What Did You Buy Today?

[pontiac428]

My preferred cutting tool on the lathe is HSS. The big lathe likes 1" and 3/4" bits, and I enjoy grinding them. This lot came up with some real gems in it, so I gladly bought it. Sometimes, it's a little hard to get scale from a photo. I ended up with some real big bricks that I might need a surface grinder to make useful!


This is a piece of MoMax, 2" x 1/2", in case I need to grind a guillotine blade or something.



Here's a block of Rex95 that I wish I cold split into four blooms.



And the reason I wanted the lot was the tantung. Tantung is a couple of rockwell degrees softer and considerably less dense than HSS, but it takes more heat than cobalt, which makes it great for parting blades that have to work through a cut that starts with a high surface speed and drops as you cut toward center. Unfortunately, these pieces are much larger than they appeared. The 1-1/4 x 1/4 piece is still workable as a parting tool with the end tapered to 1/8". I don't know what to use the 1x1 for, I've never considered tantung for profiling tools or typical grinds.

 

[Firstram]

What do you mean by blooms?

 

[pontiac428]

What do you mean by blooms?

It's an old steel milling term. I was hoping to find a photo to furnish a learning moment, but I really couldn't.

Molten steel at the mill after sparging with oxygen to burn off impurities is poured into ingots. Ingots are heat-soaked in a furnace then split into four pieces, called blooms. Blooms are rolled into billets, and billets are processed into bars, slabs, wire, etc.

So a bloom is the product of splitting an ingot like a log.

I've watched hours of pre-1950s steel industry filmstrips on youtube lately... Periscope Films is a good start. I can't watch dudebros talking at the camera, but I can watch industry propaganda from generations past. It's really interesting stuff.

 

[DavidR8]

Dudebros... so spot on.

 

[Oldseabee]

I just icked up a Renco rotary table made Los Angeles from a neighbor. He got it with his mill and has never used it. Good quality made in the USA. Best $100.00 spent lately as these are usually triple the price.

 

[DavidR8]

Picked up a 12 ton pipe bender.

 

[dkemppai]

Really. This conversation has deteriorated to high school sophomoric level or below

Which means you know the definition of that unit...

 

[projectnut]

Having heard it as a teenager doesn’t mean it’s a socially acceptable term to be used by adults. Would you use it I mixed company or with your children present?

 

[G-ManBart]

A buddy made me a deal I couldn't refuse on a very clean Baldor 8" 3/4hp deluxe version grinder on a factory cast iron stand with a dust collector unit. I have minty 1/2hp 7" Baldor and a 1hp (10"?) Baldor on a factory stand that's pretty ancient, but neither has a dust collector, no eye shields with lights, etc, so I couldn't pass on this. I'm probably going to sell the 1/2hp unit to offset the cost of this somewhat.

The prices on these have gotten nuts...the dust collector is like $3K new and the whole package is in the ballpark of $5K. They're nice, but no way I would pay anywhere near those sorts of prices (stayed way under $1k). I managed to dent the dust collector motor fan cover enough that it cracked one of the mounting holes so I have one of those on the way via eBay...not too bad at $45 delivered.

Sorry for the cluttered photo...just put it back together quickly after transport and snapped a pic.

 

[twhite]

I just icked up a Renco rotary table made Los Angeles from a neighbor. He got it with his mill and has never used it. Good quality made in the USA. Best $100.00 spent lately as these are usually triple the price.

That will clean up nice. Great score


Cutting oil is my blood.