White metal – its availability & uses ?

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

So the cleanup continues long after we have forgotten the event. Is life getting back to normal yet?

I wouldn't like a hundredweight of figures falling out of a cupboard during a quake!

Neil

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Hi Neil, Jason my nephew has a room specially for his modeling, and another (my bed room when I stay) for storage. Don't know if it was the weight of the models, but his work room dropped a number of inches from the rest of the house. Its an old (for NZ) place, 90yrs +, and no crawl space under it, so they'll have to take up some of the floor to put it back on its piles so it's a bit less like a trampoline, its minor damage really compaired to many thousands of others. Ian S C

[Flying FiferParticipant @flyingfifer]

Happy New Year to everyone.

Having a bit of a clearout (again !) in the workshop & have come across 6 blocks of Cerrobend. Anyone have any ideas where this comes in the whitemetal arena?? I seem to recall that my late Dad used it for pipe bending

Alan

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

>take up some of the floor to put it back on its piles

Funny how you colonials like perching your homes on top of rocks. Back here in the old country we find some ground, and dig a four-foot hole to drop the house in

> Cerrobend

Soft, low melting point so only good for what it's intended which is trick teaspoons and bending tubes.

I've just moulded a new ballast weight to complete my shunter – added another pound. I used a wooden mould. What I hadn't expected was the amount of charred basla from the previous attempt that emerged as the lead melted! Only slightly too hot this time, so it bubbled woodsmoke for a few minutes, but the result is prefectly OK for a crude weight – I even manged to half-embed a fixing screw in it (the lead didn't occupy as much room as I expected).

Neil

[Cornish JackParticipant @cornishjack]

Alan

I also have a couple of blocks of Cerrobend. Had it for years and never used it so considered getting rid of it … until I saw a Fleabay listing for small amounts – Strewth!! almost cheaper to use gold! It remains in the MCIUOD box! I believe it is just a variation on what was called Woods metal – VERY low melting temp (boiling water) and most useful for tube bending.

Rgds

Bill

[Flying FiferParticipant @flyingfifer]

Thanks for that Neil & Bill,

I had a very vague memory that Dad used boiling water to melt it down. Just discovered another 3 blocks total weight of the lot is 27 Lbs so might just put some on fleabay but postage would be skyhigh.

Alan

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

27lbs? That appears to be over £500 worth even at Ebay prices!

Neil

[Flying FiferParticipant @flyingfifer]

You are joking aren`t you Neil??? I`ll take £499 if anyone is interested

Alan

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

A close relative of whitemetal is LOY . This is a low melting point pasty alloy used for repairing and filling body panels and joints in old type cars and lorries . The process is very similar to wiping a pipe joint with lead solder .

In the 1950's on the Gower my late father ran a country garage . In those days many cars were still coachbuilt ie with a chassis on which were mounted engine , axles and transmission and body shell as separate units .

Repairing bodywork damage was quite an art on these vehicles . Some knocks were panel beaten out using traditional tools and methods , some smaller ones were filled and rubbed back with the LOY and some needed new panels .

Panels were unavailable for many prewar cars and these had to be made . The flat ones were easy enough but the curved ones were usually made by my father and a mate using using panel beaters rollers – the two men working push pull and manipulating sheet in different ways at the same time to get the 2D curvature .

Bought in panels when rarely available were supplied 'semi finished ' ie they still had to be hand fitted to the actual vehicle . This involved hand adjusting edge flanges and often moving holes .

There were two types of panel – the simple all in one piece ones and the assembled ones with 'invisible' joints . The assembled ones had to be dressed to match each other , welded together and then ground back and filled – again with LOY .

On the garage itself :

This handled every possible type of work – cars , vans , trucks , tractors , trailers , balers , combines , gates , toys , prams , rat traps , ashpans , grates , aerials , lightning conductors , ornamental iron work – the list was endless .

Many customers were farmers who were all poor (so they said) , couldn't pay the bill this week (so they said) and always wanted a cheap bodged job ' to keep (it) going a bit longer ' .

They also ran top of the range Land Rovers , went on holiday twice a year and on rare occassions that they ever paid for anything they did so in cash from a huge wad of notes .

Fortunately there were enough other customers who were a bit more reliable !

Michael Williams .

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Many older houses in NZ are built on wooden piles, in flat areas like most of Christchurch these are very short leaving no crawl space (nephews house), my place built in the 1970s, built on concrete piles with about 500 mm space. Not long after that it became almost universal that houses are built on a concrete slab, these slabs did not withstand the earthquakes too well, and new design for the slab is one thing that has slowed rebuilding. Some of the very old houses just had the floor joists resting on the ground, sometimes with a rock, or bits of wood to fill dips in the ground (proberbly the safest of the lot!! ian S C

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