"dpb" wrote in message
news
On 12/28/2016 2:01 PM, Cydrome Leader wrote:
...

There's no question they've made a huge flange of some sort, but if
I
ordered 100 of them, would they vary at all? Would they even all be
made
of the same type of steel etc. That's where I have questions about
cottage
type industry.

I not call that "cottage"; looks like pretty sizable operation and
clearly this is far from the first of these this crew has made.

I'd guess there's a final set of more-or-less conventional machining
operations undertaken before final use...
I think it was mentioned that's a flange for a 48" pipe. At 100 PSI
that's
90 tons of force trying to tear that thing apart. It has to be a
sound
part and not just "close enough". Forgings still need proper heat
treatment, and from that video maybe they just bury it in dirt.
It's not
really clear.

Didn't try to estimate thickness nor stresses, but I'd also bet the
stress levels are pretty minimal as compared to actual yield values.
IOW, there's likely quite a lot of margin for the end use.

Being as it's obvious they've been turning these out in large
numbers by the practiced movements, if they weren't up to snuff in
application initially, they certainly are by this point simply by
experience if nothing else...

After examining links of this chain I'm glad I wasn't in the crew that
hand-forged it: Splitting firewood is enough for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Chain

http://www.albanyinstitute.org/detai...son-river.html

The early paddle-wheel steamboats required huge forged crankshafts
that strained the limits of blacksmithing.
http://www.makingthemodernworld.org....0-1880/IC.047/

Forging a small one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL4jqvGwrqs

-jsw