On Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:53:55 -0500, Tim Wescott wrote:

I'm going to make a wire-bending fixture for putting fairly small-radius
bends into 1/8" music wire*. I have some 1/8" oil hardening drill rod
and a slightly undersized 1/8" reamer designed for installing dowel pins
in tooling. I also have some 1-1/4" round bar, made of mystery steel
but there's a good chance that it'll harden at least a bit if
encouraged.

So I'm planning on putting a couple of pins made out of the drill rod
into the end of a bar, and bending the music wire around the pins. I'm
_assuming_ that if I don't harden the drill rod that it'll bend,
although I'm in a hurry so I'm going to test that assumption by trying
to use the tool.

After I bend up my first attempt at a fixture I'll want to do it up
right. It seems like I should just be able to heat up my whole assembly
to a dull red then chuck the thing into a bucket of water -- does this
sound correct? I have some pottery clay lying around so I'll probably
paint the pins with clay & charcoal in an attempt to protect them from
decarburization. When I fish it out of the bucket should I try
tempering it? If so, how, and how much?

The heat-generating tools I have available are pretty much a propane
torch and an O-A cutting torch. The temperature measurement tools I
have are my own somewhat color blind eyes.

* Music wire is moderately high carbon -- 0.7 to 0.9%, and drawn in a
way that work-hardens it nicely. It's soft enough that you can cut it
with diagonal cutters successfully, but hard enough that you'd better
hide the cutters from their rightful owner when you're done.

What consensus there is seems to be to use dowel pins. Initially I'm
going to use 3/16" drill rod ('cause that's what I have on hand, and I
have a 3/16" reamer).

But when I do this "for permanent" I'll use dowel pins (why oh _why_
didn't I think of that?).

--
http://www.wescottdesign.com