I picked a lot of brains here about bluing steel. I wanted to thermally blue a steel watch dial. I ended up not using a flame as my heat source but a heat plate and some copper wire shavings. This was my first test piece and it came out pretty much perfect. It’s uniform in color. Depending how the light hits it, it’s either blue or black. This should be a perfect for a series of watch dials I want to make.

Hi folks,

Very novice metalworker here. I've got an upcoming project where I am needing to trim down a quantity of aluminium pieces, like in the photo. The pieces are quite small.

The width that I've marked with the arrows is approx 25mm. I'm needing to bring it down to 15mm, but keeping the symmetry, so essentially trimming 2.5mm off each side.

I need to do a couple of hundred of these, and consistency is key. The thing I'm not sure about is what sort of tooling I'm best to use. If these were made of wood (which I'm more familiar with) I'd use a router table with a fence. Is there an equivalent of that for metal which I can buy?

I have been welding for around 4 months, helping here and there. I usually cut the material, but every now and again my boss will have me put something together. Before this I had never once worked in any sort of trade before.

Today I helped weld together this porch that we are making for a customer.

I think I need to be a bit more consistent on my speed. Looking for any commentary on my welds, what it is that I could maybe be doing better?

I got a used Evolution Rage 4 carbide cut off saw with the orange multi purpose blade. Cut off quality is pretty nice and an good improvement over hacksaw and file... Some slight ripples are normal for the low tooth number blades? However, I could imagine anice improvements: -Work pice light (cant realy see my markings on the left side) -line laser for easy adjusting -Stiffer clamp -A way to hold short workpieces(might need a real machine vise) -Clamp the cut off pice -length stop for workpiece some points could certainly be realised with simple modifications, others would certainly require a new base plate... have any of you modified your saw or built your own that could provide interesting approaches?

I grew up with this clean and polished and when my dad passed away his sister took it and eventually put it in her back yard where it got all tarnished.

I am trying to figure out what type of metal this is and how to clean it. I’ve started cleaning the back but am afraid to continue. As parts of it have become pink (photos included). I am afraid this is from me cleaning it. I’ve been using lemon and salt. This also could have been from the environment it was kept in (outside in Florida) based on the pink I think it’s Bronze. But I’m not sure and just want to make sure I do my best to restore this and keep it looking great. Any advice on how to clean this and keep it clean would be amazing. The part that is “cleaned off” is on the back so though I might have caused damage hopefully it’s only to the non visible side.

If this is in the wrong place please advise me on where to post. I’m new to Reddit and this is my second post.

Control console for my grandpas boat. I just started welding in my garage in nov-dec last year. This took me about 5 days. It took a lot of hours for something so simple, but I wanted to make sure that it never fails. I’m pretty proud of it though.

It’s 1/4” 2x2 6061 t6 aluminum angle for the frame and 1/8” 6061 skin. Getting that 1/8” to stick to the 1/4” without blowing it out was a learning curve, but I managed thanks to YouTube.

I used tig for everything. I’m running an arccaptian tig200p ac/dc. I got a ck flex lock 250a torch and a cheap Amazon water cooler. 1/8” 2% lanthanated tungsten. Stubby gas lense and a #6 cup. I had the machine maxed out at 200a but let off quite a bit on the pedal so I’m not sure what amps I was actually using most of the time.

When I was doing the frame I also used some helium and that was amazing. That 1/4” was a breeze with just maybe 2-4cfh added to the mix.