Turning stainless steel

[mickeyf]

Nice job on the carding machine! In the '80's, my wife and I used to make hand-woven clothing and did the craft fair circuit, so we met a lot of people who worked with wool further upstream in the process than we did. Us, mostly yarn, and some hand spinning.

[BobL]

Around here we use the term "red gum" to refer to the heart wood of what we know as the "sweet gum" tree (liquid amber or liquidambar.) Much despised by home owners, because of the billions of spiky balls it produces to fall on lawns to be stepped on, or raked. It too exudes a lot of sap, but nothing as visually interesting as that marri. Nor is the wood so highly figured; in fact it has almost no figure. Serves mostly as a secondary wood in furniture making.

Yeah it quite different to "Liquid Ambar" which I have also milled. Marri is one of the softest of our native "Gums" which to us here in Oz are a generic name for most of our trees.
That highly figured tree is somewhat unusual as only about one in a dozen trees has any figure and one in 50 has that much figure.
As it matures it darkens and develops more resin streaks (exuding resin is its way of fighting bugs and fungal infestations.
Here is an example of mature tree, note the resin rings - this is where it tends to fall apart when it dries.

Here's the same tree with a slice off the top - note the big pocket of resin especially in the middle of the cut.
Despite this it still makes super nice furniture.


Tell me to take a jump if this is too much detail. I might sound like I'm more of a woody than a metal worker but I spilt my time roughly equally between wood/metal/electronics.

[BobL]

To bring the conversation back to stainless, the carding machine needs/uses lots of accessories like these.
The big combs are made from SS TIG rods
The woods used for A, B and E are Marri, D is Olive and C is another Aussie native called Sheoak.
Big hook in "D" is also SS.


Cutting the comb teeth all to the same length was a bit of PITA so I ended up stuffing them into a couple of collets in collet blocks like this.
Set the collet "face end down" on a flat surface and tapped all the rods down as far as they would go - tightened the collet and held the other end up against a sanding disc to grind them all to the same length