On 28 July, 12:51, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Andy Dingley
saying something like:

You'll be lucky to get it hot enough with a propane-only torch.

Dead easy, if you stack a few firebricks around it.

brainfart
I meant to write 'butane'. Doh.

Even with butane (even with a paraffin torch). A few firebricks is
easily worth a doubling of torch power, and cheaper to run too.

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Spamlet" wrote in message
...

Rigidity isn't necessarily a good thing:

It is in the application the OP posted about.

The OP has not so far said what was the 'application' he had in mind but has
only provided a link to the corner braces I am describing in my post.


I used zinc plated corner braces to hold picket fence panels I made to
their posts. The posts are in metal spike sockets. This is on a
bottleneck in a narrow lane, and even though it is kept bright white the
posts get hit once or twice a year. Most of the time the braces just
distort and allow the fence to move without the wood breaking. Then I
wrap a tourniquet around the whole thing and wind it back up again.
Irritating but better than smashed.

Also note that if you are bracing the corners of a box you are going to
have to bend 4 at once.

But you would probably have some panels attached giving a lot more
leverage and make it much easier.

And how would you make a box without panels?
If corner braces did not brace there would be no corner braces for sale.

S

On Jul 27, 7:53*pm, "The Medway Handyman" davidl...@no-spam-
blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
If I bend a piece of 1" x 1/8" ms flat into an 'L' shape, how do I make it
stay that shape & not bend back when a load is applied?

By using 1" x 1/4" unless available space prevents you doing so.
Take a piece of off-the-shelf L-angle, saw/grind, drill, fit, done.

What is the application?

I would not try a metalwork solution unless you have sufficient tools,
which might just be a vice & soft faced mallet. Using L-angle is a
very quick route and it is widely used for construction, repairs &
industry (bridges to pylons).

In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message , "dennis@home"
writes


"The Medway Handyman" wrote in
message news:rQI3o.484478$_m6.61707@hurricane...
The Medway Handyman wrote:
If I bend a piece of 1" x 1/8" ms flat into an 'L' shape, how do I
make it stay that shape & not bend back when a load is applied?

Would I heat it to 'red', bend it, then quench it in water/oil? Or
bend it cold, heat it, quench it?

Thanks for all the helpful replies.

I was thinking more of a bracket like this
http://www.screwfix.com/prods/11529/...Brackets/Corne
r-Braces-Zinc-Plated-25-x-25-x-16-5mm-Pack-of-10

They pretty much stay in shape under light loads. Are they just bent?

I can bend those with my bare hands so they wont support much.

"Once I was a forty pound weakling. Now I am two separate gorillas."

Eh, dennis ?

only in the canyons of your mind ...

or, have I lost you there ?

You don't have the intellect to lose anyone.
Why don't you go back to being drivel for a while, people miss him.

So I lost you there, then

The post went way over your head



--
geoff

"Spamlet" wrote in message
...

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"Spamlet" wrote in message
...

Rigidity isn't necessarily a good thing:

It is in the application the OP posted about.

The OP has not so far said what was the 'application' he had in mind but
has only provided a link to the corner braces I am describing in my post.


I used zinc plated corner braces to hold picket fence panels I made to
their posts. The posts are in metal spike sockets. This is on a
bottleneck in a narrow lane, and even though it is kept bright white the
posts get hit once or twice a year. Most of the time the braces just
distort and allow the fence to move without the wood breaking. Then I
wrap a tourniquet around the whole thing and wind it back up again.
Irritating but better than smashed.

Also note that if you are bracing the corners of a box you are going to
have to bend 4 at once.

But you would probably have some panels attached giving a lot more
leverage and make it much easier.

And how would you make a box without panels?
If corner braces did not brace there would be no corner braces for sale.

What exactly are you arguing about?
All the above is obvious and doesn't change what I said.

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On 28 July, 01:46, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

oil is the prefered way to get the carbon.

No, oil is one of the least effective (short of pure carbon) ways to
get the carbon.

You can't case-harden or carburize with carbon, because carbon's a
solid up to some enormous temperature and so it won't move from the
bath to the metal. As for pretty much any steelmaking process, the
elemental carbon is transported around as the conveniently portable
and reactive gas, carbon monoxide. There are also industrial liquid
processes using cyanides, as these are denser than gases and more
controllable.

You make carbon monoxide in bulk from coke, or more conveniently for
case hardening from carbon dioxide and an activator (usually barium
salts) that strips some oxygen from this to make the monoxide. As is
well-known, "hoof and horn" (or Kasenit) is the usual supplier of
this. However as oil is a hydrocarbon, it won't do this - at case-
hardening temperatures, bulk oil in the absence of oxygen is pretty
stable. That's why it's used as a quench (deliberately non-reactive),
but not for case hardening.


Trust me: sugar does the job well. In the days before cheap Chinese masonry
drills, I used iron water pipe to make holes in brick walls, by dunking in
sugar at red heat after cutting a few rough teeth in the end. This was a
dodge shown to me by someone's dad who was no doubt also shown it by someone
else's dad before him... I still have a pot in the garage: and it's
beginning to get a bit mucky.

But we're getting OT

S

On Jul 31, 2:18 pm, "Spamlet" wrote:

Trust me: sugar does the job well. In the days before cheap Chinese masonry
drills, I used iron water pipe to make holes in brick walls, by dunking in
sugar at red heat after cutting a few rough teeth in the end.

Thanks, I shall try that.
I needed to make an inverse drill, to trim the outside of a rough
brass casting so that I could put a thread on it. I made a steel tube
and cut some teeth on it and put it in the drill press. It worked OK
but next time I will harden the teeth.
The casting would not fit in the lathe or I would have used that of
course.