Thread: Scales Experiment.

What a great idea

The results look pretty damn good too

Originally Posted by gssixgun

What a great idea

The results look pretty damn good too

I can hear the gears turning in your head clean down here Glen------------------

What I envision is that lovely bride of yours saying "Honey have you seen the toaster oven"?

Originally Posted by DVW

This is an excellent idea. Thank you. I did some research on it and that stuff is extremely strong. I don't think that you need a metal liner or cheesecloth. How did you make and attach the wedge? From what I can tell, adhesives don't work on it well at all, but you can "weld" it with a heat gun.

This would be really cool with a blade forged from a recycled car spring. Imagine having a functional, good looking and unique razor that was made completely from junk. It would just be cool to have something worth a few hundred dollars that cost $0 in materials and that other people had thrown out. One man's junk and another man's treasure, so to speak. I think that I just found the next razor project to add to my collection.

My normal go to wedge material is acrylic sample chips. I was in a hurry to get this done so I dremeled up a section of some broken hard rubber scales. It is just pinned in with a friction fit, no glue.
Sounds like my type of project. I've made scales from Pex tubing before and was pleased with those results. i may even have a tutorial somewhere on making the Pex scales.

A few more blanks, new scales this weekend.
Yellow, white black and milk jug:

Milk jug and green otc supplement bottle:

Translucence of milk jug, it is clear when melted and gets milky when cool:

Outstanding! How long does it take for the plastic to melt? Got to get some ideas on timing.....

Originally Posted by Johntoad57

Outstanding! How long does it take for the plastic to melt? Got to get some ideas on timing.....

I think i spent a total of 2 hours today on the green but I was melting the milk jug in layers and sprinkling the green between them. I would say depending on quantity and size of pieces at least a good 45 to an hour and a half using a toaster oven at about 330-350. It will have the consistency of a very stiff dough.

I played with making some last night. It is kind of the damascus of plastic. I don't think that I got mine hot enough though. While it looked good and felt strong, I cut it up and then bent it to test the "welds". In the middle of the piece I had the equivalent of "cold shuts". So I'll melt it back down and give it another try later today.

Originally Posted by DVW

I played with making some last night. It is kind of the damascus of plastic. I don't think that I got mine hot enough though. While it looked good and felt strong, I cut it up and then bent it to test the "welds". In the middle of the piece I had the equivalent of "cold shuts". So I'll melt it back down and give it another try later today.

That is a big plus that the rejects and scrap can all be remelted and tried again.
I'ts a learning process too, my clamping rig has too much flex and I'm dealing with varying thickness because of it. I may rig up a frame and use a scissor jack and steel plates.
Pressure helps a lot with squeezing out the cold shuts.

Originally Posted by joamo

That is a big plus that the rejects and scrap can all be remelted and tried again.
I'ts a learning process too, my clamping rig has too much flex and I'm dealing with varying thickness because of it. I may rig up a frame and use a scissor jack and steel plates.
Pressure helps a lot with squeezing out the cold shuts.

I think that an Arbor Press may be your friend instead of the scissor jack. I have the Harbor Freight and it works OK. I did some fine tuning by smoothing things up a bit but straight from the box it worked fine.

https://www.harborfreight.com/1-ton-...ress-3552.html

If you picked up some 1/2" steel plates, then filed the edges and the surfaces you could then sand the surfaces smooth right down to a mirror finish. I'd take the turntable out and lay the bottom plate directly on the flat surface then the melted plastic and top plate and then press it.

If by chance the angle of the handle isn't where you can get good pressure, the ring on the right is held in with a single set screw, you can loosen the screw remove the ring then pull the shaft with the handle out till you can move the ram up or down till you can get the right angle.

You could do that before by experimenting with how the set up would be before hand.

I'm also wondering if those polished plates could be preheated with the plastic to give you more working time

Originally Posted by cudarunner

I think that an Arbor Press may be your friend instead of the scissor jack. I have the Harbor Freight and it works OK. I did some fine tuning by smoothing things up a bit but straight from the box it worked fine.

https://www.harborfreight.com/1-ton-...ress-3552.html

If you picked up some 1/2" steel plates, then filed the edges and the surfaces you could then sand the surfaces smooth right down to a mirror finish. I'd take the turntable out and lay the bottom plate directly on the flat surface then the melted plastic and top plate and then press it.

If by chance the angle of the handle isn't where you can get good pressure, the ring on the right is held in with a single set screw, you can loosen the screw remove the ring then pull the shaft with the handle out till you can move the ram up or down till you can get the right angle.

You could do that before by experimenting with how the set up would be before hand.

I'm also wondering if those polished plates could be preheated with the plastic to give you more working time

Great minds must think alike. I too have that arbor press, but I ended up using a large vice with steel plates. I found that preheating the steel plates not only helps with a longer working time, but they really help with the finish of the plastic. Warm plates make the plastic much smoother on the outside. Here is my second attempt from today. This time I let the plastic get hotter (almost puddling) and it didn't have any cold shuts. These are just rough cut and sanded down to 60 grit. One thing I noticed. While this material is extremely strong, it is soft and bends easily. I'm not sure how thick to make the scales. They won't give much (if any) tension due to flex. They will simply flex.