From: mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere   
      
   "Jim Wilkins"  writes:   
      
   > "Jim Wilkins"  wrote in message news:vu44rs$vrlu$1@dont-email.me...   
   >   
   > I will soon try making a tool from a scrap of broken rock drill pipe, and   
   > see how easy to saw and turn it is.   
   > --------------------------------   
   >   
   > It wears an HSS bit dull in a few minutes unless the lathe is in back gear.   
   > Annealing or tempering in the wood stove to at least 600F when I removed it   
   > from the tin can after the fire died down seems to have helped tool bit   
   > life.   
      
   I once made a (finger) ring from pattern-welded mild steel and a piece   
   of VW Beetle front suspension torsion spring.  File glided off of it   
   as if it were glass.  Put it in the coal of the wood range and left it   
   overnight as the fire died.  Next day, it filed nicely.   
      
   Those yard-long VW spring leaves can be clamped in the vise and bent   
   180 and will violently spring back.  Heated to red in the forge and   
   cooled in air on the bench, can easily be snapped of by hand with a   
   very few degrees of bend.  Glassy-hard.  Air-hardening alloy.   
      
   So, good lo-tech annealing trick.  Dunno about rock drill pipe, though.   
      
   --   
   Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)