I have a stainless steel rod that I bought with the intention of fitting it in to the steel base of a fly tying vice but it is slightly too thick so it's a case of either opening up the socket in the vice or reducing the thickness of the rod .I would prefer to leave the vice intact as it was pretty expensive (although I did consider using a piece of thinner rod in the electric drill and wrap coarse emery round it) so am looking for advice as to the best way to reduce the rod thickness .Other than a drill or angle grinder I only have hand tools .My understanding is that S/S is hard to work ? The length of the rod that has to be reduced is no more than 20mm and I estimate it needs to be reduced by 1mm all round .
Any machine shop will turn it down for you on a lathe in minutes if you give them an exact size to work to. Ordinary grades of stainless are not hard to machine. I'm sure someone on uk.rec.models.engineering will do it if you post it.
stainless is actually less hard to work than a high carbon steel.
1mm is a lot for hand tools though.
Do you have any powered grinders? that plus holding it in the chuck of e.g. a portable drill would do it fairly fast. In fact you may be able to simply get a carborundum stick, and hold it against the rod spinning in a chuck of some sort, and do it that way. Crude lathe type thing.
Or the ubiquitous angle grinder, with the rod again held in something that spins..:-)
Actually someone on usenet did me a favour a while back which I could do with putting back into circulation so if you post it to me I'll do it for you and post it back. Email me on pumaracing at aol.com and we'll sort out the details. Make sure you know the size you want first though. Not much use if it goes back still too big.
It can be extremely hard to work. It needs to be an aggressive cut, if cut, or SS work hardens on the surface. An angle grinder would do it, but it would be next to impossible to do it with any accuracy with the SS not rotating. You could improve the accuracy by spinning it in a drill chuck, but it is far too big to fit.
I was going to offer to do it for you for nowt but I'm not sure I'm so inclined considering the 'help' you gave me on my recent hand fan question. ;-(
I've turned quite a bit of stainless in my Myford ML10 and could even have a bit of scrap / stock I could just send you ready sized (with sufficiently accurate dimensions from yourself).
So, where do we go from here, in case it was just a misunderstanding (on your part)? ;-)
I'll admit I did overreact ( but I wasn't the only one :-) ). I think it was just the impression you gave me ( possibly unjustifiably) when you appeared to want taken by the hand through the Google search results .
(As this is your thread I wouldn't be hijacking it as such so) may I assure you I (we) spent a considerable amount of time searching via Google and on eBay *before* I asked the (OT) question here, as is the generally accepted procedure.
Sometimes you can't see for looking or just need some inspiration or a bit of lateral thinking, something I have learned over many years to expect from the good members who populate this particular ng. ;-)
Telling me there are 1000 hit's on eBay when none of them are actually suitable isn't actually a sign that I have been lazy is it (and I'm not saying you said such etc)?
Just has helpful as "Is that not YOUR job?" ;-)
Anyway, that behind us (and I've still not found a suitable solution to the fan question btw although I have other avenues to investigate now), FWIW I thought the question was posed such that it excluded 'other' solutions and because (it could have been assumed) that the alternatives cited had been tried and weren't considered acceptable.
Why not electric fans you asked (quite reasonably), well when your face is running at what feels like 200 deg C (to the sufferer) the tiny amount of 'breeze' you get off an electric fan small and light enough to fit in an apron pocket simply isn't sufficient. I've tried several different designs / types with her and all are soon discarded in favour of your more traditional folding hand fans (and probably why they have been in use for thousands of years)? ;-)
Anyway, it looks like Dave got in first with his offer of help but mine still stands if you need it for any reason. ;-)
Ah. whet you need is a potent model aircraft motor and suutable pack. They can whip up a 100mph breeze in no time at all.
Trouble is to move arr VOLUME requires larger blade areas. hand fans have that as do ceiling fans, Ungeared small electric motors are all revs and no torque: without a gearbox they wont shift any sensible volume of air at all.
Thanks Tim .I have a friend who was recently suffering from Internal Central Heating and when in her home everyone else was freezing and she was asking whether anyone else was hot ..lol
Sounds like you've got a usable set of tools to do it right there. Put rod in drill chuck, use grinder to gently file it down while it rotates. That can get you a small fraction of a mm accuracy fairly easily.
I missed the original thread, but a good way of cooling down is by evaporation, so a fine mister (no not a man) might be useful. The generations using lavender water, or cologne as a refreshing application found it worked ok. With wet skin, the airflow doesn't have to be as great to give a cooling effect.
Understood ... 'latent heat of vaporization' or somesuch?
I believe I have bought for her and she's tried 'a' version of a cooling spray (I can't remember what) but I can't remember her finding it sufficient.
I think the issues are that she is always generally hot but she copes with it. Every so often she'll have a power surge and then has seconds to deploy some cooling technique to prevent meltdown.
This may happen at work and being a carer in a care home limits what she can carry with her and use at every instance. It sometimes happens where in a room of a sleeping resident so it couldn't make any noise for example. She can take a few moments to use a hand fan pretty well anywhere and any time though (no batteries or fluids required, small enough to keep in her uniform pocket and not be broken when bending etc). ;-)
If it does not have to be very accurate you already have the answer and the tools, just stick the stainless in the drill and use the angle grinder against the rotation of the drill. As long as the shaft is not too long. If it is too long you can still do it by putting the shaft through something to steady it.
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