[Jewelry making - Article 00080] - Re: [Orchid] Hammer Textured Rolling Mill?

[Dar Shelton]

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    The calm and reasonable thing to do would be wait till next week,
    and order a new bigger sprocket (I've been calling them gears, but
    they are sprockets) for my rolling mill to give it more power. The
    patient thing would be to wait till it has more more torque, and not
    try to run a hot piece of tool steel against the master plate, to not
    risk jamming the mill again, or ruining the temper on the master
    plate. The patient thing.... the BORING thing !!!, and obsession just
    doesn't work that way, so of course I went ahead and tried that
    anyway. The first plates went about halfway through as the motor
    slowed and the gear teeth inside the mill started making that
    frightening loud banging noise they do when they're pushed harder
    than they like... and then it stopped. Bang bang bang went the rescue
    hammer to open up the mill, and I got a good usable section, so I set
    the mill up again for another run, this time with my fine-hammered
    master plate. The fine-hammered plate has a shallower texture, so I
    didn't need the mill to take such a deep bite as the previous run, so
    that allowed it to run all the way through, just barely. Lots of loud
    protests from those angry gear teeth, the motor slowed almost to a
    halt, the mill pulled out of alignment on the table things are bolted
    to, before it finally spit out the newly rolled plates. Not
    surprisingly, the steel had cooled down enough so that by the end of
    the run, it wasn't forming as well as it was at the start, but there
    is enough usable length for the project. Lots of boring details about
    this whole adventure I'm not taking the time to write about. Some of
    that is because I want to keep the process er.... rolling along, and
    write about what I learn afterwards also, instead of about all the
    details that got me there(some of which may not end up being so
    important), where I am not yet. But this was a big one, a hot tool
    steel plate rolled against a hardened, hammered master plate,
    creating a production plate that will deliver the desired hammer
    texture as depressions in the subject metal sheet, 24g silver in this
    case. As promised, pix will follow before long. I understand that
    there are easier ways to go about this but those require spending
    money and time waiting patiently. Today I don't have a bigger mill
    with a 2 or 3 hp motor, nor do I want to buy one now. Now is about
    now, and now I want to use what I have and make it work ; I'm funny
    like that. 

Dar Shelton
sheltech.net
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