O/T: Knife blade material from a sway bar?

[JRouche]

JRouche, I have a piece of truck spring from a '56 F100. What size knife are you looking to make? If I can accomodate, I'll saw a piece off and send it for the price of postage.

Very nice for the offer. Thank you Sir. I dont need supplies, I just wanted to know if I could re-purpose these two bars. Thank you. JR

[JRouche]

Thanks for all the help. I did not want to ruin a sway bar that some one could use. I hit up all the car guys I know before this and asked. Took measurements and all. No one could use them.

So I thought well, maybe knife material in some form.

I was happy to see my band saw slice it per the miss guided info from our buddy here. I am happy for that. I was gonna use the 14" abrasive saw to cut it. Thank you for thinking it would cut instead of abrading.

Chucked it up, set what I thought was a good feed, adjusted the lube feed and ate bar stock. Gotta love these blades. It cut nice, helps with a good lube flow and blade.

So I only made one blank today, hot out here. I might get three plus the bent ends. Oh? The lil one. She is next, not much meat there. This bar is actually 1.250". I dont know what pig that came from? Haa. Yes I do. Had it on the front of my 62 Nova before I went torsion tubes front and back. It was nice but too heavy for my needs on the car.

Fun JR

[JRouche]

As a result of this thread I took a look into recommended materials for knife blade manufacture, holy jumping jesus on a pogo stick these people are more infatuated with brands and numbers then hobby machinists.
Aside from audiophiles of course,

Talk about Esoteric? Audiophiles are worse. I dont make knives. I mess with metal.

Wanna see some old Carver amps I have? I do have a bone in the game when Audio is there. I have already posted here about my 18" JBL stadium Sub I have in my house right.

And the Polk audio mids and tweets to back her up. With an active frequency divider. All 20+ years old and still pleasant to the ear. Beethoven ot the song "Frankenstein" at high volume. No distortion at all.

FYI for yong folks that might be out there. It is not the speakers that make you music distorted when you turn it up. It is the amp driving at class D and clipping.

I like a class A for one speaker set and a class A-B for the 18"

My amps dont clip. Esoteric? NO! I dont have a turn table Hippies JR

[Ian B]

Bented,

To the list of wierdos (knifemakers and audiophiles), add car fanatics. They are convinced that any part "CNC machined from a billet of aircraft / military grade metal" is the only way to go.

Ian

[dian]

if you have a holow bar, stick a suitable steel rod into it and make damascus knives.

[JRouche]

Bented,

To the list of wierdos (knifemakers and audiophiles), add car fanatics. They are convinced that any part "CNC machined from a billet of aircraft / military grade metal" is the only way to go.

Ian

Hahaa! Ain't that the truth. I fall into that group also. That is why I have three CNC machines in my residential garage JR

[cijuanni]

I went off what cijuanni said >"I believe those bars are 4140. They saw pretty easily." So I took it to the bandsaw and it did cut easily.

Yeah, that is why I think my sway bars are not 'spring steel' because they aren't very hard and when you machine them the chips are long, stringy and tough like 4140 with a great mirror finish, not shorter chips with a crumbly finish like 1045 and up.

I have machined lots of 4140 PH and my sway bars cut and machined similarly.
I obviously have not sent a sample out to NASA to be triple, laser spectrum analyzed.


Automakers buy in such quantity and beat down their suppliers such that I doubt there is little additional cost from 1018 to 4140.

[754]

I figured out to always sound cool and make life easy.
say you want to make a machete.... get whatever material that is proper alloy and works .like flat bar..
make the machete..
when it's finished, you tell people it was made from a rear axle of a REO Diamond T...
see how easy that was.... thank me later..or not....

[JRouche]

I figured out to always sound cool and make life easy.
say you want to make a machete....

Or go find an old military machete and be done JR

[Bented]

Bented,

To the list of wierdos (knifemakers and audiophiles), add car fanatics. They are convinced that any part "CNC machined from a billet of aircraft / military grade metal" is the only way to go.

Ian

There is a long list of marketing words and phrases that give hobbyists wood.

CNC Machined is big.
Made a simple part weekly for years on manual mills, this part would not benefit from "CNC", about 10 years in the customer asks if I could "CNC" the part so that they may advertise it as such on their website, how much more would this cost they ask. Not much I answer, we take a $129.99 HD drill press and power the downfeed with an air cylinder controlled by a smartphone and drill a 1/16" hole 1/16 deep in it. It has then been "CNC" machined.

Aircraft Grade Aluminum. Do all commercial aircraft use "Aircraft Grade Aluminum" for everything including toilet flush handles?

Made from Alloy Steel. ALL steel is an alloy by definition.

Precision Manufacturing.

Machined From Billet, as opposed to forgings made to near shape I suppose, go figure.

Military Grade

And so on.

At one time I would be open every Saturday, this is when the car,motorcycle, victorian homeowners, bicyclists, sport fisherman, yoyo makers, gun nuts,boat owners, knife makers and general hobbyists are off work, it was mayhem.

A typical conversation went like so.

Can you make me a new rear leaf spring linkage for my 1968 Barracuda?
Yes, how many.
One, How much $ ?
After a bit of cost and time analysis I quote $300.00
That is crazy, the list price in 1971 was $16.00 from Chrysler.
Get in your time machine and return to 1971 and buy 100 of them for $16.00 each, surely you will get a small volume discount, you will be a hit at the next car show.

It is entirely possible that if indeed one had a time machine and traveled in time to 1971 and procured car parts said parts would not be considered "original' in 2010, so it goes.

[JRouche]

here is a long list of marketing words and phrases that give hobbyists wood.

So true. Thank goodness I never was in the marketing field. I would have failed.

Many people are delusional and dont know what it takes to make something, from ground up. Maybe they got complaisant with inexpensive this that and the other thing? I dont know. I cant judge.

My Dad was a Marketing Manager at Rockwell Int. He was a mess outside of work. It was around the time when computers were ramping up, the B-1 was well out of projected costs and the Shuttle was beginning. Yeah, he was busy.

Never wanted to be in any type of sales or marketing growing up with that.

JR

[JoeLee]

I have found hollow sway bars on some front wheel drive Cadillacs ( and probably other similar GM cars ) from the 80s and90s. They had s small hole in the bars near the link end to allow any moisture that entered to escape. The link end was swedged and punched so the tube was not water tight.
Look for a hole.
Joe

Not surprised. Anything to reduce weight. I just don't see how a hollow tube can perform the same as a solid bar when it comes to torsional twist.

JL....

[cijuanni]

Not surprised. Anything to reduce weight. I just don't see how a hollow tube can perform the same as a solid bar when it comes to torsional twist.

JL....

It doesn't perform the same it performs better given equal weight of a solid bar.
In pure torsion, the outside carries the highest stresses reducing to zero stress at the center.
So why have a center? Racing axles have been gundrilled to reduce weight and unneeded and low stressed material for a long time.

more...
These equations indicate that the shear stress and shear strain vary linearly with radius and have their maximum value at the outside radius (Fig. 8.4)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics....%20%20More%20

[JRouche]

Not surprised. Anything to reduce weight. I just don't see how a hollow tube can perform the same as a solid bar when it comes to torsional twist.

JL....

You are killin me Mr.

I just got done saying I removed the 1-1/4",solid bar from my nova to replace it with a tube.

That is what I did. JR

Sorry, my bust. I have three piece sway bars front and back lol. figure that **** out. Well I leveled her out.

[JRouche]

If it's hollow and you forge it, would it not become solid ?

The debris inside of the tube wont forge weld well with out cleaning. JR