Tough brass

[Harry Bloomfield]

This mornings task, was to make a 1" OD pulley for a small rope, which raises the bin lids to make it easy to put rubbish in the wheelie bins in their shed.

I fished out a bit of scrap brass which had some machining already done on it previously, put it in the lath, turned a suitable groove around the outer diameter, then tried to drill a hole down the centre. None of the selection of drills would even mark the brass. After two hours trying to drill the hole, I tried annealing it. Heated it up, plunged it in cold water - made no difference, tried again, no difference.

I gave up and cut a fresh section of brass, job done in 20 minutes.

[critcher]

[DerbyBorn]

critcher wrote in news:nm3k76$125r$3 @gioia.aioe.org:

Poor drill grinding!

[Brian Gaff]

Perhaps its from an alien spacecraft which unfortunately came to grief while attempting to abduct Harry? Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

maybe it was bronze, not brass

[Harry Bloomfield]

The Natural Philosopher a écrit :

Nope, I tried several, some brand new.

That might be a possibility, how could I prove it?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not sure.

phosphor bronze is HARD stuff

[newshound]

Yes but it should machine and drill OK with a properly sharpened drill!

[jrwalliker]

I made that mistake once. I was trying to cut a 5/8" BSP thread and it took ages with a freshly ground tool. (I was making an A-pillar to DIN adapter for SCUBA purposes. It really was hard work.

John