Hybrid View
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02-06-2011 08:16 AM #1
Your Uncle Bob, Senior Geezer Curmudgeon
It's much easier to promise someone a "free" ride on the wagon than to urge them to pull it.
Luck occurs when preparation and opportunity converge.
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02-06-2011 08:25 AM #2
I like it - just wish I had enough tools to do some of the "complications" that folks like Ken and Steve can with SS as well as common steel.
T-buckets!! Love 'em. A study in simplicity until you get creative: http://www.google.com/images?q=t+buc...w=1677&bih=746Dave W
I am now gone from this forum for now - finally have pulled the plug
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02-06-2011 12:44 PM #3
Thanks you guys I really appreciate the comments.
This thing with the lightning holes came about when I was figuring out what I was going to do for the infra structure inside the frame rails to strengthen the frame up. I already made up my mind that any lightning hole I made I wanted some big radius' on them, not just welding in the tubing and putting a small radius from the weld. Not that there is anything wrong with that. It's a lot of work and I think it makes a part look real nice. I just want some big ones on this car. I have been playing with the idea of making some tooling I could slip inside of the different size material I'm using but it would take so may dies it would take forever. I have dimple dies but again they wouldn't work on say a piece of 2 X 3, you could get one side dimpled but not the other. Then I thought of just taking some 1/8" sheet metal and braking one side 90 degrees. With the pieces bent like that I could dimple both pieces then weld them together and I would have a piece of 2 X 3 with big radiuses. I gave up on that when I had flash backs on welding the stainless frame together, so that was out. That's how I came up with the idea of just machining the whole thing, drill an oversize hole and slip the machined piece in and weld around the hole and it's done.
Ken
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02-06-2011 01:47 PM #4
Ken i wouldn't want to do this againi had to machine up some of the tubes in mine, it seemed to take forever to get them finished
Last edited by roadster32; 02-06-2011 at 11:37 PM.
Its aweful lonesome in the saddle since my horse died.
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02-06-2011 01:53 PM #5
That looks really nice, some times I think I should take up knitting
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02-09-2011 04:12 PM #6
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03-21-2011 02:54 PM #7
I was working on my front end the other day, bolting things on to mock up the ride height of the front end. I got to the leaf spring and put it on, here is this nice stainless front end and this black ugly spring in the middle. I did some research and I decided to make my own springs out of stainless. I bought a piece of 17 4 stainless 4" wide and 12' long by 1/4". I took it over and had it sheared into 1 3/4" for the front spring and 2 1/4"for the rear. This has the properties very close to spring steel after heat treating. So tomorrow I'm heading over to the guy that makes my springs and he will bend them up so I can drop them off at the heat treater, then polish them.
Before I decided to do this I E mailed Eaton spring in Michigan, I think, and asked them if they would make them for me. There response was, no one can make springs out of stainless. So then I called my spring guy and he told me he had made some for the front end of a Indian motorcycle a few years back without any trouble. He gave me the phone number of a friend of his in northern Ca. who also makes springs. He told me that he makes coil springs out of stainless all the time. He gave me the heat treating numbers to shoot for. So we will see what happens.
Ken
Sorry for your loss of friend Mike McGee, Shine. Great trans men are few and far between, it seems. Sadly, Mike Frade was only 66 and had been talking about retirement for ten years that I know...
We Lost a Good One