What did you do today?

[DennisCA]

Went to the local junkyard last night to have a look around, brought home some aluminum cut offs, 14kg worth, price was 3€/kg, not sure if it's a bad or good price but now I got a stash of alu for later. This will come in handy for making wheels for my 2x72 grinder.





Managed to ID these as 4404/316 steel but didn't get any, not sure if I need some or if the material is particularly useful, there were several turning blanks there too:


Maybe a good material for shafting.

[ezduzit]

Made an adapter so I could replace the horrible saw blade and pruners on my Fiskar pole saw with just the blade off an excellent hand saw, a Samuraii Ichiban. I had some 1-1/2" diameter aluminum bar which I cutoff at 4-1/4" long, turned down to 1-1/4" diameter, bored a hole 2-1/4" deep to accept the 1" diameter inner sliding tube of the Fiskar pole saw. Using a fly cutter I milled 3/8" off each side of the blade mounting area to reduce weight and allow me to reuse the screws from the hand saw. Then I slit it on the bandsaw, match drilled the blade mounting holes, and then the hole to also match the retaining bolt in the tube on which it slides.

This new setup is way lighter and cuts like butter.

[mattthemuppet]

Went to the local junkyard last night to have a look around, brought home some aluminum cut offs, 14kg worth, price was 3€/kg, not sure if it's a bad or good price but now I got a stash of alu for later. This will come in handy for making wheels for my 2x72 grinder.

a little high (my scrapyard charges ~1E/kg equivalent), but some good material there and less than you would pay new. Awesome looking scrapyard too, I don't think I would ever be able to leave it

[J Tiers]

Most of the scrapyards around here are just interested in the stuff coming in and going in the right pile. Selling bits and pieces is not much of a priority. The few that do, tend to charge for it, short of what you'd pay at the Hime depot, but no great shakes.

We do have one place that does sell though. And their price tends to depend on whether or not you want a receipt.

[DennisCA]

I am not sure about their pricing really, some yards have a "premium" section with better quality and sorted stuff. But I did not think this was that. Scrap steel I have been told goes for 60 cents a kilo by others, though I suppose it fluctuates with the market.

I have repaired, repainted and added a toolrest to this sandstone grinder:


Now I need to true the stone up. Based on my research the stone is a Swedish stone from the Orsa region, but not of the Orsa stone company since they have decor on the sides, but the stone is very similar in color and composition. There are two main pl aces in Sweden for good sandstone, Gotland and Orsa. Gotland stones are evenly grey in color and considered the best though this one works very well when I tested it by hand and with a garden hose spraying the stone. Got hair shave sharpness after a honing on a cheap diamond plate.

A sloppy job but it worked, took only 5 minutes.


Now I can sharpen this axe I just made a new shaft for (after the pictured I thinned it some more so it fit my hands better):

[Dave C]

Nice work on all the tools. Scrap steel at the only place around here that will sell it, goes for $.14 per lb. no matter what alloy or shape it is. Only problem is you have to take the whole piece which is bad if you only need a short piece of round stock, or a square foot of plate. A couple years ago I needed about 6 ft of I beam for a wood splitter that I designed. All they had was 20 ft. long, so I wound up building 2 machines.

[jdedmon91]

What did you do today?

Made up a fly cutter for my mill out of a piece of scrap and an inexpensive tool holder. Here is the videos https://youtu.be/Nn1mhb9OXQA

https://youtu.be/wRz0ije2Zco

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[boslab]

I had the misfortune of access to the biggest scrap heap you ever saw, buying any was hard work, must have been 200 kt in there when full, drove me nuts seeing the waste, ever seen a 30 ton bin of new drill bits, I have (I must have 1/4 ton in my shop) mills lathes but getting them before the balling iron was hard, (a 15 ton steel ball bearing dropped from a magnet crane)
I miss the scrap heap
Mark

[Bob La Londe]

My son actually did most of the work... until yesterday. He cut all the pieces. We tacked up the top together. I tacked up the first 3 legs (it has nine legs), then he tacked up all the rest. (as seen in this picture) He welded out part of the top. Then yesterday he I welded out the rest.

I found for this tube with all those gaps were square ends meeting round corners that MIG was worthless. Atleast for me. We welded out almost the whole table with .035 flux core. Yesterday with about 6 welds left to do I ran out of .035 flux core. Used most of a 10lb spool. I also discovered the big Miller 212 doesn't like .030 flux core much. Fortunately the little Lincoln ProCore burns the stuff like a dream. For this 1/8 wall tube the Procore had just enough power on its highest setting to do a really nice job. I think better than the 10 times more expensive Miller 212 if only half as fast. LOL. I'm glad I have it.

I didn't use the Procore for most of the job because it has a pretty low duty cycle, and because its slow. With the 212 I was able to run hot and fast.

Today I grind out the 4 welds I did with regular MIG and smooth them out with the ProCore and some flux wire.

Part of the problem with 75/25 MIG might have been when I ran out of .035 I burned up my last .035 tip. I hunted around town and discovered Cal-Ranch stocks both Hobart/Miller tips and Lincoln/Tweeko tips. Unfortunately they didn't have any Hobart/Miller .035 tips Just .030 and .045. I decided to try the .045 tips, but like I said they might have been part of my problem.

Harbor Freight tips appear to be the Lincoln/Tweeko style. To be honest they don't look like a great deal. 8.99 for ten. At Cal-Ranch the Lincoln/Tweeko style were available from Hobart or Lincoln. The Hobart packages only had 5, but they were 3.78 a package. If I hadn't picked up a couple more welding magnets while I was there stopping at Harbor Freight would have been a total waste of time.

Tomorrow I go over to Praxair and get some more tips and another spool of .035 flux core.

[Bob La Londe]

Its a 3 x 7 top with the hope to luck into a big piece of 4 x 8 plate. It has overhangs at the ends so bracing to hold it square can be on the outside of the frame leaving the inside free for "other" stuff. One end has a little more overhang than the other so it can make a nice TIG station (if I ever get a TIG) to sit on a stool and work without bumping my knees. The tube was left open at both ends to leave open the possibility of adding a table top extension and work support if needed.

If I have time today I'll turn the table over one more time to weld in some 3/8 flat bar squares tapped to 3/8-16 for elevator bolt leveling feet. The table actually sets pretty darn flat on the floor as is, but I plan to make this a mobile table, and I'd like to be able to have all nine feet on the floor no matter where I set it down off the casters.

[boslab]

I’ve seen a similar structure support a 20 ton slab so I reckon it’ll work, certainly well built.
I have tweco torches, the plasma is an odd tip, pity there wasn’t some commonly available tips off the shelf, everyone wants to make their own the only one you can use, pain.
Mark

[MrFluffy]

The other day picked up a load of steel plates, 1/16 and 1/8th thick all just lying on the floor of a barn as walking plates, just heave-able into a estate with grunt work mostly, some looked like stainless too.
One plate was 1/2" thick steel and too big for going in the back of the car and I really wanted the lot to get that plate to make a heavy bench from it as the top, I wanted to pinch-bar it out to the garden and come back with a trailer so loaded the rest of the sheets then the occupant said "oh its ok, leave that one for someone else" and was pretty insistent about it, so possibly someone else bagged the best one or they thought it had proper value and I moved the other stuff for free. But... 8-10 slightly smaller heavy steel plates, I'll use them anyway.
Yesterday fitted a slave cylinder to a relatives bmw adventure motorcycle, and it has reinforced my (bad) opinion of modern bmw bikes as everything is so awkward, it uses zip ties and a bit of rubber tube as padding factory to keep the brake bleed tube clipped to the frame rail & the bleed nipple is a optional extra. Its a bike designed by people who make cars for sure. All form and shape with function as a secondary consideration.

Then I finally got to drag one of my own projects out of storage and start assembling it to see what is missing/what needs redoing and what is still to do. Its a heavily modified 1985 kawasaki turbo. The engine had just been placed near the frame in wrong because I was moving house and needed it in big lumps, and the new house had no workshop, but that has been resolved of late and work can begin again. So I put the engine in correct and loosely assembled what I have.
Its a big todo list too, most of the bike is loose assembled in this shot, there's no swingarm bearings or bushes machined up, same for shock linkages, I decided the footrests I made 10 years ago are nasty and I'll make new ones complete and the same for the turbo header, I can make a nicer one from stainless and keep the branches equal now instead of a log style. Probably I'll swap the t25 turbocharger for a more modern turbocharger, swap the oil pump for one from a different model and rebuild the clutch basket with harder damper material too as time and knowledge has moved on, but the rebirth has started.

[Willy]

Nice project and yes, bit of a rare bike as well. Was this the GPZ750 Turbo? I almost bought one when new, wished I had bought and kept it.
I realize it's heavily modified but where did the upside down front forks and brake setup come from?
Will be nice to see it all complete and tarted up.

[MrFluffy]

Willy, yes, although there's not much kawsaki left on it. I owned a stock looking GPz750 turbo & I modified it as much as I could without feeling guilty about cutting up a rare tidy original example but there was so much more I wanted to do, so I sold my original bike and started building this. Original "stock" turbo :-


I bought just a frame and built a engine out the spares bin,forks are gsxr-1100M with new yoke spindle turned for the kawasaki frame,swingarm and wheels are cbr900 fireblade, brakes are 4 pot floating units but have to go through it as I've forgotten where I'm at really due to circumstances making me shelve it for so long.

Have another gpz turbo in a tubular spaceframe that's also waiting its turn on the ramp patiently. Projectitis...

[jdedmon91]

A simple project the granddaughter had a toy trash can the her little brother got ahold of it and broken one of the wheels off. So I made some new wheels out derlin. Video attached

https://youtu.be/udOOoZ4XWPI

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