# A twist on metal working



## Eyerelief (Jan 4, 2022)

Let me start off by apologizing for not taking a pic of the set up.  I honestly didn't know if it would work or not.  
I have a buddy that likes to look for arrowheads and artifacts. He successfully walks the country finding amazing things.  He brought me a broken golf club shaft and asked if I would put a hook on the end of it like a snake handler would use.
Knowing he would appreciate the effort, I decided to put a little extra art into the project.
He showed me one he had bought where the builder used JB weld to attach a 5/16" hot rolled bar to a golf club shaft.

I started with a 32" piece of 3/8" home depot round bar and a golf club shaft.  The ID of the shaft was about .360 so I turned down 4" of the round bar to a nice fit inside the shaft.  I was using a piece of scrap so the round bar had about 2" of threads on the end of it.  I left them on giving the JB weld a place to grab.
For starters, I milled 4 flats .050 deep in the round bar, 12" in length starting about 8" from the turned down end. This milled 12" section is now square.
Next , I put the entire length of round bar in the lathe and held 2" of the 8" side in a 5C collet.  Set the tail stock up 30" away  and grabbed the other end of the the round bar in the tail stock chuck.  Put the lathe in neutral and began heating the round bar with a torch about 6" from the collet holder.  As the bar began to cherry up, I slowly turned the chuck by hand.  I continued to move the torch down the round bar, hand turning the chuck until I had twisted the 12" squared round bar.  Any place where the twist didn't look consistent, I re-applied heat to that area and tightened up the twist as necessary.  The beauty of doing it this way was it kept the material very straight while introducing the twist. When I finished this step, I had a 32" piece of round bar, milled square and twisted in the middle.  The drill chuck remained cool to the touch, as did the 5C collet holder.
Took the bar out of the lathe, cut it to size, heated and bent the features below.
Added an aluminum sleeve to the club shaft for reinforcement.
For assembly, I filled the end of the hollow golf club shaft with JB weld, inserted the turned down end to the 4" depth.  I also glued the sleeve on the shaft covering the union where the 3/8" round bar meets the club shaft.
Finally, if you look close, you can see two .125 pins press fit through the aluminum sleeve, shaft and round bar.  Installed after the JB had set of course.  I figure that the club shaft sandwiched and epoxied between the sleeve and round bar would gain considerable strength since it really has no where to go now.  I cant imagine what it would take to pull it apart.



Don't know if anybody has heated and twisted steel this way, but thought you guys might be able to run with the idea.


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## brino (Jan 4, 2022)

Eyerelief said:


> Don't know if anybody has heated and twisted steel this way, but thought you guys might be able to run with the idea.



I sure haven't but it sounds like a great idea.

I have seen a blacksmith making spindles for a railing that had a hand cranked arrangement with simple clamp or chuck at each end.

Thanks for sharing this!

Brian


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## Ski1919 (Jan 5, 2022)

That's Really cool. Ive only seen it done by welding or clamping the material to a bench and twisting it with a wrench


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## Bi11Hudson (Jan 5, 2022)

Using a torch on something in my lathe would be a bad idea with an oil soaked wooden building. But for cold forming smaller square stock, it has several advantages. Not the least bench space by using the lathe.

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