t shirts all over the world.....

...
sometimes im freaked out how weird this world is....i've been writing envelopes and customs declarations for the last couple of nights sending t shirts from south america to spain, from england to dearborn michigan, not to mention all the aussie mates....i'm totally humbled.

thankyou to all who have bought a shirt....i know all the boys have been doing it for years and i've got a stack waist high but its just such a thing to know that people will give you money cause they dig what you are doing.

thank you again.....im up to date with all orders til tonight....expect them soon i suppose...

big thanks to my local post office and postmaster BK and his helper GC.....i know what i need to do now.......

mm

my first real T shirts in stock blokes......

......ok, so i've got the BIG CARTEL thingo set up.... you can see it in the side bar at the top, and i've worked out that its really expensive to post shit out of this country...all prices include shipping so i hope its not too expensive for everyone...maybe next time i gotta get only one side printed to keep the cost down a bit....anyway.... i'm sure you will let me know what you reckon.

i can say that the shirts are real nice quality (i bought the good ones) and the printing is A1...not to mention some sick artwork by by man jed.... the machine roboshed on the front and the wind in the face dead man on the back.

i've got small, medium, large and extra large......send me an email at machineshed@bigpond.com if you want me to measure size for you......thanks ay!....

reading.....

reading and reading.....and more reading and researching.

my vincent motor is calling for attention.....

im almost ready to start.

michael's 6 over movie...ready to go boys and girls...

get a load of it.......shot of hoodlums drag racing tractors taken by troy.......

machine wall photos.....george.

dr john like a mofo....

go get the new dr john album if you wanna hear some goooooood shit.....LOCKED DOWN

q

jeds shovel built by paul at evolution...

 you should have seen his face......smile from this side to that side.....

if you need some shit done in sydney give paul a buzz he knows whats swat....and how to weld as you can see.....

hardening the sprocket....an update

the response to my previous post from all over the world has been just phenomenal to say the least....i've had probably 20 emails from blokes offering advice, to words of encouragement, to leads on appropriate books to refer to.....

here are a couple......

from aaron in australia:


Hi Matt,
Read you post on hardening. It is frustrating when you approach a craftsman and ask to understand more of what makes their skills so appreciated & important to be passed on & not lost to our 'progress'. Not all are like what you have encoutned though, good luck finding others who get it.

Just a note, a quick dip into my old Mech Eng text books & most gear/splines are case-hardened not fully hardended. The reason being you want the surface (i.e 0.05mm) to have high wear resistance, but needs overall strength to withstand bending & torsional loads. Full harden steels can become brittle and may get a fracture.

Case Hardening of a gear tends to be by induction coil to surface is evenly heated quickly to above the point that ferrite starts to form (approx >800c for most carbon steels) but the internal is kept below the Eutectoid temp (<727C for most Carbon Steels). As you normally need to heat quickly and accurately this is not simple to do this via flame heating (but not impossible).
When quenched the outside surface will form the Martensite struture you need for hardening. Some tempering will control the hardness, but not a major issue (IMHO) for your requirements.

I will scan if I have any literature on heating gears like this.

Sorry for the long-winded tech filled crap, but thought it might assist to understand what needs to be achieved for the sproket to work optimally

Just another thing.. Read you welded the sproket after annealing them? Did you re-anneal the finished sproket? The carbon steel in each sprocket may be different  and the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) may have formed martensite (the harden form of steel) & can get weld fractures at the joints. Tis unlikely, but thought it best to tell you while on the topic of heat treatments.

I am sorry, I haven't provided a solution to what you need to do, but though would pass on some info to you to help achieve the goal. Will dig my old books again & speak with my old toolmakers at work (they are the helpful type)

Cheers,
A




from Marcel in Amsterdam:

Hello Matt,

This weekend we have in Amsterdam a rusty swap meeting, all bikers coming together, live music, parts market.
So not much at home. for the moment.

to Hardening your sprocket,  it will be like this  in short terms,

going to around 900 degree  temparture ( slowly bringing it up in temp.) , for the size of the sprockets   a holding time 30 minutes  at 900 degree
then wait just a few seconds, and cool it in harderning oil  ( special oil, up to 1000 degree)

after that it needs tempering, getting out some stress.  mostly done arround 500 - 600 degree temp.  hold it for 30 minutes
then slowy cooled down in air to normal 25 degree.

what whe also do is, when whe want some extra hardness after the hardening proces, put it in a freezer at -80 degree, for at least 6 hours

The only thing is at my company , whe do the hardening process in a furnace.  with controlled temparture, bring it up exactly how we want it to be.
and cool it at the right moment.

If you want to do this by torchflame, you need at least some extra torches to get a constant heated surface.
But it will not be the same character as with a furnace hardening
On this quest i come back on this monday, ask my colleagues  what's best to do.

I also added some explanation about hardening end tempering i found in englisch.

 The company i work for is not situated in Australia, but i found a company who does a simulary job as whe do.  Heat treatments

It's called   Heat Treatment Australia, maby they can also help you.



Best regards,

Marcel




and from the always insightful Pete from Occhio Lungo:


If you just need case hardening, not through hardening, you have some choices. The simple route is to use Kasenit or something similar. Just follow the instructions on the can, heat it up, quench in water, dip it in the Kasenit (I think it is just a carbon powder), then heat and quench. Basically, you need carbon for the heat treatment to make the steel hard. Some steels don't have much C, but Kasenit will deposit onto the sprocket. I wrote up a quick article on my site about it last year when I hardened some pushrod ends.

(in the old days, blacksmiths would use bits of bones and horns to coat the metal!)

Another option is to carburize the part. But that requires a trip to the heat treat shop, and they'll heat it up and coat it with carbon. Then cook it properly to give whatever case hardness you want. My last part was Rockwell C 62, which is pretty darn hard. .060" minimum thickness. That left me plenty of material so that I could grind off .010" to make the part perfectly round again. You probably don't need that much for a sprocket.

By the way, I've run a lot of sprockets with teeth that weren't hardened. They last for a while, but you'll want to make sure that everything is straight and true. Crooked sprockets wear out fast and break chains too.




this fine publication was recommended to me and i did a hunt for it......

 these are photos of the copy i secured...1946 issue...its in the post on the way to me...

so after the last week of lots of talk on the subject, i have a possible direction for the work at hand. i've a little more reading to do and some hunting of materials then ill do another post with what my approach and method will be so bear with me for a bit.....

thanks for all the well wishes and all the infos blokes.....its why i write this blog...

mm
 

this man....

Dr George Cohen knows absolutely nothing about nortons..............sheeshhhhh.....cammy to the max.

wanna see some beautiful photographs.....

...of that part of north america i wish to travel to again some day......then check this tumber....i've been transfixed on some of these images tonight and not getting any work done....ah....i need a break anyway.

start here at the beginning

"

On April 5^th, American born photographers Mikael Kennedy & Sean Sullivan will set out from Los Angeles, CA, deep into the heart of the country on a 30 day road trip to explore America.

In a project titled Ramblers Bone, Sullivan & Kennedy, both veteran travelers of the American highways, will wander east into the high deserts of New Mexico before turning north through the Rockies, into the wild lands of Montana, across to the Pacific for the last leg of their journey, bringing them down the California coast where the wilderness meets the water; the point where early explorers of the West realized they could go no further. "

mikes wl primary cover......

you know....when you see a part somewhere, at a swap meet or in someones junk pile or wherever whenever and you get a thing for it, sometimes its hard to let it go when it comes time....its like that with this primary cover.....to be honest i cant even remember where i got it..it will come to me in the middle of the night tonight...

for the last couple of years i've had it hanging on my wall waiting for the right day to go somewhere....

now its time.

this primary cover, obviously from a thunderbird must have been on some race bike or something at some stage.....its been drilled with AJS by some guy trying to take some weight out of it...

well now its going to go on a harley davidson wla with a triumph gearbox.....sort of fitting really.

except it don't fit. i'm going to cut it and extend it to suit...i think it will look good when done.

if anyone recognises this cover give me a tingle....

RIP MCA

the world will miss you adam......

written directed and produced by MCA

engine sprocket and... im sorry to rave on....

is all done now bar the re-hardening process.

it was a bit of work to get this one done. i annealed the original triumph sprocket and the original wl sprocket. i spun up a spacer to suit the new box offset. then i set up a jig to hold the sprocket in the lathe and make sure it spun true before i took just a bit of meat off the sprocket so the spacer would sit home true over it while i welded it in the vice. then the original wl sprocket was spun in the lathe and i machined a home for the spacer to mate to it. i welded the two together then bored out the front sprocket to allow me to get a socket right in to tighten the nut home. it runs perfectly true and the only thing left to do is re-harden the sprocket and fit it up. which brings me to my next point.

being.
i've had a fuck of a time in the last couple of days trying to see my way through the smoke and mirrors that seem to face me at each turn.

i have a good friend who lives near me....i see him every couple of days or so. he knows a hell of a lot about metal and working it......i started talking to him about the process and how i needed to know more.....i've hardened bits before but only as i was taught very early in my days.....looking at colours and cooling in oil but dave threw a spanner in the works when he alerted me to special hardening oil apparently having a higher flash point than standard motor oil or such.....

sorry for the rave but phonecalls, 100km trips to the machine shop supplier, phonecalls from there to people who know, people who don't want to tell cause its secret, send him to tech to learn, bullshit will baffle his brain and he wont know shit when we finish with him, this stuff takes 50 years to learn...he cant know it, he's only 42 he's not ready to know and the rest of the fucken crap i've listened to make me very upset, and i hate to hell when i'm told i'm not allowed to learn.

now here's the thing. if the people who know the techniques, who hold the information, who have gone before don't share this information with the people who are willing to listen and learn then its all a dying art and we should give up now.....the same goes for those wishing to learn i suppose, we need to be able to approach those that can teach with the appropriate level of respect and willingness to listen and take the information and techniques we learn and then do the right thing with them...ie: practice, get better, perfect them and then pass on to anyone willing to do similar.

anyway the last few days i have been trying to just get some simple answers, just a couple of facts so i can move on and all i've had is frustration.

its a similar storyline to the recent post on calebs cro customs blog that i reposted a couple of weeks ago....its the same stuff really....just about the passing down of information to those younger so we can keep the circle unbroken.

on saturday im hoping i will have some answers....im taking my sprocket to see a man and his forge. ill let you know what happens.

new machineshed t shirt design done......

....by my man with the can JED ......go check his shit out....he's one seriously talented bloke.

if you want to see how this blokes mind works then check this commercial .... overseas viewers are gonna love it as you may not have seen it.....



stay tuned they are with the printers as we speak.......

cant wait brew.

get on with ridin or get on with dyin....

le mans....

.....in preparation for sale im doing a bunch of things to the le mans over the coming weeks...

including fitting electronic ignition....

if anyone is interested in owning the alloy beast give me a holler....before i put it on ebay.....

say hello to my little friend...

one of the joys of living where i am....as winter comes closer so does the wildlife...

when a serious landslide....

causes one of the best roads in the country to be completely closed and its right on my door step you know i'm gonna get in somehow....

no cars, no tourists, no nothing except the leaves on the road, a setting sun, and a ducati at 6000 rpm. once in a lifetime ...... almost.

been watching a lot of music video recently...

im working on a new little thing with all the crew from the MACHINE clip we did.... centered around Surya and Karuna who did the music on that clip.....

tom waits ripping it...

http://www.muzu.tv/tomwaits/trampled-rose-music-video/229952/

good help?