Thread: Vacuum&pressure pot experiments

Wow Mike looks great. Seems you got the most out of the material. Thank you! This will be a very happy new year indeed.

Thanks Colin. Was a goal o mine to be done those slabs this week off. Now that I've 'cut my teeth' as it were in the world of tooth and tusk, I am confidant I can save more material on future jobs. If they come along that is. That marrow center is a different density than the outer tusk and as such I should have center sliced and tried to save inner and outer layers as separate cuts. The splitting due to the age of the material was a factor as well I believe. Fresh tusk was probably processed a lot quicker, back in da day.
Regardless, I think this stuff will profile into scale stock quite nicely. I am tempted to take the set I'm keeping and run it through the stabilizer solution used for punky wood to see if I can harden it up prior to use. Not sure though.
I have the 6"blanks and the couple wedge pieces soaking in mineral oil until we can arrange to GTG.
Thanks again for the challenge matey, wife says I cannot cut any more tusk while she's home. Lol.
But it looks like Christmas down here I said,, baa humbug said she..
Women,,,

Originally Posted by MikeB52

wife says I cannot cut any more tusk while she's home. Lol.

If it smells anything like cutting bone, I don't blame her!

Smells zactly like bone when cutting Roy. I guess it's less noxious than horn, but not much..

Originally Posted by 32t

I don't think that my idea would reduce the dust collectors overall effectiveness.

Use a table saw for example. The dust collector sucks from under the blade. I am sure that everyone here uses an anti kickback guard over the blade..... Drill holes through the guard and build some kind of adapter for a flexible fresh air intake duct at the top of the guard. The cold air would enter at the top of the blade and exit at the bottom one foot or so away only cooling that part of the room.

Just another of my random thoughts!

That is exactly what I am working on for my basement shop. Despite accessory air filtration, there will be heck to pay if I create any dust in the house given my wife's sensitivities, so my air system has to discharge outside. For that reason I intend to have as much of the dirty air be the cold air that just entered the house for the buffers and the inside grinder.

Remember not to get the basement to negative so you could create a backwards flow on your furnace or water heater chimneys.

Originally Posted by 32t

Remember not to get the basement to negative so you could create a backwards flow on your furnace or water heater chimneys.

Many years ago the company that I worked at installed these fancy 'French Ovens' they were vertical instead of the old fashioned horizontal ones and they used some kind of forced air.

The next day I walked in at 5am and Something Was Wrong! I smelled something associated with Natural Gas but it wasn't the Gas itself. I called the gas company and in about 10 minutes their tech was banging on the door. As soon as he walked in his little tester started going off like crazy.

After a bit of investigating he determined that the new ovens were sucking enough air to be drawing the exhaust from the gas water heater back into the store.

When I asked what we needed to do he said that we needed to allow outside air in. Well no one had a key to the back doors so I kicked one open and let the alarm sound until the store manager got there at 7:30 to get ready to open the store.

At first he was pissed but after I explained what had happened he settled down and made a call to have the situation corrected.

Just some FYI. I hope this has been of some help.

Good points about negative pressures in the furnace area gents. Another thing to consider in shop design.
Seeing as how I haven't been in the shop since last year and I had success cutting up the tusk, I though I'd try to get back to my first alumilite casting.
Swapped back to my 6 tpi blade as the urethane clogs up and re melts, unlike the tusk.
Here's my cut zone, see the Teflon tape layer bringing up the center, and leaving very little surrounding 'blade hole'.

And the blank sliced up.



4 matched brush and scale sets, and two additional scale only sets roughed out.
The brushes are 1.5x3" and the scales are about 1.5"x6" each.
Chould make some interesting finished works. Lots of cool effect between the copper dusted burls and the red urethane.
Cheers.

Nice work. Maybe you could figure out a way to bottle up some of your extra ambition and send it my way.......

Originally Posted by 32t

Nice work. Maybe you could figure out a way to bottle up some of your extra ambition and send it my way.......

........