Made me smile to see that after all that work, the component was dumped into the back of a truck to roll around and possibly fall out and be damaged.

Yes, I thought the Transport Department treated that brand-new crankshaft in a rather cavalier manner, though it had already suffered the indignity of being lifted using chains rather than webbing slings.

Having watched the video and taken careful note how to turn a crankshaft (how did he centre the “live” end in that big V-block vice on the faceplate?) it sort of led me as these things do into how to find the material….

…. to whit, the appalling conditions of the ship-breakers on the beach at Alang. Where life, it seems, is cheaper than the price of ship’s fittings or steel plate.

.

This though led me back to using the steel to make new things, before being treated like a child by Yew-Toob owner Google’s One-Ad-A-Minute department finally had me swinging from the ceiling.

Two things emerged.

One was some of the steel goes to a, I think local, rolling-mill that converts the narrow strips into hot-rolled bar.

The other is using chunks of the salvaged plate directly for new fabrications.

The video cited below shows building a replacement excavator bucket, apparently for a ‘Hitachi’ machine. Not much machining on these. It’s all plate, apart from the two pivot-pins and the bought-in teeth; flame-cut using a combination of a self-moving cutter on a special track, and a very steady hand indeed.

The man who led the work really does produce first-rate gas-cutting following chalked lines, and using a trammel pointed into a big centre-punch dot.

As for the setting-out “C” AD…… well, I like ‘Harvest Morn’ cereals but will never see their packets in quite the same light again.

The welded-on thicknessers for the pivots start as flame-cut “washers”, as one would expect (similar in our scales, could be sweated or silver-soldered on) though I’m not sure my books on using the lathe quite cover the finish-machining technique.

Oh, and don’t tell the HSE about the guard missing from the brake-press that formed the bucket’s main sheet, to a template bent from a length of rod.

I did notice that despite the generally poor conditions and apparent state of the machines the turner was taking care of the important bits of the lathe. This included lubricating and covering the bed ways.

It’s possible that the transport at the end was to the grinding shop for finishing hence lack of precesion meaurement.

Hi Nigel Graham 2, re, building the excavator bucket, while there’s a missing guard on the break-press, I would be more concerned about the total lack of PPE and missing guards on the angle grinders, plus the excessive amount of heavy manhandling of some of the material, the template made from the rod, is not unusual in such fabrication, I’ve done it and so have many workmates, after all, it’s just another measuring aid, and the bucket is hardly a high end precision piece of kit. I can’t see the problem in reusing the steel from the ship, and I’ve never seen such buckets with those pivot thicknessers shrunk fitted or silver soldered on, they are always welded, but those that I’ve repaired, have had brass bushes fitted, and I have had to build up the holes with weld, when the shaft has worn through the brass bush, the holes were then finished to size, by a contractor with drum sanders in a die grinder, and he could get them dead on size and in line with each other.

Regards Nick.

And the award for Best Misreading Of A Post goes to…..

…. Nick Farr!

🙂

I never said excavator buckets are soldered together – simply observed our parallel methods in our scales (i.e. on models).

I did not criticise the factory for using salvaged plate directly – it seems an eminently sensible thing to do, and the ship steel is quite likely of similar grade to that used on the original bucket. Certainly just as good quality.

Nor did I criticise the use of a bent rod as a template – perfectly good practice – though I thought of those steel-fabricators when I breakfasted on ‘Harvest Morn’ cereal this morning!

I don’t know if the particular original bucket had bushed pin-holes. Perhaps not. I am sure that factory would have fitted them if so. After all, they fitted what were obviously the correct, purchased teeth.

Though I mentioned the missing brake-press guard I did not mention the lack of PPE because others have done that. In some of these videos the angle-grinders not only lack their wheel-guards but the users lack goggles.

All that heavy manhandling is necessitated by the rough working conditions and lack of equipment that could used there. They did use the excavator as a crane to move the bucket about.

All in all, I am impressed by what those craftsmen are able to achieve in such grotty working conditions.

++++

That is all present-day steel-fabricating but if you really want Ingenuity of the Ancients there is that famous Old Testament description of gilding the pillars in King Solomon’s Temple. Being one cubit diameter they were, we are told, therefore exactly three cubits circumference. Since the earliest translators included the Greeks that may have been as much from mystical perfectionism as not knowing “pi”, but I am sure the gilders would have done just as you or I would do… not worry about millicubits but wrap the foil round the column and cut it along the overlap!