Author Topic: Big bung auger  (Read 4579 times)

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Offline Branson

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Big bung auger
« on: August 28, 2014, 07:26:07 PM »
I finally got around to making a handle for the bung auger I found for Sutter's Fort's cooper's shop.  Got the lathe running and went to it  Marked the center and the ends of the handle once I got the wood round, but the rest is freehand and eyeball.  I had a piece of beech I was going to use, but it wasn't quite thick enough, so the handle ended up being made from some left over maple at a full 2 inches square.

What really made me put it off was the thought of chopping the mortise for the tang.  The broad side is 1 1/2 inches at the beginning of the taper, and narrows to 1/4 inch at the top.  The thickness tapers from 3/8 inches down to 1/8 inch where it emerges from the handle to be peined over a brass washer.  Another tool acquisition a couple of weeks ago made the start possible.  Picked up a "portalign" drill attachment that has a built in V block.  It came with an old Craftsman 3/8 inch drill -- back in the day when they made all metal drills.  With this, I bored a perfectly centered 1/8 inch hole through and laid out the mortise.  It took a bunch of chisels -- 3/8 and 1/4 inch pig sticker mortise chisels followed by a little Berg 1/8 mortiser, plus a variety of paring chisels.  Took over an hour to mortise, driving the bit into it to check for fit time and time again.

Jus' so nobody thinks I don't spend time in the shop...

Offline Branson

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2014, 07:32:29 PM »
Forgot to point out that the ruler is a 12 inch Starrett.  It's one of many tools given me by a friend who had no use for them, but wanted to find them a good home.  The handle is 17 inches and the whole thing is 19 inches from tip of the auger to the top of the handle.

Offline Art Rafael

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2014, 08:40:52 PM »
Nicely done, Branson.  Seems you have a good eye for turning, and you have restored a beautiful tool.   Ralph

Offline Bus

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2014, 08:47:37 PM »
Nice Job! That's a good looking handle.

Offline john k

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2014, 09:10:39 PM »
Good work,
Member of PHARTS - Perfect Handle Admiration, Restoration and Torturing Society

Offline Chillylulu

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2014, 10:35:24 PM »
Good looking handle.  How did it feel?

Chilly

Offline Branson

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2014, 07:39:57 AM »
Good looking handle.  How did it feel?
Chilly

Heh.  It felt good to be done with it.  The mortise has been bugging me for months!  I was a little worried about the stubbiness of the ends, since the smaller bung auger I have and both of the tap augers are more tapered, but I found a photo of a big bung auger, supposedly from the 1860s that is close to a duplicate of what I turned.  This one is a hog of an auger and needs all the mass of the wood it can get.

Curiously, this, and the three others that are mine are all blacksmith made with visible forging marks on the inside of the blades.  The smallest was made from a rasp, teeth still visible.

Offline turnnut

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #7 on: August 29, 2014, 09:19:57 PM »
that is interesting about your smaller one.

there are a few guys that collect tools & odd items made from old files and rasp
which makes for an interesting collection.

old days, make it with what you have, or go without.

no computer designs, all brain power.

Offline Chillylulu

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #8 on: August 30, 2014, 12:58:30 AM »
And files had great steel, you knew it would take an edge and harden well.

Chilly

Offline bear_man

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #9 on: September 01, 2014, 01:05:09 AM »
I ran across a 1998 article for "Knives 99" about stories of old knives "supposedly" made from files.  Fellow pointed out that files/rasps were way more expensive and considerably more scarce than knife-worthy steel and that all the rumors of knives made from them that he'd actually run down petered out somewhere around 1900.  I cut-and-pasted the article in a Word document and if anyone wants a copy, email me.

Offline Branson

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #10 on: September 02, 2014, 08:31:55 AM »
I ran across a 1998 article for "Knives 99" about stories of old knives "supposedly" made from files.  Fellow pointed out that files/rasps were way more expensive and considerably more scarce than knife-worthy steel and that all the rumors of knives made from them that he'd actually run down petered out somewhere around 1900.  I cut-and-pasted the article in a Word document and if anyone wants a copy, email me.

Sure, new rasps and files were way more expensive than knife worthy steel.  So?  What does one do with a worn out file?  A worn out rasp was the father of my smallest tap auger -- you can still see the teeth on the inside of the blade.  I even have a short sword blade made from a large file and a small knife made after one shown in a Breughel painting (I watched both being made).  The fellow's "research" is questionable.  I've seen a beautiful 15th Century style dudgeon dagger worn by the fellow who made it.  "Blade by Nicholson," he said. 

My first blacksmith teacher regularly made knives from old files.  The trick, he said, was to anneal the file, and then grind off what remnants of teeth were there since they would leave a texture in the finished knife otherwise.  This he learned either from his father or his  grandfather (he was a third generation traditional German smith).  Bruce Northridge regularly uses rasps for the steel in making trade axes.  I think there is mention of knives made from old files in the Fox Fire books.  Old files are also good for making fire steels -- the carbon content makes for good sparks.  I myself have made small springs from old files -- they work really well.

Offline bear_man

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #11 on: September 05, 2014, 01:07:12 AM »
Branson, I'm not saying knives were never made from old files, just that Brenard Levine in 1998 found reasons not to take all such stories at face value.  Here's a couple quotes from his article — just food for consideration.
  "…if you look at the history of files, and look at the history of knives, it is quickly apparent that prior to this century, files were considerably more scarce, and considerably more valuable than plain working knives.  And much like old knives, but unlike modern files, old files were routinely re-sharpened for use, until they were nearly worn away."  [This I'd heard about but have never knowingly seen.  -bear]
  "…Look at the earliest issues of any American frontier newspaper -- Ohio Valley, Mississippi Delta, Rocky Mountains, Pacific Coast, you name it -- the local merchants are advertising bars of Sheffield cast steel, alongside bacon, flour, crockery, and glassware.  The man who wanted to make his own knife could obtain steel just as readily as gunpowder, lead shot, calico, or whiskey."  [Elsewhere he mentions the re-use of metal during our "frontier days."  I worked for an 80 y/o fellow in the late '60s who routinely tossed rolls of used bob wahr onto a fire to anneal it for re-use, who told me about being paid to burn down old "line shacks," after which he'd salvage the nails.  I've also read of abandoned wagons being taken apart for similar salvage, and know that metal was highly prized in any shape or form.  Nowadays you can see pickups full of "scrap steel" heading for "recycling" — think: shipment to China.  Sheesh.
  "…In 1771 [Jean Jacque] Perret [of Paris] made his hacksaw blades and sharp-edge files out of old knives.  This is not especially surprising, however.  When knives, saws, and files were all hand-made, saws and files were much more difficult and time-consuming to make than plain knives, and therefore they were more valuable.]
  "And what about all the "frontier knives made from files" shown in some knife books?  None of the authors of these works has been able to explain how he determines the "frontier" provenance of his knives.  They might equally well be products of high school forge shops, Boy Scout merit badge projects, World War II G.I. improvisation, or calculated chicanery.  Perhaps a few of these file-knives really were made prior to 1907. But in 27 years studying knives, and researching their history, I have yet to see one that could be proven that old."
    The oldest verified file knife Bernard found was one on a postcard dated 1913, courtesy of someone named Brian Huegel.  As he also noted, the concept became popular with novelists and so on — which, due to his special interest in knives, led him to search for "verified examples."
    I apologize for not opening my copy and cutting-and-pasting the nore interesting parts (to me, anyway) of Bernard's 9-page (10 pt. Times) article.  I'd thought to just hit the high points (again, to me) for the thread conversation.  So much for my being suck-sinked, eh?  *bear grins*

Offline Branson

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #12 on: September 05, 2014, 10:21:34 AM »
OK, I can see more point to the idea, because provenance of old hand made knives  is so often dicey, and "frontier" anything is likely enough to amount to history as it could have been.  Like Washington's original hatchet, where the handle has been replaced five times and the head twice.

Since kegs of nails were carried to California in the 1840s (there are inventories of the contents of emigrant wagons of that period) -- mass produced and cheap cut nails -- I'm not for a second going to fall for the "burning down the building for the nails" story.  Nails were cheap, and the lumber in a building was probably more valuable.

>"…if you look at the history of files, and look at the history of knives, it is quickly apparent that prior to this century, files were considerably more scarce, and considerably more valuable than plain working knives.  And much like old knives, but unlike modern files, old files were routinely re-sharpened for use, until they were nearly worn away."

LOL!  Maybe the files are more scarce because they were turned into knives.   Seriously, though, the expedient for diminishing the expense of buying expensive files was to make a metal scraper.   Those I am familiar with are set up much like a drawknife, with a blade about an inch wide or so wedged into place.  Viet-Namese blacksmiths use them to cheat the file maker out of profit.  The cast brass hilts of Queen Ann cutlasses weren't filed smooth, but were smoothed with scrapers.  It's a sight easier to make one of these (from an old file) than it is to "sharpen" a file, old or new.

I'll be all Missouri like about "sharpening" worn files -- I'll have to be "showed."  They could have got a bit more use out of a file by using an acidic bath, but other than that, the file would have to be annealed, ground flat, and re-toothed with a file maker's chisel while held down on a piece of lead (so as not to damage cuts already made on the other side.  I seem to remember that files were tempered in a bath of molten lead. 

Better off to recycle the files into other objects needing really hard steel until you have made enough profit to buy new files, seems to me.

Offline bear_man

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #13 on: September 06, 2014, 02:24:30 AM »
    Branson:  Erk!  Notice that I didn't say Dale (RIP) "burned down the buildings for the nails."  The burning was done at the direction of his cattle rancher bosses in West Texas for whom Dale cowboyed in his youth, to eliminate places attractive to "undesirables."  Anyway, he salvaged the nails on his own initiative and told me that particular story after quizzing me about having a (commercially-made) "magnet on a stick" in my pickup's gun-rack — still there as I type.  My former business partner and I routinely cleaned up dropped nails or screws around the outside perimeter of the custom homes we built, particularly after, say, the application of exterior sheathing, siding or shingling.  (One reason we existed quite handily without having to invest in even business cards was the bandied-about fact that we kept an extremely clean job-site.)  Silly me, I then took them home, straightened those that needed it and sorted them into piles and then cans or 5-gal. buckets — in the deep-snow wintertime.  My former partner was "above all that."  -bear barks out a laugh.
    I once had the opportunity to question a group of my Hispanic neighbors (whose ancestors had been in the vicinity since ~1597-1615, according to Spanish soldiers' journals) at a b'day party (in the mountains of northern New Mexico, which in 1960 was deemed by one reckoning to be the 3rd poorest county in the US) just how the "Great Depression" had affected them.  A shriveled-up "anciano" standing next to me touched me lightly on the elbow and said, "Oh, (insert my first name here) we didn't even KNOW there was a depression!"  My neighbors saved all manner of "scrap" and lived more frugally than most readers of this forum might imagine.  I carry on that tradition, after living for ~37 amongst them; you oughtta see my "bone-pile" (although mine is neat and sorted to my own peculiar[?] specs).
    I (almost unreservedly) respect skepticism and practice it myself, especially when I'm wearing my "historian & writer" deep-winter hat, but courtesy of my mother, an MS & PhD double-physics graduate from Kansas State Univ. in 1947, "at worst" I limit myself to an I'll-check-that-out (if it piques my interest/focus enough) kind of "Hmmm..." when confronted with something that thumps up against my previously-cherished hypotheses. 
    "…cheap cut nails" don't equal "free," such as my former boss harvested.  I think it was in "The Oregon Trail," by Francis Parkman, that I read of people salvaging metal hardware from burned out wagons.  But you're correct to the extent that I've never read of anyone else salvaging nails from a burned structure — YET.  But I can imagine it.
    Again, if you're truly interested in a copy of the article I quoted from, drop me an email line.  -bear

Offline Branson

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Re: Big bung auger
« Reply #14 on: September 06, 2014, 07:25:58 AM »
Hey Bear, that's an interesting post on a lot of levels.  About the burning the building for the nails, I guess I'm just sensitive about the story generally.  I hear people passing it  on again and again like it was how you got nails back in ye olde dayes.  A lot of folks think that the cut nails were all hand forged, and horribly expensive when in fact they were cheap for the day, hence the numerous kegs of nails that came west in covered wagons.  People have some odd ideas about the "primitive" conditions on the frontiers.  One day at Sutter's Fort a visitor asked what I was making.  I explained that I was making a handle for the cooper's hatchet, and picked up the head to show him.  "But that's not period," he said.  I asked him why he said that.  "Because it's made of steel."

Since all the adults in my childhood had experienced the Great Depression, I've straightened a lot of nails in my day, too.  Sometimes I still do.  Salvaging the hardware from burnt out wagon makes good sense.  Waste not, want not.  I have a fair amount of saved scrap myself.  It's all potentially useful, so why toss it?

Mike