll object-metal (brass, copper,
silver, gold) strips from, or also run 2nd generation , hardenable
tool steel plates from.
There is a lot you can do with hammers, peining or chewey
textures,etc., and I found some fun things by rolling a plate through
against another plate multiple times, which gave a neat-looking
“lizard skin” effect. An incomplete rolling of a chewed-up plate gave
a rough, almost stony look. A very nice crystal/ criss-cross pattern
was done by simply filing or grinding lines into the steel. Starting
with a smooth-sanded plate, fine textures can be transferred to
another plate. Photography conditions in the diemaking dungeon are
not that great, so bear with.
Pix at photobucket:
Note to self : read everything and read it again while paying
attention !!. Whether it’s a fancy, wave-contoured Pinebox Derby car
for my Stepson’s ankle biter, and especially if it’s an email from
someone telling me about rolling mills.
Rolling mills which, in both the manual and powered models, are built
very robust and sturdy, one with a gearmotor comparable in torque
rating and greater in HP than my new motor, and which, no doubt, will
be able to roll out plates with that extra bit of force I want for my
(close to being) Evil Plan…
DS