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extreme_accordion posted:Saw this on Hackaday and thought of you guys with your forges and furnaces and metal science stuff. http://hackaday.com/2012/08/13/building-a-casting-furnace-with-heat-exchanger/ I followed that through and spent over an hour looking at all the poo poo Hackaday had linked under blacksmithing and casting. Awesome, awesome stuff. It's never a bad time to give it a shot, if it's something you've always wanted to do. Also, I'm still riding a high from the last three days. Forging stuff, fixing things, listening to century old, kerosene burning, 25000 pound, single cylinder engined tractors running around the park, and talking to about 1000 people. Man I love the annual show at Pioneer Acres, best weekend of the year for me. We even got to fix an iron tire the wheelwrights brought to us. They arc welded in a piece of flat bar into a broken tire or something and they needed us to hammer it to match the curve of the rest of the rim. Not quite sure why they couldn't do it, but it was pretty neat having a 3" wide and 4' round tire hanging from the rafters of the shop as we hammered it.
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Aug 13, 2012 19:56
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Does anyone else truly love air arcing? Or is it just me? Had a lug that didn't line up with another lug at work the other day I had to carbon arc off and weld back on. Today I had a weld that had a few pin holes in it, but when I started carbon arcing it out I ended up having to take 1/2 of the weld out till I got to clean metal. I have a picture of that one too, but not much to see there just a weld gouged out. fps_bill fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Aug 14, 2012 |
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Aug 14, 2012 07:10
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Slung Blade posted:We even got to fix an iron tire the wheelwrights brought to us. They arc welded in a piece of flat bar into a broken tire or something and they needed us to hammer it to match the curve of the rest of the rim. Not quite sure why they couldn't do it, but it was pretty neat having a 3" wide and 4' round tire hanging from the rafters of the shop as we hammered it. This rules, Bealer's book talks a bit about wheelwrighting and it seems like an impossibly-frustrating super-specialized employ. Is old-time blacksmithey wheelwrighting good and truly dead yet? I can't see there being much demand for even revival-type modern stuff.
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Aug 14, 2012 16:05
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Ambrose Burnside posted:This rules, Bealer's book talks a bit about wheelwrighting and it seems like an impossibly-frustrating super-specialized employ. Is old-time blacksmithey wheelwrighting good and truly dead yet? I can't see there being much demand for even revival-type modern stuff. As far as I know, yeah, it's gone. Forge welding tires closed is such an enormous pain in the rear end, I can't imagine anyone bothering to do it "correctly". Every wagon tire that I have seen in the last 10 years (that's still in use) shows signs of having been arc welded or gas welded together. The wheelwrights at the museum park still have the big round firepit where they heat up tires before they shrink them onto the wooden wheel, so that's still happening. Frankly, I'm glad no one does it that way anymore. It's a loving stupid way to make wheels no matter how you look at it, and it was just a ridiculously overcomplicated evolutionary step that was completely unnecessary in the first place. Permit me to do a little thought experiment here: Ok, so, wheels were wood before right? Right, good, wood is plentiful and fairly easy to work with simple tools for simple products. Make the wheels out of them. Done. Oh hey, iron is getting cheaper, and it would probably make wheels last a long longer if we coated them with a tire made of the stuff. Hmm, this is going to take some serious effort, I have to precisely measure the wheel's circumference, then I have to make a tire to exactly the right size, leave enough that I can weld it shut in the fire, then I have to flatten and stretch the weld and hope to gently caress I didn't mess up the measurement and calculation in the first place, and then I have to heat the whole bastard up and shrink it onto the wood. Wait a minute, why weld anything at all, we have rivets, they're a million times easier, cheaper and faster and almost as strong. Oh, right, it makes the ride bumpy. Huh, how about we countersink the holes on the outside of the tire then just hammer it flat? Sounds good, except now how do we get the tire over the wooden wheel with the backing plate there holding the rivets in place? You know what, gently caress the wood, let's just make spokes out of iron, it'll be way stronger and quicker. THERE. Instead of all the specialized to gently caress and back wheelwright's tools (like the tire stretcher, the whole concept of that thing bothers me to no end) you only need one, the roller to form the curve which can be used for all kinds of things other than tires. We have both a stretcher and a roller at the shop, they probably weigh 4-500 pounds apiece, each one looks like it would be expensive as hell. Oh, and I guess you need something to countersink with, which could be a drill or a punch if you know what you're doing, but this is also a general purpose tool. Holy poo poo that was a lot of words to say "wood wheels with iron tires is dumb, just make them all iron and save a fuckton of time and money". I guess I was angrier about that than I thought.
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Aug 14, 2012 17:36
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fps_bill posted:Does anyone else truly love air arcing? Or is it just me? Its just you. I think there might be something wrong with your head. e: spelling and grammar. something wrong with my head thecobra fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Aug 14, 2012 |
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Aug 14, 2012 19:36
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thecobra posted:It's just you. I think there might be something your head. Its not just him, I love it too. in my piping world though I rarely get to use it because everyone is afraid that you will destroy the piece. I knocked off two 20" slip on flanges in a little more than an hour with a gouger but it would have likely taken all day with a grinder. Plus its just satisfying to scrape off huge quantities of metal in a flick of the wrist.
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Aug 14, 2012 21:52
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Ambrose Burnside posted:This rules, Bealer's book talks a bit about wheelwrighting and it seems like an impossibly-frustrating super-specialized employ. Is old-time blacksmithey wheelwrighting good and truly dead yet? I can't see there being much demand for even revival-type modern stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO_yketZyUM here is a nice video made in the late 70s about carriage builders here in ireland, has a bit on making the wheels
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Aug 14, 2012 22:11
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People who don't love air arcing clearly have not spent enough time grinding out ridiculous amounts of welds Maybe "prefer" is a better word than love. It sure is satisfying, anyway.
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Aug 16, 2012 03:04
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I wanna get some gouging electrodes and try making calcium carbide in an expendable crucible carved out of a firebrick. Chalk and charcoal's all you need. Also melting small quantities of virtually any metal becomes possible. I must resist... experimenting to this degree in my garage. e: Although I'm hoping I'll be able to melt usable quantities of copper/bronze/brass for very small castings as a temporary workaround to a proper smelting furnace. Probably not though, my arc welder's feeble. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Aug 16, 2012 |
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Aug 16, 2012 03:13
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Ambrose Burnside posted:I must resist... experimenting to this degree in my garage. Indeed, this is precisely why they invented sheds.
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Aug 16, 2012 03:15
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Bad Munki posted:Indeed, this is precisely why they invented sheds. My mother, bless her, is adamant that the secret to a lasting marriage is ensuring that the husband has, at all times, a shed. She's been married for 35 years, so it must hold some merit..!
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Aug 17, 2012 01:12
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Some probably dumb questions because I know little of metalworking. I want an aluminum channel with slots across the legs at precise locations and each slot a precise width (say .02"). Is my best option a machine shop or a CNC or is that likely to be the same place? Do I just give them a drawing and ask for a quote? I only want one to start, a prototype, then will likely order more... is that feasible or should I pony up and order them all at once? I may end up having this done in plastic if it turns out to be substantially cheaper but I want to explore my options.
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Aug 17, 2012 06:50
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wormil posted:Some probably dumb questions because I know little of metalworking. I want an aluminum channel with slots across the legs at precise locations and each slot a precise width (say .02"). Is my best option a machine shop or a CNC or is that likely to be the same place? Do I just give them a drawing and ask for a quote? I only want one to start, a prototype, then will likely order more... is that feasible or should I pony up and order them all at once? I may end up having this done in plastic if it turns out to be substantially cheaper but I want to explore my options.
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Aug 17, 2012 14:43
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This morning I was thinking it might be simpler just to cut the slots with a bandsaw but I'll have to research and see if there are any bandsaw blades that thin.
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Aug 17, 2012 18:32
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Slot it with a cutoff wheel.
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Aug 17, 2012 20:20
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The Proc posted:Slot it with a cutoff wheel. Cutoff wheels cut big, ugly gouges, much bigger than what he wants, because the wheels have to be thick enough to not instantly shatter the moment they're not babied. Even the tiny tiny superthin Dremel cutoffs have so much wobble in the mandrel that they make cuts two or three times their actual thickness. You want a half-milimetre slot exactly where you need it for cheap? Pick up a jeweller's saws and a couple packs of blades (they break a lot, like I mean a lot, and they're usually like 75 cents per dozen or something ridiculously affordable). Slow, but it's hard to get much finer than that. I cut jewellery rings and I only hand-cut my own rings because all other methods I've encountered remove too much material. e: Other option is (hey) a jeweller's slitting saw, like a wee tiny circular saw blade with very fine teeth. I don't use one even though I have a precision mandrel for em because it still leaves a gap larger than I do by hand, but that's another solution. Problem being that it's useless if it isn't mounted extremely securely and the work fed into it carefully and cleanly and in a controlled fashion, which ain't easy to do without building a whole complicated jig for it. Just use the jeweller's saw imo. e^2: Jeweller's saw blades have a tendency to snap juuuuuust as you're fatiguing and getting rough/sloppy, meaning you tend to stab yourself with the broken end if you're not very attuned to your own work rhythm and your tools, and getting what's essentially a barbed-from-tip-to-tip needle out of your finger or hand sucks. Took one under the nailbed about a month ago, urrrghhhhhhh Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Aug 17, 2012 |
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Aug 17, 2012 21:16
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Slung Blade posted:THERE. Instead of all the specialized to gently caress and back wheelwright's tools (like the tire stretcher, the whole concept of that thing bothers me to no end) you only need one, the roller to form the curve which can be used for all kinds of things other than tires. We have both a stretcher and a roller at the shop, they probably weigh 4-500 pounds apiece, each one looks like it would be expensive as hell. Oh, and I guess you need something to countersink with, which could be a drill or a punch if you know what you're doing, but this is also a general purpose tool. Well, I can think of a few reasons why a wood wheel with an iron "tire" (did they really call them that?) is advantageous. First, it's probably lighter, and that could matter a lot. Second, it's probably easier to repair in the field with just a small portable stove and a hand-hammer, which if you're a pioneer could be lifesaving. I mean, if you lose a rivet or three you can fix that yourself, and if a wooden spoke breaks you can cut wood and form something that'll fit and jam it in there or something. Third, not only does it use less iron, but it uses iron in a form that is easier to mass-produce. An 18th century ironworks could assuredly produce long flat strips of iron a lot cheaper than casting whole iron wheels (or whatever). And of course, there's the "backwards compatibility" issue. I imagine if you have a million existing wooden-wheeled wagons out there, it's a hell of a lot easier to convert them to using wooden wheels with iron straps, compared to converting them to using all-iron wheels. And we're talking about a time period where a wagon was a very significant expense for most people that needed one, that they expected to last for decades. But yeah, there's no need beyond historical re-enactment to look back now.
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Aug 17, 2012 21:45
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Bealer wrote something about how wheelwrights would often refuse to work on a wagon if it had rained on the way there or if they had had to ford a river, because just the contact with moisture would change the dimensions of the wheel enough to produce lovely end-results. I can't imagine a more frustrating line of work. Well, I can, but nothing up my alley at least.
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Aug 17, 2012 21:48
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Ambrose Burnside posted:Cutoff wheels cut big, ugly gouges, much bigger than what he wants, because the wheels have to be thick enough to not instantly shatter the moment they're not babied. Even the tiny tiny superthin Dremel cutoffs have so much wobble in the mandrel that they make cuts two or three times their actual thickness. A slitting saw will do it better and easier. Like a circular saw for horizontal milling machines.
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Aug 17, 2012 22:48
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I really want to get into blacksmithing and possibly wheelwrighting (at some later point, I had no idea it was so finicky) and I have a couple questions that have not been answered in this thread. What kind of location do you need to in order to do blacksmithing? I live in a pretty drat quiet residential neighborhood, in a large-ish duplex. I have a small backyard and an unfinished basement that I currently house my tools and such in. I don't have a shed. My immediate neighbors are all pretty cool and I'm on excellent terms with all of them. However, I do not want to irritate people with a bunch of too-loud noises. I might be able to locate my hammering stuff at a friend's house in the country though. Is there any way to make the whole affair reasonably quiet? I'd prefer to keep the stuff at my house for obvious reasons. I've looked over the "what you need to get started in blacksmithing" posts a few pages back and I have all of it except the anvil, tongs, and forge. I'm in the Buffalo area and this guy is selling a 142 lb Mouse Hole Forge anvil, forge with air blower, 4 hammers, 4 tongs, and a hardy cutoff tool for $575. Is this a pretty reasonable deal? I really want to get into this as a hobby, but I need to know if I can reasonably do this at my house or if it'll just have to go elsewhere.
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Aug 18, 2012 18:02
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That's... fantastic, if it's all legit. I paid ~600 for an anvil that weighed less than 100 pounds.
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Aug 18, 2012 19:07
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Does anyone here have experience with making dies? I'd like to know if what I have in mind would be wildly expensive. I want to make confetti, each around 3 mm in size, in non-circular and non-square shapes like stars and such. The material would be sheet plastic around 1/2 mm or less in thickness. How much would a die about a foot square with several thousand shapes on it cost to make? Would some other method of cutting be better than a die? Sure, but I want to make shapes that aren't available from stores. Then sell it to people. VVVVV Prof. Ann Mary Ann fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Aug 18, 2012 |
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Aug 18, 2012 19:46
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Prof. Ann Mary Ann posted:Does anyone here have experience with making dies? I'd like to know if what I have in mind would be wildly expensive.
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Aug 18, 2012 20:01
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Ambrose Burnside posted:This rules, Bealer's book talks a bit about wheelwrighting and it seems like an impossibly-frustrating super-specialized employ. Is old-time blacksmithey wheelwrighting good and truly dead yet? I can't see there being much demand for even revival-type modern stuff. There's a few people carrying it on, but it's definitely dying out. The local paper had an article on a guy doing it near here: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/Wheelwright+carries+grandfather+calling+spare+time/6949092/story.html
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Aug 18, 2012 21:26
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Prof. Ann Mary Ann posted:Does anyone here have experience with making dies? I'd like to know if what I have in mind would be wildly expensive.
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Aug 19, 2012 01:35
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IRT the confetti thing- could you instead extrude the shape you want into a plastic bar (or order such a bar on Shapeways or whatever) and then shave the confetti off individually? Like with a planer or something, with the blade set to the thickness you want? I have no idea what sort of volume/money you're talking about, but I seriously doubt it's Serious Die Money.
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Aug 19, 2012 02:11
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Ambrose Burnside posted:I have no idea what sort of volume/money you're talking about, but I seriously doubt it's Serious Die Money. This is very "if I can't come up with a way to do this for a low four figures then I can't do it" deal. And the only power tool I own is a crappy cordless drill.
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Aug 19, 2012 16:47
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Plastic confetti sounds like a horrible idea anyway. Won't they all stick to each other from static cling? And also never ever biodegrade. Well I guess you could get biodegradable plastic with antistatic properties, I dunno. But making a high-resolution die like that is super expensive and I think you'll also need a pretty expensive machine to make use of it in volume, too. I doubt anyone wants to pay you $30 for a quarter pound of specially-shaped confetti. Also do you live in China? This is the kind of thing where labor costs eat you alive. Pretty much everything that is very small and made of plastic is made in China. Sorry for making GBS threads on your idea, and maybe I'm wrong on every count, but it seems like a non-starter to me.
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Aug 19, 2012 17:47
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So I bought some blacksmithing stuff. A 128 lb Mouse Hole Forge advil from 1840. The top is a little pitted, but it should be grindable to get it into smoother shape.  A bigass post vise. It's got some rust, but it is in good order.  A Buffalo Forge forge. The wooden handle operates a ratchet that drives a couple gears that run the blower. The leather belt that connects from the reduction gear to the blower is missing, but I should be able to build or buy a replacement pretty easily. Plus if I use charcoal, I can use it as a barbecue grill!  Two hammers, two sets of tongs, and the steel piece in the center of the forge that I'll need to patch the hole in the center of the forge that you can't see, since it's under the round steel patch.  It all needs some tender love and care, but it isn't anything a little wire-wheeling and oiling can't fix. Now I'm off to get some railroad spikes!
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Aug 19, 2012 20:23
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I got a 7 1/4" non-ferrous blade for my dad's chopsaw and finally cut a pipe round and it went like butter. Made an unholy goddamn mess of aluminium chips but it took 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes so I'm game.
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Aug 20, 2012 17:57
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Yep, they're nice. And with a little practice at getting the right feed rate and a smooth hand and that cut will look like you'd polished it. Putting a vac on the saw is pretty much a must, though.
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Aug 20, 2012 18:29
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Leperflesh posted:Well, I can think of a few reasons why a wood wheel with an iron "tire" (did they really call them that?) is advantageous. Man I don't want to get into a giant spergy argument but I have some thoughts that I want to share. (also yes, they did call them tires, or at least everything I've read leads me to believe so) Lighter, hmm, perhaps. There's a lot of wood that goes into a wheel though. I think an iron tire with a few iron spokes would compare pretty favourably. Wooden wagon wheels are in no way field repairable. If a spoke breaks (not really likely in my opinion) you would just leave it alone until you got to town. See, the spokes are all tenoned into the wheel, the only way to replace that is to take the iron tire off, split the circle of wood apart, make a new spoke the right size, put it in, put the wheel back together, and then you need a fire big enough to heat the whole iron tire up to shrink it back on the wheel. Also you need heavy sledges, big fuckin tongs to lift the tire up with, and a flat enough area to put the wheel down on to hammer in place. Also enough water to make sure the wheel doesn't literally burn away once the tire is on there. If the tire breaks in the middle of nowhere, forget about it, there is no way you could forge weld that thing back together in the Arizona desert or wherever unless you already have a full set of tools and a portable blacksmith shop on the wagon. If a rivet broke, that's something you could potentially fix with a good campfire and a couple rocks, provided you have a rivet or something to make a rivet out of. Plus something to handle the rivet with, sticks would work in a pinch I guess. For the spokes, you would need a lot less iron than you do wood, and it would all just be strap iron. Couple 90' bends, two holes for the rivets and something to attach it to the hub with. Strap iron was everywhere, and should be relatively easy to get a hold of anywhere people were. Not talking about cast iron wheels, those are way too heavy and brittle for use on gravel country roads or cobbled city streets. I'm talkin strap iron tires (just like the wood wheels) with strap iron spokes. All I'm proposing is that it would have been advantageous to skip the wood part once they figured out that wrought iron tires were a good thing because the process to make them was incredibly painstaking, and making iron wheels would have been about a hundred times easier. Uncle Enzo: that is an amazingly awesome haul. That vice is complete and looks to be in awesome shape.
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Aug 20, 2012 18:30
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Well ok, you know more about it than I do obviously. It's one of those interesting cases of evolving technology where, in hindsight, maybe it seems so clear how things could have been done better/more smoothly, but at the time things happened that way because of reasons.
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Aug 20, 2012 20:16
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Leperflesh posted:Well ok, you know more about it than I do obviously. It's one of those interesting cases of evolving technology where, in hindsight, maybe it seems so clear how things could have been done better/more smoothly, but at the time things happened that way because of reasons. For sure man. I bet the reasons included "well, gently caress, I already invested 25 years of my life learning how to work with wood and a significant portion of my money buying the tools for it, god dammit someone is gonna be paying for all this poo poo" and it just kinda hung around. Technological inertia, I guess. Hard thing to overcome at the best of times.
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Aug 20, 2012 21:16
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You're completely forgetting that iron has terrible shock absorbing capabilities compared to wood, and as the wheels are the only shock absorbing component of the whole cart you can look forward to a real lovely ride without it. Not to mention iron is poor in compression which is also another negative factor because at the time spokes in tension hadn't been developed yet, whereas wood is naturally good in compression. Kim Jong ill fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Aug 20, 2012 |
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Aug 20, 2012 22:58
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Iron takes a lot more work to pull out of the ground than a tree does
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Aug 21, 2012 00:30
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I have a 10inch by 10foot sheet of 20 gauge sheet metal. I have a ton of wood tools and a 4.5" grinder. I basically need to shear across the short side. Is a cutoff saw my best/cheapest option? I've used one in the past, but only for square stock.
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Aug 21, 2012 03:48
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iwannabebobdylan posted:I have a 10inch by 10foot sheet of 20 gauge sheet metal. I have a ton of wood tools and a 4.5" grinder. I basically need to shear across the short side. Is a cutoff saw my best/cheapest option? I've used one in the past, but only for square stock. If you're talking about cutting 10in across the sheet then yes, a zipcut (aka: abrasive cutoff wheel) is your best bet. It will take longer for you to go buy the cutoff wheel than it will to actually cut the metal. Remember, they cut using friction so they'll want to pull themselves one way or another. Always cut so the blade wants to pull itself out of the metal if it binds. If you've never worked with zipcuts before you'll find out what I mean the first time you try. Cut in the correct direction even if it means contorting your body into ungodly shapes.
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Aug 21, 2012 04:38
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Kim Jong ill posted:You're completely forgetting that iron has terrible shock absorbing capabilities compared to wood, and as the wheels are the only shock absorbing component of the whole cart you can look forward to a real lovely ride without it. If your solid wooden wheels are the only shock absorbing component on your theoretical cart, I feel extremely sorry for your theoretical spine.  We invented springs for a reason you know. Sure, wrought iron is lousy in compression, I agree with you there. However, given the relatively minor amount of that force it's going to have to handle, I think it would hold up to it fairly well. I mean, poo poo, it held up steam tractors well enough.  I mean, if we're talking like a red river cart, or something that a single person is going to pull/push around themselves, yeah, just make the whole wheel out of wood, forget the tire, you don't need it or the expense. I'm talking buggies and wagons and such. Dongsmith: I know, but if they have enough iron to make the tires, they probably can spare a little more to make the spokes. Am I being really thick about this or something? e: also, I am not a materials scientist, but according to this website the compressive strength of red oak is 47 - 61.2 MPa. http://www.matbase.com/material/wood/class4-5-10-years/red-oak/properties Ash seems better, but I don't really get how the yield strength of 112 can be higher than the compressive strength of 23-80 MPa. http://www.matbase.com/material/wood/class5-5-years/ash/properties Wrought iron's yield strength (if I have read correctly) or where it will begin to deform is 159 - 221 MPa, according to wiki. Ultimate is 234 - 372. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrought_iron So, for equal cross sections, wrought iron is 4 times stronger in compression than red oak, and still a lot better than ash, which I think were pretty common woods used to make wheels out of. Sure, it would be heavy if you were to use the same size/cross section of iron to wood, but you don't need as much. If I've hosed up my interpretation of the numbers, please help me out. Slung Blade fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Aug 21, 2012 |
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Aug 21, 2012 08:41
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Bad Munki posted:Yep, they're nice. And with a little practice at getting the right feed rate and a smooth hand and that cut will look like you'd polished it. Putting a vac on the saw is pretty much a must, though. Vacuums on fire are really neat to see, they shoot fire out the exhaust port! Just saying.
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Aug 21, 2012 09:29
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