Block Work in Perth, Western Australia | Home decor

Block Work

Locality: Perth, Western Australia

Phone: +61 423 361 414

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25.01.2022 Two more hammers today, technique works well. No toilet rolls in any shops though, seriously?!

24.01.2022 Had to weld a cast iron bracket today. Cast iron has 50/50 success rate as it is difficult to weld. Process involves weld preps, pre-heating, laying the weld, preening to de-stress the material as it cools then back in the hot oven to cool down slowly. A fair process but more than happy with the results

23.01.2022 Found this beast on the side of the road. The engineer in me said thats too good to throw out, Ive got a job for you, this isnt the end yet. A laborious part of sand casting is reusing sand. Getting the lumps out, making fine sand and adding just enough water to the mix takes a while. So this will be a dough mixer to sand muller conversion, a new life for this machine. Fast forward 12 months and Ive finally got around to commissioning this beast. Someone had a crack at fi...xing it, and the wiring was in disarray. So sorted that mess out and plugged it in, boom, kept blowing the workshop fuse. Motor resistance and capacitors tested fine, phew! That leaves the wiring, the contactor wiring looked too hard for now, so the next easy thing to was check the centrifugal switch in the motor. Pull motor apart and Bingo! The centrifugal switch was seized and with a little nudge it freed itself up. The centrifugal switch switches from the start capacitor to run capacitor. Machine now works perfectly On with the conversion! See more

22.01.2022 Branding iron tested, ready for delivery

21.01.2022 Smokin chips in the workshop

20.01.2022 60mm Mill-Spec brand complete

20.01.2022 Nice surface finish

19.01.2022 Day 2. The beast conversion continues. A sturdy attachment bracket is needed that allows for the shock absorber to be restrained but easily removed for sand removal. There is two existing bolt holes in the front of the casting that will allow a bracket to be permanently mounted to the mixer. The shock absorber will fit into this bracket. Cut the material to size and prepped the edges for welding. Clamped in place on machine and tack welded it to get the right shape. Removed b...racket and finished welding. Next a housing was fabricated and added to the bracket to hold the shock absorber and two clamping studs added. Shock absorber outer tube was cut to size and capped. Put it all together, crossed fingers and turned machine on. Well Im impressed, smooth and solid. Onwards to the spring loaded bowl scrapper. What? I hear you say! Well the wettish sand will stick to the sides of the bowl and build up because of the consistency of it. Bowl scrapper is needed to ensure no sand is left unmixed. Coincidently the axle studs can double as a mounting point for another bracket. I cant be bothered describing the process of how it was built, mistakes were made, first prototype didnt work that well. Start again! But we got there in the end. See the pictures of the scraper, thats how its done. Dont away yet, theres still more to come... See more

19.01.2022 Needed a 54&60mm coffee tamper so made a reversible stainless version

17.01.2022 Second go. Tried a different approach based on Chvorinovs rule and use some huge risers each end being feed by a single sprue. Here is the result, worked out ok, a very big positive is there is no shrinkage or porosity, its a bit of a gnarly casting, surface finish pretty average. Technique needs work.

15.01.2022 4140 steel pin, challenging to machine being so slender

15.01.2022 School holiday fun, set up a sand pendulum, these things are very cool

15.01.2022 These electronic housings are going to be fitted to mining vehicles in Russia.

15.01.2022 Day 3. Final touches. Got to make a bottom scrapper/guide bracket. Pretty straight forward, get the angles right then weld. I like to put grub screws in the corner of the larger tube to give a more square and solid attachment to the smaller tube. Once this was complete the assembly was finished. Next disassemble everything and using a wire brush cup in an angle grinder give the parts a clean up. Then 3 coats of clear satin spray paint. Job done. Tomorrow is the big test. Will post a video of it working.

14.01.2022 Latest branding iron ready for delivery. Martyn needed a brand to mark his creations, check out his timber work page at: https://www.facebook.com/MadebyMart/

14.01.2022 Machining with a face mill

14.01.2022 Hot in the workshop cutting big threads today. Love it

13.01.2022 Got a job on. If anyone out there needs machining, welding or design, then contact Block Work

13.01.2022 Latest branding iron kit for a customer. Keep an eye out for serving plater boards with the Boards Apart logo on them. They are large serving boards that can split in two for easy storage

12.01.2022 Found a weathered longboard and some plywood. Bit of shaping and its good as new

10.01.2022 Success! Loaded the bowl up with 5kg of dry sand mix, which wasnt enough. Added another 5kg and then water. After 5 minutes of mixing the batch increased in volume which is good, nice fluffy green sand. I think it might be better with slightly less sand for better mixing. Added too much water to the mix, green sand has quite a dry consistency and doesnt stick to your hands and breaks cleanly. Overall, very happy with the build. The capacity of sand processed exceeded expectations and the mixer is very powerful. The best bit is, the rolling assembly can be removed and can still mix dough in the machine!

09.01.2022 Surface grinding in the mill, turned out quite well

08.01.2022 Made an adapter to refill camping gas cylinders from dirt cheap readily available gas cylinders. Cheap to refill them, about $3!

08.01.2022 Mill-Spec branding iron being cut today

05.01.2022 This is a mock up of a bee keepers brand for marking their bee boxes

04.01.2022 Gravity sand pattern

04.01.2022 Woo hoo! The reason for the gnarly casting yesterday was the metal flow rate was not high enough I so ended up pouring the melt down one of the risers, which was an improvement but still not satisfactory. Third try, eliminated the sprue and runners and tipped it straight into one of the risers. This is not ideal, causes too much turbulent flow, flow needs to be steady and laminar. But hey, its works pretty good. To prove its a repeatable process decided to use the same technique again and ended up with two perfect hammer heads. Now got to work out how to clean them up for a nice surface finish. The sand machine works great for refurbishing sand too.

03.01.2022 Parting off a Branding iron adapter

03.01.2022 With an abundance of green sand now available, its time to make something with it. Decided on a hammer, which will be a bit of a challenge. The large volume of material in the hammer head will cause shrinkage to occur and needs to be considered. It will also would require a sand insert for the handle hole. Ive not done sand core inserts yet, so will be interesting. Oh, and to make it even harder its going to be made of pure copper. First thing to do is make wooden patterns.... I designed the hammer in 3D CAD first and then traced the outlines on to some timber on all sides. Then cut the shape out with the bandsaw and shaped it with the 72x2 belt grinder. Got to add draft on the sides which matter for ease of removal from the green sand. The sand core pattern was made on the CNC router and glued together. The parts were painted for a smooth finish. See more

03.01.2022 Have an old pot belly that had broken at the front. Whilst the cast rods are still out may as well fix this too.

01.01.2022 Day 1 of the build. Good sand mullers use rollers and guiding blades to crush/mix the sand and bentonite, then water is added. Bought some heavy cast iron/poly wheels to reduce wear and damage to the mixing bowl. With no plans and using whatever materials on hand, preceded to make a sturdy axle. To get the finished mulled sand out of the mixing bowl, the entire crushing assembly will need to be removed so the sand can be easily accessed with a dust pan. The entire crushing as...sembly will also need to be spring loaded to reduce shock loads on the front of the mixer and bowl. The mixer body is cast iron and doesnt like those kinds of loads at all. Ive used tight fitting telescoping SHS tube for other projects and love it. Had a big dirty spring Id salvaged from somewhere, which will make a perfect shock absorber. The plan had formed, so got busy making a bracket which attaches to the axle and will fit inside a larger tube that will house the spring for the shock absorber. Really got to pull myself up which is hard because I just want to start building but theres a lot to nut out, weld preps to do, drilling and cutting before the build takes shape The next instalment is going to be pretty cool. See more

01.01.2022 The big melt. Prepared the green sand, then used the patterns to make the mould. Needed to have enough material available in a riser to allow for shrinkage. The riser can act as a reservoir of molten metal and should turn solid after the part has solidified. This way the part can draw as much material it needs to form a full part. Had to look up good old Chvorinovs rule for metal casting. But in the end I went with my gut instinct for riser size. Melted about 4kg of pure cop...per, melting point 1085 deg C. Aluminium is 660 deg C, and quicker to melt, but copper is way more sublime. So poured the melt, waited 20 minutes for it to freeze, then cracked into the mould. Initially looked good, but after checking out the riser inlet to the hammer face, shrinkage had occurred. Shouldve paid more attention to Chvorinovs rule! The runners werent big enough either, they blocked up quick. The sand insert worked a treat for the handle hole, surface finish not too bad, shame about the hammer face though. Oh well, try again. See more

01.01.2022 19mm Jarrah cutting board and some other trinkets