Metro Detroit Metalworking Club

October, 2006

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE: Greetings, members. At the last meeting, we talked about where you can buy metal in small quantities. I just found a place where you can sell metal in small quantities. It’s Silver’s Metal Co. at 1401 Woodland , Detroit , MI 48211 . The phone is (248) 867-9188. The owner, Steven Silverstein, helped personally to take a few hundred pounds of scrap off my hands. I had 4 boxes of steel, aluminium, brass and titanium (they take the mundane and the exotic). They have a neat gun-shaped instrument that can determine the kind and percentage of alloying elements. My titanium was found to have vanadium, aluminium and iron in it.

There is lots of shiny stuff at Silver’s Metal. Piles of chips, a mountain of spark plugs, pallets of aluminium wheels. Anything you bring in should be sorted by metal of course, but also by alloy if you happen to know it. For instance, some aluminium alloys have a high silicon content, which lowers its value (sand is worth less than aluminium). Also, painted scrap brings a lower price because it needs to be sent to a different processor to burned off in a furnace with an after burner.

MINUTES There were 19 members at this meeting. We started by talking about the outing at the home of James and Sallie Howard, which was last month’s meeting place. We expressed our appreciation with applause for them inviting us to their home.

I talked about the metalworking class, which needed a few more people to sign up to make it viable. (Enough people have, and the class is continuing). I pointed out that material is included in this class, and I felt I had gotten my money’s worth already. If I had to buy the minimum quantities for the steel I got as part of the class, it would be more than the cost of the class.

Don Kuwik is the latest borrower of the club book, “Machine Shop Trade Secrets.” EVERYONE in the club who read the book has recommended it. Don probably will, too.

We had a discussion about how to machine narrow slits. After bypassing the exotic approaches, like EDM, the club generally settled on slitting saws or jewellers saws held in arbors that are easily made or bought.

We had a guest, Randy Tucker. He works at a place that makes drills, step drills, reamers and similar cutting tools.

We then went to show & tell.

Here is a picture of the regular members or sometimes also know as the usual suspects…

Bob Fuhrman “rescued” the object above from the trash .He said it was too good for the junk pile. I agree. It’s a fine old relay adjustment kit. Its used to check and adjust precision relays to current in milliamperes.

John Osborne (me) brought in a device to turn the hand wheels on my mill. But without the mill and the drill it chucks into, it was hard to visualise what it did. I use this like a power feed for X and Y feeds and for rapiding between cuts.

Joe Pietsch must know where every piece of antique machinery is within 500 miles. He showed pictures of the last show he saw.

Ronald Grimes brought in some things he made in the metal class. The tap holders are best held in place with the spring-loaded tool on the left which is chucked in a drill press. The die holder can also be chucked in a lathe mill, etc. to get the threads started straight. These five items only took him about 2 hours to make and he reports they “really work fine.”

The flywheel is for a model steam engine kit Ron is building during the metals class.