Answer

This is one you may need to make. Since you have the broken one, you know the shape and size. The AGI springs DVD has decent info on making flat springs and this would all apply here. The last web class, I asked a question about tempering/annealing flat/leaf springs, and Ken gave some decent answers on how/when to do this.

I had to make a V spring recently and got decent success on my third try, real success on my fourth. Spring material is cheap to practice with and, for me, the time wasn’t wasted since I was acquiring a new skill. If I had to charge for that spring it would probably be $120 in time, but I doubt any customer would have paid anywhere near that. 🙂

Enjoy the learning and get over the fact that you’re currently completely inept at doing this. Skill only comes through practice anyway. Jeff

Question Follow Up

Thanks Jeff for the encouragement. That’s what I’m preparing to do next. Found flat spring stock of the correct thickness on eBay (tattoo machine contact springs). Have told client that I won’t charge him for the time if he agree to cover the material.

Any suggestion on source of flat spring stock? Brownells sells a kit, but it is too thick and too narrow, and not cheap either. I need something below 0.04″ in thickness and about 0.6″ in width. I found some contact spring for tattoo machine on ebay. $5 for 2 pieces is a bit too expensive if I need more for practice. Thanks. -TL

Answer

Grainger, MSC, lots of places have spring stock. I’ve occasionally ordered from Small Parts, which is Amazon’s hardware division. Just do a search on Amazon for spring steel in the thickness you need. Most of the stuff I ordered was relatively inexpensive and it doesn’t require minimum orders like some suppliers. Jeff

Answer

One of the things I’ve found…..McMaster – Carr, Grainger and so on have some cleverly labeled spring stock in the guise of shim stock. It comes already tempered blue, so you will have to anneal to do anything with it. I bought a pack that has 4 or 5 different thicknesses in approx. 6″ square sheets. The sheets are all less than .050″ thick. Trying to make something that thin with the kit from Brownell’s is a real pain. DC

Question Follow Up

Thanks. I did find the shim stocks from McMaster. They are alright.

A silly question. Some spring stock arrives tempered. How should I cut a small off a bigger sheet? I suppose a shear may work with some struggling. Or I can use a cut-off disc on Foredom? Thanks. -TL

Answer

Cut off disc on Foredom works well when it is a small piece. Ken

Answer

I use a band saw or, better yet, a scroll saw. But being a frustrated woodworker, I have those tools. A cutoff disk works fine and I’ve even used a jeweler’s coping saw (wife does jewelry as a hobby, so again, the tool is here). Jeff

Question Follow Up

Some updates on this one:

I finally put this old side-by-side back to firing status. There has been a lot of work on it; re-tipping a firing pin, fabricating the sear spring and the safe spring (both snapped when I tried to adjust), shimming one of the sears, re-adjusting one of the sears. It has been fun. The guy is lucky. As a starting smith, I cap my hours to 4, or it would have cost him a small fortune. The hour cap is a self-imposed policy for the first year of my “internship”. The cap will rise as my experience and efficiency.

Anyway, just want to share with folks here that I got to use a lot of what I learned from the professional course. Making the leaf springs was intimidating at first, but it wasn’t bad after the first one or two failures. One spring snapped when I tried to bend it into shape. Apparently I didn’t anneal it thoroughly. The other one didn’t spring back after a few use. That was because I re-tempered it too soft after hardening, or I didn’t do the hardening right. I fixed it by doubling quenching it and tempering it when it just pass straw and into blue. All and all, it was rewarding even I lost money doing it. I’m a part-time smith, so I don’t really care about making money, for now. Gaining experience and learning the trade is my focus. I still have my day job to pay the bills. -TL

Answer

Congratulations. As to the minimum charge, you also gain value from the learning process, so you can’t really lose money. I have a friend who worked as an auto mechanic at a dealership when he was starting out. Everything was charged by flat rate manual. In the beginning, a job that the manual says takes an hour would take him two. By the time he left, that job only took 30 minutes.

Now that he’s been out on his own, except for routine jobs like oil changes and such, he charges straight labor. Usually makes him the cheapest around, but it’s because he’s so experienced and efficient. Though how he makes money doing oil changes for what it costs me for the oil and filter, I’ll never know. 🙂 Jeff

Reply

Thanks Jeff for your encouragement. I also do “oil change”. Inspection and cleaning, that is. I make it known to the customers that I like old guns, especially milsurps. A lot of old timers, or their offsprings, bring in their old guns for me to look over and clean. Sometimes they have little or no idea what they have. I will do all that, plus background stories of their guns, for one hour of labor, even I may spend way more time than that. Another policy of mine is I will do all the work for veterans gratis. They only pay for parts.

From time to time, their guns need repairs; broken firing pins & whatnots. Many occasions they are willing to spend more than the gun’s worth to have it done because they feel more attached to grandpa’s Remington 69A once they learn the history of the model. Certainly my 4-hour cap always applies; I only charge them 4 hours even I may have spent 40 hours to have the repair done. -TL