Door problem

I met up with a friend today who earns his living as a joiner. Amongst other jobs he works for a firm that sells solid wood doors. The customer comes to the showroom and chooses the doors, then Jim takes them out and fits them. Incidentally, if you've ever fitted a door you'd be impressed by Jim's speed and accuracy.

But anyway, Jim had a job which went normally, then a few days later the customer came to the showroom to complain. The doors didn't sound right. The customer (who for brevity I will henceforth call 'Mr Pillock') had apparently been brought up in an old farmhouse, where the doors were massive and heavy, and closed with 'a real thump'. He had been hoping that his new doors would sound the same when he closed them. Was there anything that could be done to make the doors sound 'more realistic'?

Having effectively got the bum's rush from the door company Mr Pillock discussed the problem with his mates, one of whom suggested, probably in jest, that he should line the doors with lead. Building on this thought Mr Pillock had a better idea. He was a keen sea fisherman, by the way, in the habit of making his own lead weights, using a mould.

He removed three doors and stood then on their hinge edges in the yard. He drilled 5/8" holes into the lock edge of each door, one hole per nine inches, all the way up. He melted a large quantity of lead. He was later to explain that he got it pretty well bubbling so it wouldn't solidify too quickly. He then ran along the row of doors filling each hole with molten lead.

He had considered the possibility that the wood might be scorched a bit but had decided that this wouldn't happen because there would be no air in the holes. After a few moments he started to suspect that this hypothesis might be incorrect. The doors started to smoulder alarmingly. Mr Pillock stood watching, and thought that the smoke would die down as the lead cooled. In fact the doors burst into flames and were destroyed. Thus it was that Jim had to go round with three replacement doors.

Mr Pillock has a senior position in local government. He has a large staff and a budget of millions. Thus we are ruled.

Bill

Stranger than fiction

Which part of "SOLID WOOD DOOR" did you fail to bother to read?

I have sucessfully cast lead weights on this scale. Are you just inexperienced?

Anyone spouting off without reading the story properly is also guilty of behaving in a retarded fashion.

Tim

maybe mr pillock could arrange for harry to stand the other side of any door he is closing, in a position so the door hits his head just before it closes fully, should make a dense enough sound to satisfy mr pillock, and give harry something useful to do for once in his life.

Harry leapt to mr pillocks defence as he immediately recognised a kindred spirit.

G.Harman

A six inch deep 5/8" diameter hole would only need around half a kilogram of lead.

You only need to pick up one ladle full at a time.

I always had several kilos of lead in my factories.

I would use a solder pot, although that wouldn't get the lead as hot as he seems to have managed, so my guess would be a pot on a gas ring.

Carefully, although a funnel might help if you didn't have a steady hand.

Nightjar > Would they even have that amount of lead to hand?

Many years ago I found a roll of lead sheet (about 6" wide) on a roof. I carried it down with some difficulty and put it in my shed. Once every few years I need a bit of lead so I snip some off the roll. It's funny the things we hang onto.

Apparently fishermen making leads generally use a calor burner and a steel watering can, or a saucepan and some sort of ladle to pour. Apparently if you try to make your leads using the kitchen equipment you can get into bother.

I suppose this guy would just use his normal method but he'd pour into the holes rather than into a series of moulds. He must have gone along the holes quite fast because surely he would have stopped once the smoke got bad. He burnt three doors anyway.

Bill

Somewhere in my garage are a pair of weights that were made for the pendulums on a harmonograph, rather like this:

My dad had lots of lead sheathing from the cables he removed when he rewired the house.

It was simply melted in an old saucepan on a gas ring, and poured into syrup tins. Each weighs about 11 kg.

I didn't inhale. ;-)

Chris

If you really want to melt lead for sinkers etc just cut a 9 Kg lpg cylinder in half and use the bottom half as I did, and do it in the open in a slight breeze.