I missed the staff meeting but the minutes show "A.Gent"
wrote back on Sun, 22 Aug 2004 12:07:21 +1000 in
rec.crafts.metalworking :

My best solution so far?

Get hold of some carbon tool steel blanks. (I have scads of these in 12mm
hex, so I don't need to recycle older tools, but if you don't have any, then
an old drill bit - the unfluted shaft, that is - will do fine. It'll need to
be annealed or normalised first.)

You can get drill rod, which is just that, steel rod suitable for
making drills from. We were making punches with it, so the detail wasn't
as necessary. For the final part, If I remember right, it was "dip in oil,
then burn oil off with propane torch, quench in water."
"Worked" for the kind of work we were doing.


tschus
pyotr

I picked up a square cross and an H punch. My projects I wanted to keep
(and not recycle the metal) got hit with those, just to leave a "mark".

--
pyotr filipivich.
as an explaination for the decline in the US's tech edge, James
Niccol wrote "It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."